Our Favorite Thing

We've been on five cruises and there are so many things we love about cruise vacations. The beautiful weather, the gorgeously decorated ships, the impeccable service, free room service, elegant meals in the dining room, beautiful sunrises, breathtaking sunsets, the seemingly endless opportunities for fun, free ice cream 24 hours a day, the multitude of activities provided for kids of all ages, the indescribable blues and greens of the ocean water, the pitch black of nights at sea, sheer relaxation... the list truly goes on and on. However, even though all those things are great, none of them are our favorite thing. What IS our favorite thing about cruising? This may surprise you, but it's talking with and getting to know the members of the crew. I'm talking about waiters, bartenders, room stewards and the bussing staff. None of these people are from the United States, many have very limited English, they all work six months and are off for two months. These people work from early in the morning until late at night and NEVER (and I really do mean never) get a day off. At first glance, many of these folks seem somber and glum. They will smile and greet you as you pass by (because that's what they've been told to do). You can tell they miss their families and in many cases think Americans are boorish pigs. I'm not proud of it, but all too often they're right. I have seen it time and time again where some haughty American is rude to a crew member. My guess is the passenger knows they have paid a lot of money for the cruise and feels entitled to get whatever they want by any means necessary.

Tami and I try to counteract that view of Americans by showing God's love and by having small interactions. Please understand we are not going around asking everybody if they know Jesus or thumping our Bibles. We simply hope they see something different in us and possibly realize it's because we're Christians. We don't announce our Christianity, we simply hope it speaks for itself. We know we can't single handedly change the way Europeans and Asians feel about Americans, but maybe they'll see something in us that causes them to see our country in a different way.

When we encounter a crew member, we always smile and greet them. Throughout our conversation(s), we ask where they're from, what their native language is, whether they're married or not, if they have children, what their home town (sometimes village) is like and other things about themselves. I mentioned how glum and somber the crew members sometimes are. However, when you engage them in conversation and show a genuine interest in them as human beings, it is amazing how they light up. They literally beam and life comes back into their faces. The transformation is incredible and almost always instantaneous. I think these people are so used to being treated like servants and not like people that they take on an almost machine-like persona. But when you realize these people are human beings with feelings, emotions and a life outside the cruise industry, you look at them a lot differently. These people are husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, sons and daughters. They are not robots and they certainly are not second class citizens as so many cruise passengers treat them.

This post has gotten lengthy and I want to stay true to my word to try and not bore my readers. In the coming days I will post specific stories about particular crew members Tami and I had a chance to interact and bond with. But for now I will just tell you that five days is plenty of time to get attached to a person. It doesn't take very long to make connections and it's not surprising that it was painful to leave some of these people. It wasn't painful because the vacation was over. It was painful because your heart goes out to these people and you really miss them when you leave them. There will be more on that later. These stories will tug at your heart strings... be ready, folks.