Sandwiches Sandwiches Sandwiches

What day is it? What month is it? What country am I in? Life in a hotel can be disorienting. Our offices are bedrooms with the bed merely a soft table. Our storeroom and workspaces are also bedrooms with boxes flowing throughout the room, sometimes on a bed, leaning next to a bed, or on top of the dresser with the TV pushed aside. Even the microwave becomes a storage rack!

What that doesn't leave is workspace.... So when your task is to make hundreds of sandwiches, you have to make a spot. Cathy chose to stand by the bathroom sink. As a good novice, I chose the kneeling position by the bedside table.

What that doesn't leave is workspace.... So when your task is to make hundreds of sandwiches, you have to make a spot. Cathy chose to stand by the bathroom sink. As a good novice, I chose the kneeling position by the bedside table, praying to the God who made peanut butter.

Why do we need so many sandwiches? Well the people who travel by bus travel for up to 2 days and need food for the journey. The people who travel by airplane need sustainable too, but no liquids and less because it tends to be faster. So for a two-day bus journey, we supply each person with 6 pb&j sandwiches (one per meal), a few pieces of fruit, some snacks (chips and a granola bar, maybe a few cookies), and some combination of water, juice and Gatorade. People traveling with babies also get a blanket. These packages are typically made the night before for morning trips and that morning for the evening trips. 

This means I stayed for 12 hours again today, despite being relieved of my duties after a more reasonably-lengthed day. It's not just because I have trouble leaving an unfinished job (yes it mostly is). Well, after making hundreds of sandwiches with Cathy, I decided to reorganize the entire room so we could sit at the table to create our next culinary masterpieces. 

Within minutes of christening the newly organized room to resume sandwich making,  we were given an extra room and I got to reorganize the sandwich fixings and newly streamlined care package creation station in the new room, leaving behind all the medicines and toiletries (but not before reorganizing all of those in the more spacious room once all the food was out). 

So, after a day of organizing 2 rooms (three times), I made the packages the for the next day. It was a good day with many interactions as I met the new refugees right off the bus with snacks and drinks. It was so cool to see the worry melt away and their faces relax once they realized that we were friendly and they would soon see their families. Also, shortly after they arrived, since I was primarily in the room with the medicine and toiletries, so many people came through excited to get to shave now that they had a razor, brush their teeth and wash their hair. It was a pretty cool room to be working in. It will certainly be quieter when I move to the sequestered pb&j room, but we might have to install a coloring station near the extra bed....

Also, Maco and I served lunch today: leftover (but amazing) costco pizza. It had been in the fridge and with no way to heat dozens of pizzas, Maco explained over and over how to use the microwave in their rooms. With a few practiced words, I tried to explain too "Caliente pizza....micro....cuarto" but then just pointed them to Maco to explain with sentences. 

I initially thought I would have nothing to write about, but today really was full. Also - I am happy to report that my sick mama from yesterday is doing fine today, her sons were happy to show me that they were bringing her pizza (and she was well enough to eat it though not yet out of bed). 

Tonight I go to bed with heavy eyelids, smelling of peanut butter, but feeling so relieved that the rooms are organized! All my type-A's say heeeyyyyyy!!! (Heeeyyy!)