When you board a 66,000 tons/782 feet ship, and you're about to travel and live with 800 other crew members and 1200 guests for 3 months, you are thankful for both satellites (as crappy as they may be depending where on the planet you are) and the holy world wide web that allow you to stay in touch with the people you know in a different life and world so that you can share your amazing experiences, your joys, rant every now and then, and just try to remember (and be remembered) that there is a whole other world out there that you once were a part of and will go back to soon.

Here are a few "messages in a bottle" to my business partner, courtesy of the famous book of face!

MS MARINA

VENICE, ITALY

DAY 1
8:45pm

So a little update on what's up on my side of the world.

I am SWAMPED with work. I boarded the ship today. We rehearsed from 9am to 8pm, with like an hour lunch break and a short safety training in the middle of the afternoon. Then I finally had a chance to get to my room and bring my stuff there.

Showered (at last!), started to unpack a bit (and by the way, tiny ugly bunk beds cabin with no window...)

Headed to dinner with my friend who also happens to be my boss, which is nice cause he knows his way around the ship and most of the rules. It will most likely be helpful!

Will write back later...

2:20 AM

We went to town!!!

Which I enjoyed cause it was like a breath of fresh air after a very long and stressful day. We just got back. The port is pretty far from downtown and this city is kinda built on water. No cars. Just boats pretty much, so it takes time to get from one place to another.

We almost finished learning the other half of the show Bon Voyage today. And tomorrow we rehearse that Latin bumper which we will perform tomorrow night as we will be sailing away from Venice.

So first performance!!!

We had a lot of work in Nashville but we also have twice as much now.

1) Everything we left out cause we couldn't figure out well from the video we now have to learn, and 2) it's different doing your own thing by yourself than having to match a whole cast obviously so... Just a lot of work. Which will be fine eventually, but I don't expect to have much time to myself for the next 10-15 days!

By the way, the Internet is by the minute.

The boat is big and luxurious. The crew areas are clean but ugly. Think hospital meets factory...

Like this is what leads to my room...