Since February, my family and I have all waited patiently for our long-awaited cruise. This cruise was definitely not your average summer cruise. It was 10 days of traveling around Ireland and Iceland. Neither my dad nor I had every been out of the country so to say we were excited would be an understatement. We couldn't wait for those two relaxing and Europe filled weeks. As my cruise crept closer, I announced to my mom, "I am determined to make friends." I've seen so many people go on cruises and become friends with other people their age, and I thought I could do the same. I was wrong.
When my family and I made our way to the port to check in, I marveled at all the people in this one room. As my eyes scanned the room, I couldn't help but feel out of place but not in that classic "I don't belong here" kind of way. I was completely surrounded by wrinkles and grey hair. And within those few seconds, my hope of making some friends was thrown into the ocean.
I come from a very sarcastic family. You cannot be around us for more than a minute without a joke or sarcastic comment coming out of our mouths. And as you can probably guess, the fact that I was one of the youngest people on the cruise became a running joke. We laughed as we watched the elders mosey on through the security line to get onto the ship after each port and as they each got on the buses for excursions. An important lesson I learned on this cruise was that patience is a virtue.
Gaining some wisdom from an older woman, I learned that Celebrity, the cruise ship I was on, is advertised more to adults rather than to kids like Royal Caribbean and Carnival. This was not my first Celebrity cruise. On that last one, there were also a small number of kids but at least it was more than this one. The number of kids that were on the ship I could count on one hand.
Another factor is that I was taking this cruise in the middle of May when school was still going on so if there were going to be kids they would most likely be in college like myself.
Regardless of our sarcastic comments and complaints, we all managed to keep ourselves entertained with observing the older people and their paces of turtles.
