Saturday, November 26, 2011

I was assigned to clean the church with Y, R, and D. M also came. We had some coffee in the cafeteria, which was yummy, and then cleaned all the bathrooms and hallways.

I was changing trash bags in one of the big trash cans, and felt something drip on my foot. The whole bottom of the trash can was full of Coca Cola or something brown and sticky. I took the bag out and carried the trash can down to the kitchen, not realizing I was dripping all the way. In the kitchen, I used one of the spray nozzles to squirt water and some soap in the bottom of the trash can, intending to slosh it around a little bit and then dump it out outside.

However, the water started leaking out of the bottom of the trash can, and I was like, “Oh, great! Now what do I do?” I went to the door and it was locked. “Oh no!” I thought. “I can’t get outside with this thing.”

There was another door, but I would have had to carry the trash can a pretty long way out the kitchen and around the corner, through the dining room, and out to the parking lot. The water was running out pretty fast and I knew I would make a huge mess all through that way. It occurred to me to just dump it out in the sink right in front of me, so that’s what I did, despite major misgivings about food safety and garbage can muck in our kitchen sink. (I had washed some lettuce in that sink just a few days before. What if someone before me had dumped out a garbage can? Grooooossssss.)

Once the trash can was empty, I carried it outside, swished the mop around the bottom of it to scrub out the rest of the gunk, and set it upside down to dry. Then I went back to the kitchen, where there was a ton of water all over the floor, so I had to mop that up and squeeze out the mop a bunch of times in order to get rid of it. Then I sprayed a disinfectant cleaner all over all the areas I had handled and the sink where I had dumped the garbage water. I wiped it down with a clean rag and sprayed it again and wiped it down a second time. Then I went to get the garbage can, put it back in its place, and got back to work. Ah! What a time.

The girls let me have 5 minutes to send my prayer letter while I was at the church, which was really nice.

Then we went on a recuperación run, where we pick up food from area stores that they donate to our food bank. We didn’t get a whole lot of stuff.

We got back home, ate lunch, and then the girls sorted out the food we had gotten. C assigned me to clean out the refrigerators. The one we keep the drinks in had a bunch of liquid in the bottom of it and a bunch of broken glass from a bottle that had frozen and shattered. I had to clean that up and then I went to the fridge at the end of the row. I threw out things like soy milk that expired in July, moldy meat, and opened cans of stuff that no one was eating. The whole thing was pretty clean because they do this every week, so I basically just had to organize what was there and wipe down the shelves.

Then C and I went on a garbage run to dump the trash. This time we actually went to the main city dumpster where it is okay to leave all your trash. She had me bring my driver’s license, and after we emptied the van of the trash, we went to a deserted warehouse area where there was no traffic and C tested me on my driving skills. That was fun… maybe I’ll be driving for them soon.

Next Post: Sunday, November 27, 2011
Previous Post: Friday, November 25, 2011
First Post: My first day