Garden Produce
Hi All,
Today is the second day in a row I have rostered myself for a spilt shift. Opening at 8:00pm and closing at 9:00pm, this is on account of having "Helper Only Staff" on the weekend. During the week Annette or Caryn work 9:00am til 5:00pm allowing a different rostering pattern. Due to the fact that Melody has not yet had a full induction to reception tasks; sign outs/ins, accounts, and the like I thought it best that I do the admin stuff and she concentrate on room checking and laundry. Things worked out pretty well. Except for the tiredness.
I was able to progress the procedure manual and cleaning schedules, as well as spend some time getting my head around the school visit on Tuesday. We were away for the last school group so it is a bit of the blind leading...
The most challenging aspect of the job is communicating with the helpers particularly when they have limited English. At present we have helpers whose native languages are Mandarin (2) Cantonese (1) French (1). They are a good group and are quite willing workers.
It has amazed me to learn about food/eating habits of our Asian helpers particularly. It seems that eating out for 3 meals a day is the norm, as a result some of these kids have never seen a meal cooked at home much less cooked a meal themselves until they arrived in Australia. The communal dinners give every one a chance to cook, and I have quietly made it a project of mine to encourage these kids to develop cooking skills.
Agnes from France has secured some paid work at the pear orchard, and has organised to ride one of the resort bikes there, to aid her navigation skills, Simon drove her to the site in the afternoon. While they were away it occurred to me that the "Hong Kong Couple" as we call them, could probably drive her as they work there also.
After introductions it was worked out that they had all met on a farm in Cohen. We all had a laugh about the small world and reflected on a couple of other small world moments.
French Julie who we only met for 5 minutes on our first day left for Melbourne on our second day here. English Julie was wrestling with her watch on arrival in Darwin last week and stopped a passer by to check the time, it was French Julie! Agnes also worked at the same school HelpX in the Blue Mountains as Marielle and US Ben, but didn't meet them. Ben and Jiwon have gone to the HelpX in Denmark WA where we may head next. I was calculating the chance of these meetings, and suggesting his was more than just coincidence, Simon the sceptic poohooed the idea.
A job I need to get to in the next few days is taking some clothes to the opshop, in preparation I let "the kids" look through the stuff and they all found something useful to wear, a scene from the summer sales! Armed with their new clothing and a ChupaChup, the kids retreated to their rooms to hop on to facebook and share the days activities, just like us old folk.
Cheers
Susan
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