The day started with me being startled out of sleep at eleven to eat breakfast. It may be weird to eat breakfast half past eleven but when you have had watch until four in the morning it's perfect. I then had to make the daily but extremly hard choice, do I want to eat breakfast or lunch . But when the lunch is fried rice the choice is easy.

After breakfast we had another watch but today I was going to work in the kitchen. At that point I didn't know that I was going to have to fight of a bunch of hungry students. When I came into the kitchen I expected for those that had worked in the kichen before to give us a explanation on what we were supposed to do. Instead we came into the kitchen in the middle of rush hour. Those in the kitchen had no time to explain anything at all. All that I could do was to give food to those who were hungry. The lack of explanation then led to not knowing which of the food trays were vegetarian. We were very lucky to have a patient student who didn't mind waiting.

After rush hour and the aftermath... Loads of dishes. It was time to prepare for ”fika” which is the swedish word for eating cakes and sandwiches. Today's fika was special, it was apple cake. If you can imagine 50 students on a boat, isolated from eating and buying candy and cakes freely then you understand how excited everyone was and most importantly how much chaos it would bring. We were going to serve the fika in two rounds. First the watch who was working, my watch was going to get cake. Then the two other watches would get served. When me and my friend who worked with me in the kitchen waited for the first watch to come, we could no longer resist the amazing smell of cake. Taking the biggest cake squares, savoring the taste of apple and fluffy cake. Then the first watch came. Giving them cake there was no chaos except when one or two persons who were not supposed to eat yet came in and wanted to eat in advance. Maybe they were a warning of the horde of people who would then come. Serving around 30 students while on the same time defending the cake from those who had alredy got one piece and wanted to steal another one. It's surprising how many ways a person can try to get cake. One way is to try and convince those working in the kitchen that they had not gotten a piece. Then some also told us they gave their cake to another when we rememberd giving them cake. Lastly some tried sneaking in the back when I and the other person working in the kitchen weren't looking. I guess I understand everyone's attempts to steal more cake becauase it tasted like heaven.

// Astrid Bonde