Day Six - Grocery Store

I have officially arrived: now the frozen foods person.  The 1000 patrols that come through the store each meal purchase a lot of food.  It takes our group of 20+ all day to keep up.  During the two hours before meals, the store is packed and a queue can be long outside.  That period is just about keeping the food visible and stocked.

Items like bread go quickly and take a lot of time to pack correctly.  My area includes all the meat such as today's preference - salmon.  Yesterday was chopped beef and tomorrow's meal plan suggests Swedish meatballs.  During the two hour break between each meal, the store receives new product and we all restock shelves and sweep up.  There is one Dutch worker who is a store manager back home and he seems to handle the logistics well.  The official store manager is handy but doesn't really manage.

Tomorrow is my day off and I plan to goof around a bit.  We've had three straight days of rain and tomorrow is to be nice.  If so, then I plan to find a nice spot and paint a bit.  With minimal tools, that should be interesting.

As in 2007, there are a good number of IST who don't show up for their work - particularly the less glamorous jobs.  There is a sign on the toilet doors to shame those who are to clean toilets but are absent - "remember you took an oath to do your duty".  Most do their work with a smile.

The most fun group is probably the Brazilians.  They are vocal and use every moment to celebrate.  This is at dinner, in the common tents, and just about anywhere else.  The Americans are again the oldest (with perhaps the exception of the Indians).  In the BSA program, we tend to recruit parents of the youth while in most other Scout countries, they use twenty-somethings.  The average age is about 35 and split evenly between men and women.

I'm sorry that there haven't been images recently to download.  It is something that may have to happen after the event.  The internet folks not only reduced the time per sitting to 20 minutes, they also changed the operating system to something that my camera doesn't like.  What used to take 5 minutes per image to download now doesn't happen.  Hopefully, my words will paint the scene.