Monday, July 20, 2009

Two Weeks.

Tomorrow marks the day each student on Project is supposed to hand in their two weeks' notice. Only two weeks of work left! I feel like I just got comfortable, just got settled into my routine of cashiering Monday-Wednesday, having off on Thursday, cashiering again on Friday, serving on Saturday, and off again Sunday.

I finally got the hang of the cash register, how it sometimes freezes up for a second when you ring up too many adult buffets and how it still features menu items that have been discontinued long before I started working at Ryan's.

I finally feel comfortable with my coworkers--Chris and Dot and their passive aggressive arguments, Rhonda's bouncy steps and hairdo full of colorful barrettes, Beverly's sharp attitude punctuated by her Jamaican accent, the way Cortillia slyly asks how I'm doing when she knows my section just got slammed, but then offers me some of her contraband candy. I know I'll miss Willie and Sam, the dishwashers, especially them calling me and the other women at work "Baby Girl" and "Darling" or "Pretty Mama" in the case of Miss Ellen, resident Grandma. I'll even miss Sylvia, who I can't for the life of me seem to please.

All of us here, whether we enjoy our jobs or not, are going to miss some parts of it. Some of the best times we have here are telling funny work stories. Like how all the Wal-Mart kids share the secrets of that mysterious corporation--its morning cheer for example. (Who's number one? The customer, always! What store is number one? 5087! What do we want to be? Accident free!). And then there are the fast food kids--the ones at McDonald's, Chick-fil-A and Wendy's--who love to brag about how many people they got through their drive through that day, how many sandwiches they made and wrapped, or the crazy milkshake creations they invented during down times.

Summer jobs are a funny thing that way--teaching us to make fun during slow boring days and entertain ourselves when our job gets monotonous. There is a song we like to listen to here--Swing Life Away--that has this line: "We live on front porches and swing life away./We get by just fine here on minimum wage." It speaks truth to all of us minimum wage workers--we are getting by just fine. And we only have two weeks left to make the most of free french fries, getting paid to watch people on vacation, and trying not to laugh when we can't understand Southerners.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Feeding the Faith

Last Saturday's community event was one of the best this summer. The community team brought us Christmas in July--complete with mashed potatoes and stuffing. They revamped the Grassy Knoll with wrapping paper, streamers and pine cones and called it the North Knoll and we even had our own Santa of July. We made snowmen out of our own team members (our team's looked more like a white tin man but we did get runner up!) and had a "sleigh ride" (pulling people on a tarp across a field).

Then we kicked off "Feeding the Faith" week. The theme verse is 2 Peter 1:5-8: "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours an are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

As a part of the P & WV team, I helped set up a prayer walk we did on Tuesday around North Myrtle. We also sponsored a 36-hour prayer/meditation vigil and had someone out in our prayer tent continuously from Wednesday morning at 8 until tonight at 8.

Another new event here on project is our Wednesday night concert series. There is a bar/dance club not far from us that has live bands every night and on Wednesday an 11-year old girl named Gabbie Rae sings. A bunch of us go listen and support her each week, and she now recognizes us. I don't know what the bartender thinks of us--we all order soda or water and then just dance/sing along or play pool--but we have a lot of fun. And Gabbie Rae is good! She has been on the Tyra Banks Show--check her out here!

Oh yes, and I have to say happy birthday to Quinn today and Mom tomorrow!! Just so you guys know, everyone here knows it's your birthday. :)

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Agape & Answering the Call

Last week was the week our staff left and the theme was "Agape," which is Greek for love, but a specific kind of love--self-sacrificing, unconditional, consuming love.

We had an Agape Dinner on Thursday where we encouraged each other were encouraged by staff before they left for the summer. Now that the staff is gone, we are student led until August.

So far this week, "Answering the Call" week, we have all stepped up into our various roles. We have four new student project leaders (one of them is my roommate!) and then each apartment has a Bible study leader and everyone else belongs to a certain team, each with team leaders. My team is the Prayer and World Vision team; we explore different ways to pray, especially as it applies around the world.

Our weekly schedule is basically the same; the only change is planning meetings on Tuesdays for each team and we do more intentional exploring on Sunday afternoons when the beaches are full of people (not so much high schoolers anymore, now we get a lot of vacationing families).