Melting Pot in the Shape of a Boat
People love or hate cruises. Nobody is neutral. We love them, and everyone we know is surprised by that. For sure, we are not the typical American cruise passengers most people imagine when the topic comes up. We’re not Wall-E characters.
The kids can make their way through some buffet desserts, let’s be honest. But Mike spends sea days hitting the gym once or twice. I read, go to the library to find a puzzle, or (this time) blog. We go nowhere near the casinos. We have bought a grand total of 4 (maybe 5?) alcoholic drinks on this 10-day cruise, and that’s only because we got a credit we need to use up before we leave the ship.
But that’s the thing about cruises that most people don’t realize. You can kinda cruise however you want. Don’t like crowds? Find a quiet spot. Want to eat at weird times. Go for it. Or you want to go to shows and get fancy for dinner? You can do that, too.
We cruise the way we want to, and it’s all just there for us to choose from. We don’t consider cruises travel most of the time. They are VACATIONS.
And yes, we do know it’s the worst thing for the planet, and we’re awful people for that part of it. But I don’t eat meat, drive an electric car, recycle and compost just about everything. I don’t even use normal towels because they waste so much water and energy. Just give me this one thing, please.
However you feel about cruises, one thing is true - you can meet a whole lotta interesting people on a cruise (if you choose to). This cruise in particular has been amazing for that.
The first several days we didn’t really mingle much. No particular reason for that. We just found ourselves doing our own things. But once we’d tried out the water slides and zip lines that take you out over the ship and had seen a couple shows…we dug in deeper. Story started spending more time at the kids’ club. Sagan started shooting hoops on the sports deck. Mike and I hung out in the hot tub and chatted with friendly strangers.
One day, Mike and I were witness to such a fun conversation. We were included it in a bit, but we mostly enjoyed watching it. There was one guy who is Nicarauense (Nicaraguan) by birth but has lived in California for a long time. He speaks Spanish, English, and Portuguese for some reason he said was too long of a story to explain. He was chatting with a family from Rome who speak Italian and a little bit of English. Another guy got in with his little boy, and they were Brazilian and spoke Portuguese with a little bit of English as well. The Californian was basically the United Nations, helping all of us fill in any blanks we couldn’t get through choppy Spanglishtalianguese. The Brazilian is a huge fan of some Italian race car driver named Valentino. Such a big fan that he has a tattoo of the guy, and his little boy is named - you guessed it - Valentino. It turns out the Roman guy grew up with Valentino, which led to some very animated conversation. We loved being there for that, and we especially loved Story seeing it all too. One of my favorite things about living in El Paso back in the day was Spanglish conversations. Everyone kept up well enough, and we all learned in the process. So fun!
And better than that has been this wonderful group of buddies that Sagan has found in the last few days. It started with him shooting hoops solo on the sports court. Some other young guys (ages from teens to early 30s) started a soccer (sorry, football!) game, so Sagan joined in. I just happened to walk up to see Sagan pull off a surprisingly cool behind-the-back kick of the ball, and then I heard a kid say in a middle Eastern accent, “I thought you said you aren’t good at football!” I’m sure that shot was a combo of luck and skateboarding skills coming together at just the right moment, but it was awesome.
Anyway, he’s been hanging out with these guys since then, playing ball or going to the nightly dance party things on the top deck. Story and I joined him for a few minutes last night, and each of the guys introduced themselves, shook our hands, and had sweet things to say. I asked each of them where they were from, and there wasn’t a single repeated answer among them!
One guy is from Kuwait. Another from Saudi Arabia. One from Rome. Sagan from America. Another guy was Mexican. And this one dude was British and Irish but lives in Spain. Ha! It was so cool. They’ve all been asking each other about their countries and about how Americans see them and vice versa. They’ve traded Instas and talked about how cool it would be to meet up in their various homes.
Story met some friends from different places too, such as Australia and the very exotic west Michigan.
Oh! And don’t even get me started on the international staff on every cruise. I know they’re all working hard, and I’m sure there are plenty of days when they hate their job, just like every human out there. But sometimes you get to chatting with someone on board, and you get to learn little bits about where they’re from, too. Yesterday I talked with a Bulgarian guy about the Trevor Noah book “Born a Crime.”. (It’s a great book. Go read it if you haven’t!) And today I talked for a quite a while with a lovely pair of crew from the Philippines and Indonesia. They asked for my blog when they heard about our trip, so maybe they’ll read this now. (Hello, if you’re out there!)
So, you can hate cruises all you want, but these are experiences that would be hard to duplicate in any other setting. I’m grateful for that.
