"Flying Solo"

What a week! Bob and Sheri left for Texas early Thursday morning (Oct. 22, I think) at which point we had about 8 people here, I think. The following Sunday, we went from 8 to 26, and all this past week, we've been feeding 26 people, three times a day! Here's what our daily schedule looked like:

6:00am -- wake up, get dressed
6:15 -- coffee must be turned on by this point (it takes about 45 minutes to make 5 liters of coffee)
7:00 -- Finish guys arrive for breakfast. We had to have ham, cheese, bread, boiled eggs, coffee, tea, milk, orange juice, butter, jelly, cereal, and plates/silverwear set out for them to help themselves. Starting at this point, we just had to make sure things stayed full... we usually used 4-5 liters of orange juice per day.
7:15 -- Amber starts desserts for the day while Charles tends to breakfast refills and dishes. If the lunch dessert took a long time, I'd just make that one and have to wait till the afternoon to make the dinner dessert. I often had dessert ready to go before 8:30 in the morning!
8:00 - 8:30 -- French guys arrive for breakfast. They're more talkative in the morning :) and I think they eat more bread.
8:30 -- We double-check that all the ingredients for the day are at hand
9:00 -- our last customers come to eat breakfast and Marie-Yvonne and Barnard arrive to help
9:00 - 11:30 -- the four of us cook lunch, set the table, and keep up with dishes

11:30 -- quick lunch (we eat leftovers)
12:00 - 12:30 -- Finnish lunch (just the main dish and coffee; they only have a 30 minute lunch break!)
12:15 - 1:15 -- French lunch: entrée, plat, cheese, dessert, coffee
1:20 - 4:00ish -- dishes, cleaning up (the French always put bread on the table rather than their plates, so we spend a lot of time cleaning up bread crumbs), re-setting the tables, finishing dinner
4:00ish -- coffee with Marie-Yvonne and Barnard... we'd usually eat any leftover dessert items at this point. :) Then we'd check the ingredients for the next few days and see whether or not Charles and I needed to go shopping that afternoon or early the next morning. Mondays are veggie pick-up days, Thursdays are meat. We also order bread every day for the next morning.
4:30ish -- Marie-Yvonne and Barnard leave. Charles and I either nap, run to the grocery store, or finish up things for dinner.
6:30pm -- Charles and I return to the kitchen to do final dinner prep: check water pitchers, make bread baskets, prepare serving dishes, make coffee, etc.
8:00pm -- dinner starts. It usually lasts -- much to the dismay of some of our Finnish clients -- over 2 hours. On Friday, I left at about 11:30pm and Charles stayed till 12:30... that was unusual, though. We usually get back to our chalet at about 10:30. Some nights we ate dinner and some nights we didn't.
One or two nights, Charles entertained the guests with music while I caught up on dishes. They loved his Cajun songs!


We've had long days, but we've had a great time. We sort of found our "rhythm," and we've laughed a LOT with Marie-Yvonne and Barnard. They are SUCH fantastic people! They've been so patient with us as we learned our kitchen vocabulary in French-- they'd ask us were something was, and we'd just stare at them. Haha! This week has really been good for our language learning! It was hard, though... by the end of the week, we were waking up with sore feet, tired backs, and legs that didn't want to carry us anymore. Saturday we were definitely ready for a break.

Saturday and Sunday Marie-Yvonne and Barnard stayed at home because all of the recipes were ours and because half of our customers (the French ones) left Friday evening.

Friday was room cleaning day. We asked the clients to bring their sheets with them to breakfast Friday morning, if they didn't mind, and we ended up with mountains of dirty sheets!
We had a lot of help with the rooms, though! Anne and Madame Adams came to do the bathrooms, which was a HUGE help! Unfortunately, I forgot to remind them do to the chalets, so I had to clean 3 bathrooms (wah). Bob and Sheri were so good to us to organize help, plan out the menus, order veggies for us for Mondays, and even ask the Boulanger (bread maker) to deliver for us!
Saturday, we still had to do all three meals, but Sunday, we had only breakfast! It was wonderful! We spent the day going to market, drinking coffee, browsing for new cheeses to try, doing laundry, and working in our future apartment. We now have clean floors, a desk, a dresser, kitchen chairs, and dishes!

Sunday night, Charles cooked up some of the mushrooms that grow all over the property. They're delicious!

This week, Monday was going to be Marie-Yvonne and Barnard's last day helping us. Bob and Sheri were scheduled to come back Monday evening and wanted to dive back into work Tuesday morning. However, they fly standby and all flights are currently full. Sooooo they'll be back Thursday evening instead. When we timidly brought this up with Marie-Yvonne and Barnard, they're response was, "oh, no problem!" and they'll be continuing to help us this week. :) However, this week, instead of 26, we have only 17... which doesn't sound like a big difference, but it seems like a walk in the park after last week! Today, for example, we had everything except the icing for the cake and the potatoes done by 2:00pm, which gave us time for a leisurely coffee and an afternoon trip to the grocery store.

Keep us all in your prayers, though, especially Bob, Sheri, Kristin, Isaac, and the kids as they travel back from the US. Thanks for keeping up with us!