Well its Tuesday and I started one of my new duties today on base camp. Shopping! Yes ladies, the way I am to serve the Lord, my fellow students and staff is by hitting the shops. Now, I know all you guys out there are thinking that I got it easy out here, but let me stop you and correct your thinking. Shopping is a nightmare! Its so stressful and I certainly have a new found respect for my mother through this experience.
How did I get landed with this job you may be wondering? Well, I am one of only two students on camp who is eligible to drive the Ywam van and since they drive on the left hand side of the road here (same as back home) it just made good sense to ask me to do it. Also, most students are young and back home live under their parents roof and so have very little experience of fending for themselves. Of course when this was explained to me, I just played along and acted like I knew what they were talking about. I do Grocery shopping... sometimes!
Anyway here is the problem. There are three different houses of students who I need to buy meals for. Each person only gets a budget of 4.50 for their breakfast. 7 guys to one house, 2 girls to another and 1 girl in the last house.
The lady living on her own only gets 4.50 in total and a box of cereal costs about 5-6 dollars! Already over budget. Now luckily I can compensate with the lads house budget and the guys dont mind. Guys are fairly easy going anyway.
The second problem is trying to buy groceries for girls. So it turns out that girls dont eat cereal in the mornings! They prefer yogurts and fruit. Thats just the beginning when it comes to womens eating habits in the mornings. So what do you do when you get to the fridges and try select a milk for cereals etc.?
Simple- you reach in for a few litres of full fat milk....if your shopping for the guys. Men really are easy going and dont fuss over what kind of milk they are drinking. Not so simple for the ladies though!
Ok so most girls dont drink full fat milk and much rather skimmed or low fat milk. However if I buy full fat milk for the guys and bring back skimmed milk for the girls, the girls get quickly insulted and instantly assume that I thought they were overweight and needed to shed those few extra pounds so they can squeeze into their summer swim-wear. The strange thing is that they wanted the skimmed milk the whole time!!! Go figure? Women are a strange beast....
If I dont get much spiritual value from my Dts, I will at least understand a little more about the complexities of women.
Mum and I got a good laugh outta this Paul. I suppose if your own sister was even a little fussy when it came to food, this task might not be so difficult!!
ReplyDeleteYou could just ask two of the girls to be female shopping advisors and assist on your shopping.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with asking girls to assist me would be that my inability to do a simple shop would be quickly exposed and I would get phased out of the whole shopping experience
ReplyDelete