About me

Who's that girl?

As you know, I'm Barbara Costa. I'm from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. I'm 29 and graduated in Tourism in 2007. I chose this area because of this huge love that I have for my country and city. Also because I had learned some languages.

My native language is portuguese, but I speak english and a little spanish. So, this way wasn't hard for me to be selected by the govermment to be an exchange student in Us, where I lived for six months and studied at Gadsden State Community College in Alabama.

I used to be an english teacher in a small city close to salvador, but I went out from there to finish my studies. I worket in a front desk of a big hotel in Salvador too.

I've decide to work as a crew ship because I would like to keep working in my area and to get more money. Also I love to travel, and after you go out from your country once, you can't stay longer without travelling. So, here I am...

Sorry about my english. If you see some mistakes, please, don't be shy to correct me, ok? I'm opened to recieve opinion and some new information.

This blog is a way to registrate my itinerary at the cruise ship. this will be my first travel as a crew member. later I tell you my experience abroad, as exchange student, or whatever...lol.

I finish here for the moment, but I'll be back.

Cara de Crew

Costa Crew selection, interview

and trainnings

This blog aims to tell the aspirants how is the process to prepare to be a cruise ship crew and everything that happens before the embarcation, during and after desembarcation.

This group was selected in Salvador- Ba, and they did all the enterviews at Salvador.

The firt step to be a crew is to fill up the formulary to some cruise agency. Our agency is the Infinity Brazil, that is situated in Santos São Paulo.

They have a site, where you can see what you can do to candidate yourself: http://www.infinitybrazil.com/ .

The agency does two enterviews and they choose your occupation inside the ship. They select all hotel area employes. Them, they prepare you to be interviewed by the Human soucer of the Ship company. Normaly all that process is at Santos, but our interviews were at Salvador, because the great number we were.

Our company is the Costa Corciere. It´s a italyan Company, theyr site is: http://www.costacruzeiros.com/ . After this last interview, they sent us to do some courses. At first we did the Costa trainning, where we learn about all the company polices. This course has the duration of five days, ten hours a day.

The other course we have is the STCW http://www.stcw.org/ , without that certification we can't apply to be a crew ship. There we learn about first aid, fire and water survival.

Is important to know that during the costa course, the expences with the hotel are paid by the company, but at the STCW trainning, you'll have to pay all the expences.

Transport, food and any other expences are all yours.

Even you having all those expences, and doing all that trainning, all that experiency can be fun, also you will find some friends for life. The STCW is paid, and that is another expence you will have.

If you have the orkut profile, here are some links that will help you to get some informations:

http://www.orkut.com.br/Community.aspx?cmm=46676637

http://www.orkut.com.br/Community.aspx?cmm=55117245