EN What a month!

Now that I'm back on board and have settled in a little bit (more on that later), I want to pick up the monthly updates on this blog again. I know I've already written two seperate blogs in August, but here's a little overview of the month of August. 

So much has happened this month! I'm going back just a little further, to the end of July. On the 27th of July, I received an email from the Dutch Mercy Ships office with an update around Mercy Ships. In this email they also wrote about some critical positions for which they needed more people in the coming months. At that moment I was already second guessing my choice to go to university and so I decided to contact my volunteer coordinator in Texas. I think it was already certain from the beginning that I would return to the ship, the only question was when. It took a bit of time to get all of the paperwork sorted out, but in the end I got the news that I was scheduled to arrive on the ship on Wednesday the 19th of August.

Quarantine/Restrictions
Arriving back on the ship felt like I had never left it. The ship still feels like home and when I climbed up the gangway that evening, it really felt like coming home. Of course a lot is different from when I left the ship in April 2019. Like I wrote in my previous blog, I had to be quarantined for two weeks when I arrived, to make sure I wouldn't make anyone sick, if I had been carrying the coronavirus. After my first week in full quarantine (about which you can read more in my latest post), they did a COVID-test on me. Luckily, it came back negative, which meant I could move on to contact restrictions, which is sort of like an eased version of quarantine. That second week I was allowed to start work (as long as I wore a mask and socially distanced where possible) and I could collect my own meals in the dining room, which I then still had to eat isolated in my cabin. The best part of my week in restrictions, was that I was now allowed to go for a walk on the dock, instead of just deck 8, and that I could go out all day long, instead of just during specific times.

Freedom!
And then last Wednesday (when it was technically already September) I was set free from restrictions! I can now do everything on the ship again, don't have to wear a mask all the time and I can eat my meals with other people in the dining room. There are still places on the ship where we have to wear masks, because we have local contractors working in those areas, and of course we need to wear masks around the new crewmembers in quarantine or restrictions, but other than that life on board is sort of "normal".
I already had to leave my very spacious family cabin last Wednesday, so it can be used as a quarantine room for a new incoming crewmember. I moved to a 4-berth on deck 4, that I'm sharing with just one other girl, which means I still have a lot of space! I've also been doing the usual work again since last Wednesday, but I'll write more about that next time.

I know this update was a bit all over the place, but that's because there was a lot I had already told you about. Hopefully next month there will be a new update with some more news too. See you!