Well I went through the Panama Canal two days ago, and I am now officially in the Caribbean! Panama Canal was quite the experience. My camera lens fogged up really badly as soon as I stepped out onto the ship deck and took a good 15 minutes to clear up. The humidity was incredible, rivaling even that of Zhanjiang. The nice thing was that it was only 77 degrees and so I only sweat 5 gallons instead of 20. Apparently on the northbound trip it was in the 90s and made life almost unbearable. It was a lot of fun for me though. They have these things called Mules which are like trains that pull the ship through the canal. They run on tracks on either side of the canal and pull and push the ship. They each cost like $2 million. It’s amazing how powerful they are and how they can pull such a huge ship through, and pretty quickly too.

I am now in Curacao, and island just north of Venezuela. It’s in the 80s or 90s here and very humid as well, but not as bad as Panama. I’m enjoying exploring and getting some great photos. I’ll be uploading more in the near future. Tomorrow will be Aruba and then two days after that Grand Cayman!! I’m super looking forward to that. Meat patties here I come!

I have started training as a printer. That means that once I learn everything about printing, I’ll be eligible to be promoted to assistant manager and be in charge of getting all the photos printed that we take. That’ll put me well on my way to being photo manager, which would obviously be nice. I plan to do at least another contract after this contract, so I decided to take advantage of my current manager because he’s really great to work with and does a great job training people. He’s leaving at the end of November so I need to do my best between now and then to learn all I can about printing. He said by the time he leaves I should be able to print an entire formal night by myself. That involves editing and printing around 1,400 photos and usually takes from 11pm to 6am. Can’t wait to start!