A Look Inside Our Cabin

Thanks to wonderful technology, you can get a panoramic view of our cabin – it’s quite spacious (though not as spacious as it looks courtesy of these photos):

Here is our main room.  The girls are having a bit of snack here.  Straight behind them is the door to the corridor – on the right side is the door to our bedroom, behind Kylie to the right is the door to the bathroom, and the door that is open at the right side closest to the camera is their room.  Let’s have a look, shall we?

Here is our bedroom.  As the shipping container that we packed our Suburban-sized load of personal belongings is still not open, everything that you see in the cabin either A) came with us in our seven pieces of checked luggage, or B) has been provided by the ship.  The couches, pillows, towels, curtains, comforters, etc.. are courtesy of Mercy Ships at this point, until our own arrive.

Here’s the view from our room back into the main living area.

Here is what our closets look like - the tall units have several shelves in each- each door measures 14.5”, so there’s not a lot of width, but they are quite deep so we can have double stacks of clothes inside.  The entire width of our bedroom is 7’4”, and the length is 16’4”.  So, lots of room in here! (actually these are the cabinets in the girls’ room, but they’re identical to what we have at the end of our room- we just don’t have a window, or more room on either of the sides)

The Bathroom

Our bathroom is not so roomy.  This is what you call a “wet unit,” meaning everything has the potential to get wet, and is waterproof.  The toilet is one unit that is fastened to the wall (making for easy cleaning around and under it).  It, along with all the plumbing, is operated on a vacuum system.  So, the noise of flushing has been something we’ve had to get used to.  There is a lip on the floor around the shower area that keeps most of the shower water in that corner.  Again, a vacuum system helps suck the moisture down the drain.  We have perfected “Ship Showers:” get wet.  turn off water.  lather up. turn on water to rinse.  turn off water.

We have a sink, mirrored cabinets that open, and a few hooks – nothing fancy.  The bathroom measures 5’8” deep, and 4’6” across.  Somehow all four of us fit in there to brush teeth in the morning.

The Girls’ Room

The girls have great fun in their room.  Their bunks flip up against the wall, so sometimes they like to sleep with the bed tipped up, like they are in cocoons.  I’ve been asked by other moms on the ship not to share this information with their children because they don’t have to start another battle at bedtime…. (Sorry! )

Looking from their bed this is the view you see- we are on the starboard side of the ship, so our windows face shore.  They have another little wall cabinet and an extra cubby. 

And here’s the view we have from out of our windows.  The port has worked hard with their TeRex machines (T-Rex) that lift and stack the shipping containers to create this security wall for us.  It provides some privacy, safety for us and the vehicles, and a little noise barrier too from the rest of the happenings at this very busy port.  Nearly all of these containers are empty- there are a lot of imports arriving, but not very much being exported.  Because of this, companies don’t find it cost effective to pick up their empty containers so they sit here in what may be a container graveyard.

This is the running route for those that are ambitious enough to get up early and run before the sun and humidity have awoken and are competing to dehydrate your body.  At the far left side of this there is a perpendicular wall of containers too, to the far right is the end of the pier- if you kept running you’d run right into the ocean. 

Somewhere out there in the land of containers sits the container that we put our personal belongings on in January. 

Hopefully it will clear customs soon so we can start to make our cabin feel like home.