Tenerife, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Job.

I don't like the word 'blog', but I reckon I will do it anyway. I'm going back to the MV Lyubov Orlova for a second season, this time sailing between the southern tip of Argentina and Antarctica. I will be gone from November first until sometime mid March. Life on a ship tends to make me introspective, so why not channel these currents into a usable format so that friends and family can see what I am up to? It really is interesting...

I've just gotten back from a whirlwind trip to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. What did I do in such a paradise? I provisioned a ship. Provisioning a ship means boxes. So many boxes. Hundreds of them. Packing, unpacking, lifting, throwing, passing, dragging, and storing them. Big, small, heavy, light. Broken? Sometimes. Spilling all over the place? Why not?

I also caught a glimpse of what the upcoming season will look like. I met a few of my coworkers and we became fast friends, bonding over the bruises, sweat, scrapes, and cuts caused by the aforementioned paragraph. We shared stories of previous seasons at sea. We scarfed pizza together. We laughed. We complained. We smoked cigarettes and made pacts to quit once the season starts. We passed downtime by tying different sailor's knots for fun. We listened to Russian pop music and techno. Speaking of music, I'm allowed to control it in my bar. It's really all I ask in order to be happy at work. I hope Europeans like countryfolk.

I was given a letter that details what the average cruise will look like from the vantage point of the bartender. It said things such as many people will be crossing the last continent off their life list and a subtle (or maybe not) nudge might boost sales a bit. It has finally sunk in: My job is going to be to help tourists celebrate a voyage to the end of the world!

But that isn't the end of it. If you are organized, you should be able to make about eighty percent of the landings. The end of the world is also about to become my stomping ground.

...I feel like the luckiest girl on Earth.