Halfway

I’ll do my best to write this halfway stage of our cruise as an appraisal of how we feel about sea cruising on our first ever attempt.
Nearly everybody we’ve spoken to on board has told us we were brave to take a 42 day cruise as our first venture.
My view is that they are probably right, but we wanted to see the mighty Amazon.
I think that perhaps for me there would have been a better way to do it, and that would have been to fly out, miss out the long sea journey, and quite honestly the in between stops, which didn‘t add anything to my fountain of knowledge.
Having stated that I do like what we are doing, that is to say, cruising.
The ship is not bad, the cabin amidships is still comfortable for us although we mainly sleep in it.
The crew are a real hotchpotch of nationalities, all quite young, mainly eastern European, Indian sub continent, southern Asian/ Philippines. 
I’m not aware of any British staff apart from three or four of the entertainment team
Our table stewards are both from Odessa in the Ukraine, and yes there is a bit of strain showing by sneers at times with their Russian counterparts.
More a case of ignore them, don’t help them out, and they may go away. 
Very difficult, but no doubt they will be friends in 6 months time, when their current contracts expire.
Some personnel manager using a brain may have helped, but cheap labour probably is all they concern themselves with .
The entertainment is at times very good other times amateurish.
Shows put together by the in house team varying in content mainly based on show music like Queen, The Four Seasons etc. 
The “orchestra” is excellent, all Eastern European. They annoyingly point out the soloist on every solo, in every song, seeking applause, as if the audience didn’t know by the first song who was playing what instrument, and who needed the applause if due.
We’ve had two visiting comedians, both Brit’s probably never been seen on tv and unlikely to be so, but good entertainment they each put on two different shows.
There are 3 quizzes and a game of bingo everyday, all of which seem to be quite well attended. 
I sometimes play on my own at the 21:30 quiz, putting my answers on the reverse of the drink receipts and whilst drinking copious amounts of the house red. 
I came second once with ten out of twenty points, the other team of six got twelve points!
The food, is really very good, especially considering they are feeding big numbers.
Two restaurants, two dinner sittings each, plus the bistro running all day.
So, on the whole I think I’d be happy cruising again, perhaps a better class of ship would make up the odd gripes, but as they say, you get what you pay for.