Dec 11, 2009

Not too much more has happened lately. I don't think the reef is this weekend so I think I'll be jet skiing around Dunk Island on Sunday instead. I guess the scuba people are a little stingy about who they give trips to... understandable. It's been crazy hot today. I was just sitting at the desk and I was roasting hot and dripping sweat. The pool is pretty small so it heats up pretty quick. I'll probably go for a quick dip and lay out a bit, but it won't really cool me off, just make it so I'm not as sticky. I was super productive yesterday though. Like I said before, the room was TRASHED when I got here. I figured when I got to know everyone better I wouldn't mind cleaning up after them. That day was yesterday. During my break I had some time. I layed out at the pool for a bit, then showered, then cleaned the entire room basically. I went through the cupboards in the kitchen, washed all dishes in and out of those cupboards and rearranged them to be used. That's basically one cupboard with like 10 dishes in it, but it looks like an actual kitchen cupboard now. I wiped off the counter, stove and sink, and threw out the crap that was laying around it. There were drawers of peoples crap that I trashed leaving a cupboard and three drawers open to anyone who wants them. I swept the floor and kicked everyone's stuff to their area. When people started coming in noticing the cleaning, they started organizing their stuff a bit and tossing anything that's old as well. I think people come and go so frequently that no one knows who's is who's but everyone that's here has been and will be here for a few more weeks, so we can figure it out pretty easily now. I didn't clean to MAKE them clean, so I hope it didn't come off that way, but we did get a lot tidy. The bathroom has millions of shampoos and bottles laying everywhere, but that's a little more difficult to clean, but we started that process. I hosed down the little fan so we can use that, and I'm going to move a table and chair in here to we can actually use the tiny bit of space we have. I haven't really slept that great since I've been here and I thought maybe it was because the mattress is so thin. I found old mattresses and stacked the two on top of each other. Because of the huge dent in the middle, my mattress has the thickness of one mattress in the middle and two on the outer edges. I slept much better, but don't expect me to be able to roll around at all. There are two rooms in the employee quarters. I'm in the back room with A/C leaving the four people that sleep in the front as well as anyone using the kitchen without AC. I figured if we kept all outside doors and windows closed, we could leave the bedroom door open and AC the whole place. It's been working pretty well. By habit we've been closing our bedroom door, but it eventually gets opened again. I think that earned me some brownie points with the guys in the front lol. Anyway, that's a lot of info about cleaning but I was pretty excited about it...

Sven made a roast for dinner. He's quite the cooker and I think he enjoys it, so we throw him some money and he cooks for us. He made a lamb roast, roasted potatoes, green beans, and pumpkin. It was awesome, and a huge improvement from my PB&J that I've been eating regularly. Oh, and Europeans call it PB&Jam, so I've started calling it that, I'm pretty happy with myself. He made enough for 5 of us so we had a cute family meal that stuffed us all. After he made pancakes for desert. Not the same as American pancakes, but delicious either way. After dinner Annika told us that the 9th was her name day. We had no idea what a name day was, but when we looked it up, it turns out yesterday was Emily day! Still not positive what that means, but we bought some Rum and UDL to celebrate. Dani made some cocktails and I took a big shot. Party! We sat around for a little while chatting and figuring out what we wanted to do and decided a night swim was the best bet. We grabbed the hose and ball and played in the pool for a few hours. The sky was so clear so we could see a lot of stars. It's weird because they are different stars than I'm used to, so looking up at them made me sort of realize that I'm far from home. It was kind of weird. I'm swimming in a pool on a hot December night with a bunch of people from around the world, weird. At like 1:30 I decided sleeping was a good idea. I slept like a baby. Tonight's another bonfire at the beach. I'll try and get pics of people... put some faces to names.