Doodle Pad

Hi Guys!
I have had plenty of things going on, and it ain't over yet.
Basically as soon as I graduated I hit the ground running.
In between Graduation and Fourth of July was week-wacking and a visit from the Grandparents. Then there was a week at Jr camp on the kitchen staff, and week of recovery with my 18th birthday thrown in.
Tomorrow we leave at o'dark-thirty for (my last year at) senior camp, then a night in Seattle to meet relative (oh! Remind me to tell you a funny story later), catching up with home life, and then a third week of camp, also of the senior variety.
So.
Last week I went to work, as previously stated, on said kitchen staff at said junior camp.

The head cook (Bro. Don) was retired from the Army, and was not afraid of yelling. He liked to sneak in the back door quietly in the morning while the morning crew had their backs turned and then yell
GOOD Morning!!!!! There were a couple ladies who were easily startled and they both promptly jumped several feet. As did most of us.
That week was more fun (albeit exaughsting) than any kitchen week should be!
I keep laughing at memories of the week as I try to decide which part to tell you next.

Ok, so there was a morning crew, an evening crew, and a pots and pans crew. I was on pots and pans. Also on the crew was Mrs Torri Starkweather ( cancer survivor)(hard-working motherly type)(good leader), Andrew (his nickname was Goober)(He led us in song all week)(He's a total goof-ball) Friis Heighberg (he's Danish)(very tall, very good worker)( a real gentleman) and Grace ( new buddy!)(she's my age)( We already were aquainted with each other, but we became good friends that week).

The thing that made the week so great was everybody's attititudes. We were all ready to work hard, and do our best. Nobody was Very few people were grumpy. Nobody on MY team was grumpy. A couple of the little kids who were on duty to help with trays one night told my friend Grace that they were jealous of us because it looked like we were having so much fun.

" We're just standing here watching you guys work and it looks like so much fun!" - Somelittlecamper

This "Fun" included:

• Getting to the kitchen 15 minutes before everybody else
• Scrubbing any dishes left over from last meal
• Starting up the heavy-duty dishwasher and hoping the temperature got up the required levels before the rush came (160 degrees)(Fahrenheit)

Then once the rush started you had:

• One person scrubbing all the pots and pans used for cooking and serving
• One person stacking all the trays, bowls, cups and silverware
• One person spraying major chunks off said trays, bowls, cups and silverware
• One person stacking all pots and pans used for cooking and serving plus all the trays, bowls, cups and silverware onto trays and sending them through the dishwasher
• One person putting away all the clean dishes as they come out the dishwasher

Keep in mind that this is not your average household dishwasher. It looks something like this:

See where they get sprayed? And then get sent through on trays? And where they come out on the couter thing?
Thats what it looked like.
Only less shing. Much less.
 So the person on the receiving end of those dishes can't take their time putting them away, because if you don't get those trays out of there, the whole system get jammed. So you gotta be fast. Also keep in mind all those metal trays, pots, pans etc, just came out of 160 degree water. So they're a little warm.
Guess who got to be the dish-putter-awayer.
Your's truly :)
So, the boys were the ones scrubbing or spraying the dirty dishes at they came in from the dining area, and however fast they worked kind of set the pace for the rest of us.
They were super fast.

So we were all ( I was) going at break-neck speed to keep things from getting things jammed up.
With burning hot metal in our hands.
Oh yeah, baby.
Gave a whole new meaning to "feel the burn"
But the head cook did say it was the fastest time he'd seen deep cleaning get done in his 10 years of being head cook.
And on Thursday night all the kitchen staff hung out after chapel in the dining area and played games.
Including a game called Mafia.
Involves being subtle.
Very fun.

This isn't us...but that's what we looked like!

Kinda.... ;)

And another night Gracie and I took our blankets and laid out on the grass just looking at the stars. We saw at least 3 shooting stars (in one night!!), and there was a lot of heat lightning.
There was also left-over pizza and rice crispy treats.
Made for an enjoyable evening.
So anyway, that was my week, for the most part.
Saturday morning on the way home I decided there was no reason for me not to go back as a camper for senior week.
But for now I'm gonna focus on the camp week starting at o'dark-thiry tomorrow...



There. Finally got a post done...
More to come!

Be Thankful, Sarah