Globalization

Now that the holidays have passed, the camp employees have resumed their regular schedules, including in the kitchen. We've shared lunch with the trail-building construction crew, retired townsfolk visiting the amphitheatre they're helping fund and most recently, 70 overly-enthusiastic Cal-Poly students training to welcome next year's freshman. This afternoon we'll meet a bunch of 5th graders up for life science at the beach and community building over tomorrow's pancake breakfast.

Camp food is delivered in an enormous refrigerated truck. It takes at least an hour to unload the 7-pound cans of beans and cases of red delicious apples. Behind closed doors, the generic foods take a turn for the better. Green beans with red peppers and a touch of something sweet- apricot? Roasted vegetable soup with extra garlic. The lemonade, always the same, is mixed in a 5-gallon bucket.

The lunch bell doesn't startle me anymore. Last week's california rolls did.
I watched Theressa pat rice onto sheets of seaweed. My spanish is lousy. Her english marginally better. It took a while before I understood. She learned to make sushi working as a cook at Walmart* in Mexico.


*Our appreciation of avocado/cucumber rolls should NOT in any way be seen as an endorsement of Walmart, its policies, practices or world-wide evil-doing.