Vacation Chronicles Part 2

I said I wanted to write about the people on the ship. First of all, most of them are foreign. A lot are from Asia. Most of the people in the spa and gym seemed to be from South Africa. All of the stewards, waiters, and food service people were from Asia especially Indonesia. I'm still trying to decide if it is because Carnival wants the ship to look exotic or if they can pay them less. I also learned that they sign contracts for 4 to 6 months at a time and then get like 2 months off. I feel so bad for them. They have to be away from their families for so long at a time. Even when they get off duty the employees still have to stay on the stupid ship. Some people might like it but I certainly wouldn't. Most of the employees I ran into were very friendly and said hello.

Although we never met the stewards I felt a connection with them. They cleaned our room all the time, made our beds, pulled the covers down, left mints and fresh towels especially the towel animals. Really good service. And this was done while we were gone from our rooms. Sometimes the most exciting thing was go see what animal was on our bed after dinner. Here is one:

Our waiters were the people on the ship we got to know the best. They assign you dinner times and tables so you have the same people every day. We sat in the Golden dinning room lower and were at table 115. We had the best waiters in the world! Walter was the headwaiter and Made (Mah-day) was the waiter. We got to know them a little bit on the first night. Walter is from Peru. His english was very good but it was hard for the older people to understand him sometimes. Gretchen told him I knew Spanish and he tried to speak with me. I understood him just fine but I am terrible at speaking. I wish I could have spoken with him more in spanish but I felt like a privlidged little white girl who thinks she's bilingual trying out her spanish on the native. But he was cool about it and usually asked how I was doing in spanish each night at dinner. He had been working on the ship for about five weeks when we got there and was signed up for a 6 month tour. Walter has been working on cruises for about 6 years. He was so good to us. Grandma left it up to him to decide what to eat every night. He picked the appetizer, main course and dessert. Usually he picked well. One night Grandma had a pork chop or something and he offered to cut it up for her. Every night after that Walter cut up Grandma's food for her. Jillian even had her food cut up for her a couple of times. Walter was patient with my large family crowd. He would joke that he would bring us warm chocolate melting cake every night because my family liked it so much. He also started bringing us two things of ice cream because one was not enough to eat the whole cake with. Walter was a little shy though, he didn't get really crazy on the nights of the singing and dancing. Dinner was an amazing experience. They would replace our silverware after each course. They had service plates you don't eat off of but they take them away depending on what food you get. Dad's goal was to keep his because he thought Walter took his away because it was always messy. Dad finally asked why they took his plate away and not others. That was when he learned the truth. Made was from Indonesia. His english wasn't as good but he was friendly. I think he has a teen son or daugher at home. Made wore these crazy glasses during the dancing and singing. The eyes looked like they were spinning out of control. Walter and Made made dinner fun and we didn't want to eat anywhere else because they treated us so well. Walter even tried to get my little cousin Eve to eat when she would only eat bananas and yogurt. I felt sorry for Walter because sometimes he had to work the late eating parties they had, after his usual shift of dinners. We saw him at the midnight buffet. I often wonder how he felt about all these people being so glutonous on food. Did he think we were weird for eating so much? Does his country have a lot of underfed people? It must be interesting experiencing the opulence of the cruise ship and then returning to one's home country that may be a lot poorer. Since we saw them every night we got to know them a little. I really enjoyed Walter and Made. They are some of my favorite memories from vacation and I hope they are well wherever they are!

Me and Walter

Jillian and Made