On Monday we visited St. John’s for a second time. The last time we went they didn’t have any work for us to do so Sophie and I were only able to get a tour of their facilities. This time though we were put to work right away. We walked in and they had us wait a minute before taking us to put on hair nets, gloves and aprons. For the first time out of all our fieldworks we actually got to help in the kitchen. When we first arrived it was about 10am which is right between their breakfast and lunch times. This meant that there wasn’t anything for us to cook or serve yet. We started off by cleaning and then they asked us to help break spaghetti in half. We needed to get the hang of it and at first we sent of few pieces of spaghetti flying across the room. At 10:30 it was finally time to start serving lunch. We were all assigned to different stations Sophie and I were plates and spaghetti and Tibeau was parmesan. Like Holy Apostles we were serving food then entire 2 hours of lunch service. What was nice about this though was we could actually talk to the people. We were able to scoop spaghetti onto a plate while saying hello to someone or asking them how their day was which to me was a really valuable part of the experience. One thing that strikes me again and again is the fact that these are people who work full time. Many of the people we were clearly wearing work uniforms and had to eat quickly to make it back to work before their lunch break was over. Every place we’ve been we see this; people are working and not getting payed enough to eat. That is a serious problem. It is one thing if your homeless, unemployed and hungry, but its another thing all together to be working one, two or even three jobs and still not be able to fill you plate.

Sophie, Tibeau and I in the kitchen by the pots of tomatoes sauce.

Sophie and I behind the serving counter right before the lunch service started.