(This is a continuation of my first installment of ten days on a cruise ship.)

The whole cruise thing is odd. It's an unruly mass of people, all ostensibly going the same place. It kept occurring to me, day after day, that we were all having entirely separate vacations, in parallel.

The people-watching on a cruise ship is without fail some of the best I've ever seen.

There seemed to be an inordinate amount of Russians. I'm told that New York has a large Russian community, and this cruise originated there. I could always spot them at 30 paces--something about the hair, the clothes--something slightly foreign. And, unfortunately, many of them had Soviet bloc teeth. They dressed to the nines for everything. The men wore suits and ties, cufflinks, and wafts of cologne. I saw women at 8:00 a.m. at the breakfast buffet in dresses, nylons, and heels--invariably speaking Russian. Maybe they dressed so formally because they could? Maybe they'd never been able to afford nice clothes before? I wish I could talk to them without seeming rude, ask them about what it was like there, what it's like here for them now. But they seem to travel in large family groups, and I don't want to intrude.

I watched a couple, my parents' age, and they made my heart hurt. They were like hundreds of other couples on the ship in their sixties or seventies, but they were traveling with their retarded adult daughter. She looked to be in her forties, still obviously a child, her parents still caring for her. I watched one morning as the mother cut up her daughter's pancakes. What will happen to her when her parents can't care for her any more? Will she move into assisted living with them? What will she do when they're gone?

There were a large number of thin and beautiful people. The ones who look stunning in bathing suits (both men and women). They must have had entire steamer trunks delivered to the ship--cocktail dresses and suits and exercise clothes and beachwear and casual dresses and dressy dresses and jeans and damn if they don't look perfect in all of it. I hate them. I wonder if they have a space-time gap in their teeny tiny ship closets because I don't know where they could possibly keep all those clothes. Their hair is usually perfect too.

There were a fair number of families with kids on the ship, all sorts of ages. The ship had a kids club, where the kids could hang out, and have "dinner parties" and "pajama parties" in the evenings, mostly so the parents could have kid-free dinners. My daughter loved it. My son didn't. (Lucky for us he was old enough to hang out on his own in the evenings).

Our room steward (who knew I'd ever be anywhere with my own steward?) was a nice man from the Philippines. All the staff wore name tags with their names and their country of origin. A huge number of the waiters, waitresses, and room stewards were from the Philippines, India, and former Soviet-bloc countries like Slovenia and Moldova. One young waitress cut up my four-year-old niece's dinner for her, and smiled and said she had a young son too. I asked how old? He's two. He's two, and she's working on a cruise ship for ten months out of the year, and he lives with his grandmother. I think she was trying not to cry, so I stopped asking. How priviliged I am, to be born in a country where I have a job where I can live at home. I wonder about all these people. How many are working on a ship because it's a lark, something to do when they're young? How many are there because it's the best job they can get, and they're away from the ones they love for more than half a year at a time? There seemed to be some of each. We chatted with David from Australia. His name tag read "Dancer" as his job. His parents ran a dairy, and hadn't lost any cows to the flooding. I think I'd put him in the cruise-ship-job-is-a-lark category. (He also wore eyeliner).

The sun-worshippers came from all sizes, ages, and shapes. Because with 2500 or so passengers and 1000 crew, there just isn't that much space. On sunny days, the various sun decks were full. Crammed with rows and rows of humanity, lying in the sun, wiggly thighs and all, while a band wailed and kids splashed and the waiters plied them with tall fruit-flavored drinks.

The drinkers get a category all on their own. Some people must have spent a month's wages just on their bar bills--they seemed to always have a drink. How do they do that? I'd be asleep in a puddle on the floor if I drank that much. And every day for ten days? I'd probably be in the hospital.

I found the quiet-lovers on Deck 7, after we hit warmer weather. Deck 7 was below the lifeboats, in the shade most of the time, and five floors away from the nearest pool. I found quiet there, and wicker deck chairs, and all of my fellow book readers, or people who just wanted to hear themselves think. Some were definitely in the little-old-lady category, but not all. Deck 7 also had walkway which made a full circuit of the ship. Two and 2/3 laps made a mile. Did I mention this ship was big?

I wonder if they were all also watching me. Middle-aged suburban mom with graying hair, glasses, and too little time in the gym, hiding from her children with a book? That would be me.