No one said it was going to be easy...

Well, today was the first day of my externship at H5O, and it went pretty well. The day started easy, waking up at 11:00pm, which was an hour before I wanted to get up, I decided to watch some videos online and relax before my day really started. I had 3 hours to kill, so I read some webcomics, lurked on my favorite image board, and watched some Cinema Snob reviews. After about an hour and a half, I got up, got dressed, had breakfast, brushed my teeth, ironed my apron, everything I'd usually do before heading to school. Than I layed back down on my bed and thought about what might happen that day. I finally left the house at 1:45pm,got into my sisters car and headed towards the Max. About half way to Elmonica a little thought popped into my head, and it went a little something like this,

"SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT, I don't know where my stop is"

This was bad, cause I knew that if I missed my stop, there would be a 20ish minute round trip to get back there. So, I called up my dad and had him tell me the right stop, which turned out to be wrong. But I still got to H5O 30 minutes early, which wasn't bad. I walked in through theback, made my way to the kitchen,put my stuff down, and got a tour of the kitchen from a woman named Amber. She reminded me allot of Alex, the way she talked, her jokes, her height, everything. Anyway, after a short tour of the kitchen I got to work chiffonading Parsley and cilantro. All I have to say is fuck choffonading parsley and cilatro. It is one of the most time consuming tasks I have ever done. You have to pick through all the stems one by one till you get a good amount of leaves, than you have to cut this pile into such thin strips of herb that it is no longer recognizable. After about 30 minutes of this, chef Nick told me to watch Amber plate food, so I would know what goes with everything. This was fun, I just sat back and wrote stuff down, than got to eat. It was the second easiest part of the day.

After this we opened for business. Amber got to work, and I either stood near her, or did some other task. This went on for the rest of service. All I really did today was cut herbs, dice Tuna, and make potato sticks, that's it. Than we started to clean up, starting with the outside (which is really supposed to be the front of the houses domain, but what ever). We tried to open the big sliding door thing, but one of the chains came loose and popped off the cog, so we needed to get a ladder to fix it. The first ladder was too short, and the second one was really fucking heavy. We fixed it, and got to work. It was about 10:30pm when we finished. Now we get to worry about our end of the day tasks. We started out by playing a little music, some Harlem Shakes (my suggestion), and than we wrapped the food. This part was quick and easy, not much involved with it. Than we started on the dishes, or should I say, I started on the dishes. We have no one to do our dishes for us,in fact, there's only 3 people working the kitchen, including me.

I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. At around 10:50pm I was halfway through the mountain of dishes that had accumulated over the course of dinner service, pots, pans, dishes, everything needed to be washed by me. Everything. I stopped for a while so I could sweep the floor and put some of the clean dishes away. It is now 11:20pm and it finally hit me that I was only half way through cleaning the dishes, and that I might miss the last Max out of Portland if this takes too long, but I resume cleaning anyway. At 11:40pm Amber asks me when the Max stops running, I tell her I don't know, and that it might still run after Midnight, but I wasn't sure. She told me that I could leave, and that she would do the rest of the dishes. I told her thank you, got my stuff from the other room, and left. I didn't even change my shoes like I planned. Turns out that the last Max out of Portland is at 12:44am, but dammit, I really don;t wanna have to take that one.

As I exit the building, I feel the cool nightime breeze engulf my body, I just now realized how hot it was in that kitchen.I walk for a couple of minutes before reaching the Max stop across the street. I sit down at one of the benches and wait. I curse tri-met under my breath as the Max rounds the corner into view, revealing the harsh yellow mask of the Yellow Line. I just want to get home, I want to take a shower and sleep, and fucking tri-met thinks that people still need to get around fairless square at fucking 11:54 at night. I wait another 15 minutes for the Blue Line to appear, marking the beginning of the end. I board the near empty max and sit behind a man wearing a Noble Rot shirt.

I call my sister when I arrive at Sunset, she sounds tired, and angry. Can you blame her? Here I am, 19, with no drivers license, my only means of transportation at such a late hour being my parents or my sisters. I apologize to her for waking her up to come and pick me up. She hangs up the phone, I put my earbuds back on, and listen to the rest of Two-Headed Boy part 2 before switching to Fortunate Son. I arrive at Elmonica to see my sister's car waiting for me. I exit the Max and enter her car. It is 12:25am when we finally get home.I finish my burger, the first food I had eaten since 4:00, and took a shower. It is now 1:46am as I finish writing this post, I still need to brush my teeth and clean the shit off of my bed before I can finally sleep.

I am so glad I only have 3 more days till my days off.