Getting to the ship. Home for the next 108 days.

We’re on the ship! Hard to believe that this will be home again for the next four months. Well, I shouldn’t say again, as this is a newer and improved version of the S.S. Universe Explorer that we sailed on the previous 2 voyages. Improved it may be but that also means we will be spending a little more time orienting ourselves and getting a feel for the new layout. And so you know, the ship we are on is M.V. (motor vehicle) Explorer, which I may also refer to as the “great white mother” at times. Explanations for such a name will make sense as the voyage continues.

Let me just play out the last 48 hours of Hoff madness to get the five of us packed and ready, to Florida, and on the ship.

We had a 6:05am flight out of SeaTac on Wednesday morning, January 14th. This meant that we ideally would be leaving our house at 4am hopefully getting us to the airport by 4:30 and in good time to unload our ungodly amount of luggage (aka: crap), make our way through security and board our flight. And I must say, I was quite impressed with what we managed to pull off. Although it wasn’t quite our goal, it was pretty darn punctual for our perpetually late mentality. So, Wednesday was spent around the house packing bags and prepping the house for potential renters or sitters while we are away. This means Mom magically had to make vanish numerous pile of clutter that, hence the name, cluttered our house. I wish you could have all seen our house between the hours of 3pm and 3am, it underwent a total transformation. My contribution to the whole production was an activity I have come to really enjoy when I find myself at my parents house: it’s cleaning the fridge. A bit disturbing at times, seeing as it requires quite a bit of throwing out food that has seen better days (my mother has a hard time parting with such items), but by the end when you can actually navigate through what remains, its a true sense of accomplishment. So that’s what I spent, not kidding, a good three hours on. Dusting as well…anyone who has lived with me or visited my various dwellings may be pleasantly surprised that I possess such ability; I know my parents certainly were.
So by the time the fridge was clean, bookshelves and windowsills dusted it was nearing midnight. We had some late night visits from special family members, namely my cousin Heather and moms brother, David and a dear childhood friend Allison. Their presence brought somewhat of a calming atmosphere to our rather uncalm push to get out the door. Once they left, I managed to finalize my packing festivities and take a short snooze for a mere half hour before it was 3:45am and time for us to be loading our gear into the car and on our way. This might help you understand the immense amount of stuff we decided was necessary to travel with us…it required us to take two cars to the airport in order to get all our luggage and our rather generously sized selves there. This also meant subjecting one more loving person to such an early wakeup call. But we seem to have done something right over the years because we had plenty of gracious offers from our wonderful network of family and friends. The two lucky winners of such an honor were, Janet Lawer a good family friend and my uncle David (whom I mention earlier). Us kids, meaning my brothers and I decided it would be in our best interest to drive ourselves to the airport and so we did, meeting the rest of them in the departure drop-off at SeaTac. Our drive consisted of the somewhat delirious me being reminded by my smart-arsed brothers that I should stay between the lines (luckily I won’t be driving for the next four months), listening to “Leaving on a Jet Plane” a remixed version by Slightly Stoopid, and being somewhat in disbelief that we are actually doing this voyage again. I feel so privileged as a sister to be spending this time with these boys, as I have somewhat accepted that this could potentially be one of the last family trips we take as our nucleus of five.
So we made it to the airport, on our flight, to Atlanta, to our next flight and finally into Miami by 4:30pm EST. Here we lugged out baggage from baggage claim onto a cart outside where we loaded it onto the AVIS shuttle, and then unloaded it at AVIS. At AVIS we picked up a Kia minivan (that I reserved! If I seem to be boasting about some minor involvements I had in this whole production…well, I am! These are my baby steps toward adulthood that I seem rather intent on avoiding. So I have to mention the when the come along) and threw everything inside the van. Only to take off to navigate the streets of Miami during rush hour. After a lot of well intentioned yelling, map reading and calls to our friend Helen we finally made it to Helen’s home in Pinecrest—a suburb about 15 miles south of Miami. Whew. Helen is a friend of ours from our Fall 98 voyage. She has twin 4 year olds, Sarah and Jaden, who do their best to keep her busy... We ordered in pizza and spent the evening with them.
Thursday morning was spent at Costco, Ross, tjmaxx and Starbucks getting our last dose of American consumer culture before we do our best to leave it behind in the coming months. Costco was necessary to get browning mixes for any birthdays that might need to be celebrated while aboard the ship as well as a few other items that we deemed necessary. The others stores were intended to provide us with some formal wear for Michael…as he is growing at a nice clip as well as ever improving on his savvy sense of style. You may ask, “why is such formal attire necessary?” The answer to that is the one formal event of the ship, known as the Ambassadors Ball…a festive gala of sorts.
Okay, I can imagine if any of you are even dedicated enough to be reading this still, you must be entirely board out of your mind. So with that I will wrap it up fast…I guess all you need to know for now is that we have made it onto the ship. The next few days we will be slowly making our way to the Bahamas where the students and remaining passengers will be boarding on the 19th. It is then that classes will start and the whole things really get in gear. For now, its time designated for relaxing and kicking back…so that I shall do. Thanks for your amazing attention span. I love you all.