Tour My Texas: Kudos to our Room Stewards

We had the friendliest room stewards on our cruise to Alaska. Zelimir Savic from Bosnia and his assistant I Made from Bali. They helped make a wonderful trip even better. We could always count on seeing their smiling faces in the hallway. And once they found out we were from Texas, there was a daily exchange of jabs with "Zee" since he was a Miami Heat fan and Team Baird was clearly cheering for Dallas during the NBA Finals that week. And yes, victory is sweet, Zee!

Zelimir aka Zee
I never did take a picture of Zelimir and I Made,
but I found this one of Zee on the Carnival website.
Apparently he won Employee of the Month a few years ago!

Quick side track here --- If you've ever been on a cruise then you've probably noticed lots of men named "I Made" (prounounced Ma-day) or "I Ketut". Sometimes they shorten it to just Made or Ketut. Well now I know why! In Balinese culture, they only use four first names. The first-born child is always named Wayan or Putu, the second is named Made or Kadek, the third is Nyoman or Komang, and the fourth is Ketut. And if they have more than four kids, they just start over at the beginning. And all the male names begin with "I" and the females with "Ni". Interesting! Now when you see their nametag, you can say "Hi! I see you're from Bali" and that always gets you a big smile in response. So what's your Balinese name? Mine would be Ni Wayan.

Well, back to the main story . . . It's always fun to come back to your cabin each evening and find your bed turned down with chocolates on the pillow and a towel animal waiting for you! Once Zee knew we were Texas Longhorn fans (Hmmm, I wonder how he knew), he promised the kids that he was going to make them a special treat.

We stuck a Longhorn sign on our door so the

kids would always know which cabin was ours.

We came back to our cabin one evening and discovered that Zee had made a Longhorn out of towels just for us. We were thrilled! "Were" being the key word in that last sentence. Mom decapitated the thing when I tried to move it from the bed to the shelf so we could enjoy him throughout the cruise. I'm just lucky the kids didn't make me sleep out on the deck that night! But Zee came to the rescue after hearing about Bevo's accident and the next afternoon he made another Longhorn for us. This one was carefully placed on the shelf by dad.

"I'm a Texas Longhorn, you know!"

And the day that Freddie and I renewed our marriage vows in the chapel, Zee made us an extra special towel creation. Isn't that cute!

Before we left the cruise, Kaitlyn took her allowance to the gift shop and bought the book "Towel Creations" so she could learn how to make these amazing animals herself. Let me just say, it's not easy! But just maybe the next time we have guests come stay with us, you'll find a special treat waiting in the guest room.