So Many Countries, So Little Time!: Fall 2016 Update

Hello friends and family!

I'm so sorry I've neglected to keep you all updated on my life for the past few months. Usually when I'm traveling, blogging is part of my routine, but when I'm settled into more of a steady job it seems to fall by the wayside. Hence me not writing since I got back from Cuba. So here is a brief overview of the past several months of my life.

After I got back from traveling, I almost immediately went to Montana to work as a crew leader for the Montana Conservation Corps, which I might have mentioned in my last post. It was similar to the jobs I'd had the previous two years in Vermont and Nevada, except this time the crew I was leading was a specialized invasive weed management crew. Our work all summer involved spraying invasive weeds with backpack sprayers of herbicide, not exactly the type of job I would have necessarily seen myself doing given my love of organic food and aversion to toxic chemicals, but after learning more about the process and the chemicals themselves I felt okay about doing it. Our safety procedures were strict (and I made sure to enforce them) and I trusted the knowledge of the more experienced professionals we worked with who assured us that overall it wasn't detrimental to the environment and that it was the most effective way to protect the biodiversity of the habitats we were maintaining so that the non-native plants didn't crowd out the natives ones.

I lived in Bozeman, Montana for over three months, during which time my crew worked throughout Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas, in many state and national parks including the Badlands, Teddy Roosevelt, and Yellowstone, as well as the Gallatin National Forest which surrounds Bozeman. As usual I loved being outside all the time and camping every week, and it was great to explore a part of the country I'd never been to before. Even though the work could get monotonous, just walking around locating and spraying weeds, I found myself enjoying it. My crew members did not, however, so by the end of the summer they were so bored and miserable that it was hard to keep them going sometimes. But they all worked hard and they made it through, and I was very glad they all stuck it out.

Towards the end of my time in Montana, I was spending a lot of time looking for jobs and submitting applications, and by the end it felt like I would never get one and I was so frustrated. I'm still not ready to settle into a permanent job yet so I was looking for something seasonal for fall/winter to get me through to the next summer season, and conservation jobs proved difficult to find for this time of year. So long story short, I ended up getting a job as a deckhand on a cruise ship, which is what I'm doing now! I'm working for American Cruise Lines, which is a small cruise company that does cruises on the east coast, Mississippi River, and Puget Sound. Currently I'm working on a boat that is sailing up the Hudson River for a fall foliage cruise, and my duties as a deckhand are primarily hauling lines during docking, security rounds, standing gangway watch, and steering the boat, and we also do various other things like laundry, maintenance, hauling trash and deliveries, and any other tasks passengers request. The first few days were a bit of an adjustment, getting used to a totally new type of job, the motion of the boat (which made me a bit queasy the first day), and the schedule. We work 12 hour rotating shifts, and my first week I worked overnight 6pm-6am. In addition to those 12 hours, all four deckhands are required for all docking procedures, so every time the boat docks or departs, the two deckhands who are off have to wake up for it. The first week I had to wake up in the middle of my off time every day, and then spent all the rest of my time in bed. But despite that I've been enjoying the job, and my fellow deckhands have been awesome to work with. They've been great at teaching me what to do and made me feel at home right away, even though I was a new addition and the other three of them have worked together for three months already. I'm the only female deckhand on this boat, so I've dealt with a little bit of them thinking I can't do certain things that they can, but not as much as I expected, and I'm proving to them that I can do my share of the heavy lifting.

The way this company handles their entry level deckhand and steward positions is that they hire mostly students or young people for 16-week contracts, which made it perfect for me because it's temporary, and it's cool because I get to learn a completely new skill set. They also have high turnover for these positions, so they hire a lot of people and are constantly shuffling people around. This meant that after I was hired, I waited three weeks before I was placed on a boat, and the boat I'm on now is actually being retired after this week's cruise. That means that after only two weeks, I will have to get moved to a different boat, and it's not guaranteed that they will have a space right away. So I might end up having to go home and wait again for them to have availability, which would be frustrating because I'd really like to have a steady paycheck. As of now, it's looking like they're sending us all home to wait for positions to open up, which sadly might not be until the holiday cruises. It is also disappointing because I really like the deck crew I'm working with now, and we will most likely all get split up. But, as with most of the jobs I've had in the past few years, I just have to go with the flow and understand that I probably won't be informed about things until the last minute. Good thing I'm used to that! Overall I'm enjoying myself and it's great that I'm basically getting paid to travel. My dream!

I would like to say that I will post updates more regularly but I honestly don't know if that will happen, given the unpredictability of my upcoming schedule. However, I will do my best to post at least small updates if I go any interesting places I'd like to share. To finish, here are a few pictures of my time on the boat so far. Thanks for reading!