I Smell Like Chicken

This post was supposed to go up over a week ago, but the Internet in the moadon was down, and this is the first chance I've had to blog. There is so much that I want to say, but I don't want to hog the computer, now that it's finally working again.

Apologies to those of you whose visions of me working in the fields, milking cows, or feeding chickens are about to be dashed to pieces. I work in the kitchen ("mitbach" b'ivrit), and I love it. I work on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:00 until 2:30ish. Usually I chop vegetables, or shove rice up a (dead) chicken's tuchas, or some other preparatory task. Sometimes I get to crack eggs or scrub large pots. I'm on my feet the whole day. I love it. The people are very nice, and I never get bored. I think I'm one of the few people who's truly happy with my job. The only downside is that I usually smell like chicken fat by the time I come home, and I'm often covered in a few different types of food shmutz. It's a small price to pay.

Life is starting to lose it's "summer camp" glow here in the Love Shack. People are realizing that we're here for 5 months, and we've had a few altercations. It's not too surprising that I usually end up calming someone down and helping to smoothe things over. There's no way that everyone here is going to last 5 months. There are some people who may not last many more weeks. At least when I get weary of playing mediator, I can go into my room and close the nice heavy door. I did that for all of shabbos afternoon.

Overall, I'm incredibly happy here. I'm making friends with some fascinating people from around the world. Right now, I spend a large chunk of my down time with two absolutely absurd British boys named Jacque (pronounced Jack...he's French, but has been living in England for the past few years) and Daniel, aka Danny aka Dan-Dan. I don't think I've ever laughed more in my life. Describing how we spend our time would take far too long, so I'll only say that it includes baked beans, a shopping cart and a small dog.