For the past 5 weeks, much of my time has been taken up with planning and organising this event. We are open the last weekend in November and the first 2 weekends of December.
We held a competition among the crew to produce the best country display and this resulted in a huge amount of effort being put into creating all the displays.
The Brits produced a street scene complete with chestnut barrow, postbox, lamp post and snow.
The Americans won the competition for best stand with their display that showed the inside and outside of a typical American home at Christmas.
On Thursday we had our first ever Official Opening. We had invited ambassadors from all the countries represented onboard, local goverment officials. business people and church leaders.
Despite only having a few weeks notice we were excited to welcome around 80 guests including ambassadors and representatives from 6 countries.
After a program in the Logos Lounge, we all went down to deck 4 for a ribbon cutting to officially open the book fair and Christmas around the world.
Our programme includes a live nativity with a goat and sheep, carol singing, displays from 14 countries and cultures showing Christmas around the world, life performances on the stage in our International Cafe, a kids zone and many other features.
Heather has been practicing for weeks as part of the street carol singers.
On Saturday we sent them and our mascot "El Capitano" out on the streets of Koge inviting shoppers to come and join us.
Over the whole weekend we were thrilled to welcome over 1100 visitors to the ship. It was so exciting to see the whole deck full of people and many people involved in good conversations with the visitors. The whole ships crew seemed to get involved at some point or other over the weekend and it has really got everyone excited.
Last week was also a very busy week with lots of visitors including my boss Mark and old friends from Australia that we haven't seen for about 8 years. It was great to catch up with them as they are on a 3 month trip to give their daughters missions exposure in different parts of the world.
Sadly on Wednesday we said goodbye to the snow which had been here since Friday. Hopefully we will get more before too long.
Just 17 days until we leave to go home for Christmas.
