Life in the kitchen.

Today started off strong, I was going to be canteen and we had already been woken up late which meant that we we’re going into the day with no breakfast. As a canteen your first job is to dish all the dishes that’s left for the breakfast. Luckily for us there were only a few that got waken up in time for it, so the dishes were relatively small.

After the dishes were done it was already time for us to put out the 10-o clock meal. As canteen all you do before lunch is just to dish, dish and dish. We got a little 20-minute break after the 10-o clock meal but pretty soon it was time for lunch. The lunch was pasta carbonara, it was great. After lunch we got our first actual break, a 1-hour break which was a huge relief after working and sweating for around 5 hours straight.

After our break it was time to put out the coffee break at 3. Once again it was nearly no dishes as nearly all the crew was out exploring San Domingo. We had also changed chef from our main chef to our second chef whose job is to prepare dinner. After the coffee break was put away and dish we we’re greeted with yet another 2 hour break. After this break was done at 5:30 we began dishing out everything we had to the dinner tables. Eating out is very expensive at Santo Domingo so nearly everyone was going to be home for dinner. All this with the addition that there we’re some problems with the oven resulted in a very stressful dinner for us.

After dinner we had so much dishes to take care of even without all the plates and utensils that the workforce were meant to take. After around 1 and a half hours of doing dishes and dishes we could finally begin cleaning the kitchen. Every day at port you get a specific segment of the kitchen hat you had to clean. The segment this day was the oven, when cleaning the oven you have to use a special cleaning tool called “ugnsrent” this substance is only used when cleaning the oven and its very corrosive and just the fumes of it burns your nose and throat. After we we’re done cleaning the floor too we we’re fully done with the kitchen. After all this we went to bed in under the span of 10 minutes.

Anton Clementz