I was so busy yesterday I still haven't recovered yet. I have to get up before six to get to the dining room to set up breakfast. Luckily, my room is directly underneath the dining room so I don't have to walk across the whole ship early in the morning. (The bad part is that I can always hear banging from chairs and people walking around). I met my team leader Kevin who takes care of the dining room while the Head Steward is doing other things. He has a very thick accent (he's from Togo) and his English isn't so great so I have a hard time understanding him unless it's quiet and I listen really hard so I couldn't figure out what he was telling me to do.

 

I had met another person who works in the dining room named Uta the night before so I had to keep asking her what I was supposed to do. We get two-hour breaks in between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner. I honestly don't remember what I did on either of my breaks yesterday. I had a meeting with the Head Steward Ernest at 3 so I really only had one hour to relax before I had to start getting ready for lunch.  

I had to leave dinner early because I had a mandatory new crew member meeting at 6. I was the first person there and I just collapsed into a chair to wait until the meeting started. The meeting lasted two hours and by the time I got out I was falling asleep while having coffee with my friends.

 

And I wasn't even able to fall asleep quickly when I did go to bed so I feel cheated!

I've seen only one stop sign in the whole city

I've made friends with the two other first-timers that I met on the way from Brussels. One is a anesthesiologist from Germany and the other is a dental assistant from The Netherlands.

Today we went off the ship with a group of people to visit the Country Lodge which is up in the hills. It's supposed to be the nicest hotel in all of Sierra Leone. Some people went swimming and then were at at the hotel's restaurant. A couple of the people ate barracuda. I kind of regret not tasting it but I have a few more months to try it if I want to I suppose. Then suddenly it started to down pour and people swam in the rain for a while before we left.
And then, on the way down the hill we got stuck in traffic. Let me tell you about African traffic:
Distance-wise if you look on a map at how far away from the docks it would only be maybe a half hour to 45 minute drive. But the roads are designed in such a way that the middle of Freetown is a huge choke point so it took us two and a half hours to get back to the ship. We were very lucky to get back in time to eat dinner!

Travel:1 Tiffany:0

I'm not sure how much sleep I've gotten over the past three days. I slept only about a hour on the flight from DC to Brussels because the people behind me decided THEY weren't going to sleep and instead were going to stand right next to my aisle seat and talk. And constantly bump into my seat. And my arms. And pull on my headrest.

I did, however, sleep most of the seven hours from Brussels to Freetown. We got onto the ship close to ten pm Sierra Leone time, then did some paperwork and ate then I finally got to go to my cabin. I had planned to unpack some stuff and take a shower but my body said "NO" to that and I ended up crashing. I am pretty lucky that none of my five cabin mates were in at the time because I don't think I was capable of rational thought.

I had a mandatory ship tour at nine this morning and I barely dragged myself out of bed in time. My body is trying to get me to take a nap but I'm afraid I will either a) sleep through dinner or b) wake up in the middle of the night tonight. I totally forgot an alarm clock and there are a lot less clocks on the ship than one might think. (I'm trying to find a way to blame the odd wording in this post on my jet-lag but I'm afraid this how I normally write)