Culture Shock!
I wrote a rough draft of a post the other day… I’m so glad I didn’t publish it! I was just re-reading it now, and yikes! It was so negative. I’m definitely feeling much better today. The last two weeks have been extremely difficult for me being away over the holidays. Not just that but my mom’s birthday is the 28th of December, and my birthday is the day after hers. Usually the two of us have a big dinner with all of her family on one of the days too… this year I was not present… 
My mom was in labor on her 21st birthday. My grandmother was telling her all day to wait until her contractions were closer together to go to the hospital. Finally after she blew out the candles on her cake, she knew it was time…
The other photogs on my team are so amazing! They really made me feel better on my birthday. I’ve only been here for 6 weeks, and they already love me enough to decorate the whole photog corridor, they got me amazing flowers, a German chocolate cake incomparable to anything I’ve ever tasted, made especially by the princess pastry chef! They also bought me a beautiful necklace! I couldn’t believe how lucky I was! Thanks again you guys… if any of you read this at all!
This experience is so strange; like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There is a huge culture shock moving away from land and to a ship. It is just so different; it’s hard to explain. There are so many different nationalities on board, so many languages, cultures, ways of communicating; it’s all very confusing. It’s not anything like moving to another city or country. It seems almost like another planet sometimes! Things are just so different. I can try to describe it to you over time, but really, you probably won’t get it unless you do it yourself at some point.
Being on the ship with 1200 crewmembers that live together in a very small area is very much like living in a small floating town. That’s how I see it anyway. Sometimes it feels like I live closer to these people than people in a small town would, because really, we can’t go into our houses and escape… we all work every single day! As far as I know there isn’t a single department that has any days off! It sucks if you have any enemies, because you end up seeing them every day… Luckily, I don’t have any!
Gossip spreads like wildfire on board as well… when you do something… everyone hears about it over the span of a few days. You have to be careful of what you do all the time, as there is always somebody watching. I have already seen a rumor nearly destroy somebody’s reputation.
Here’s a little example for you; the other day I decided to go up to the crew deck and pool area, which is 6 decks below where the Bridge is. The Bridge being where all of the navigation and watch goes on, it’s where the Captain and all of the bridge officers work mainly. Anyway… we were in port, so I kind of assumed that the Bridge wouldn’t be busy for the most part. I was just tanning, and I got hot, so I went for a quick swim. I dunked my head under and pushed off the wall from one end of the pool and went to swim for the other end. When I pushed off my bottoms floated down to my knees! I laughed and told my friend what happened, and didn’t really think anything of it.
A few minutes later one of the officers, who is a friend of mine, came out on the deck and said, “You know how some things happen in life you wish nobody had seen…” LOL! That was a little embarrassing… Later on that day I was getting some attention from other officers and people I didn’t really know as well… LOL… So there you go, people hear about things within a few hours… The officers of the watch caught an eyeful that day! Maybe next time I’ll wear a different bathing suit, as I really don’t like to give away any free shows.
I’m very tired! It’s bedtime for me. I hope all is well with everybody on land, or sea, or wherever you’re reading this from!
xxK
Hey Kyla,
We miss you so much too. I love reading your blog!!
mom
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