The work

What did you do at work today? Eat.

Haley House is truly an opportunity to mix my love of nonprofit work with my love for food.

3 days a week I roll out of bed in time to be downstairs at the soup kitchen for the 5:30 am breakfast shift-- sometimes that means 5 o'clock, sometimes 5:20, depending how ambitious my dressing and breakfast plans are. Getting up is much easier than I thought it would be, seeing as it gets light at 5:15 here every morning and the sun shines directly into my curtainless window. Once I'm actually down in the kitchen, though, I can pretty much cruise on auto-pilot for a little while: chop potatoes, season the homefries, get 'em in the oven because they take forever to cook; chop veggies for the eggs; slice fruit for the fruit salad; break 100+ eggs, beat, put 'em on the grill; serve at 7; eat & socialize with the guys around 8:30; dishes, dishes, dishes, more dishes; sweep; reflection. Somewhere in the middle I'm usually hunting down granola, brown sugar, Splenda or cheese the men are asking for or taking out the many loads of recycling we create every morning feeding 70 men.

Every intern works kitchen shifts. However, 4 days a week I also walk down to the Bakery/Cafe, about a mile and a half from the soup kitchen/live-in community, where my main duty this summer is serve as catering assistant to Danny. Right now, he's in New Hampshire for the birth of his daughter, who I think they're going to name Isabella, so I've been instructed to "learn the ways of the kitchen." This ends up translating to me following around whichever person will have me for the day while they show me what they're making and how to make it. After some failed attempts at Vietnamese spring rolls (oh darn, I just had to eat them), I ended up getting a masterful lesson in pizza-dough making from Ron. The Bakery/Cafe is really pretty popular in the community because a) the food is fantastic and b) people like knowing their catering order is going to a good cause. The Haley House Bakery/Cafe is used as a job training program for people re-entering mainstream society from prison or people who have recently finished up with a substance abuse rehab program. It provides job skills, its main objective, but mostly people do it for the sense of consistency and stability it provides in their lives. The application & interview process is rigorous so you know the people are there because they want to be and it definitely shows. Everyone is enthusiastic about their job, they get along well with Danny and with each other, and they are good at what they do. Mistakes happen, but they're all nice about it. Lucky for me, because starting out in this kitchen is not as easy as I'd thought. However, they're all excited to have a new face around and every time I ask what something is, they ask if I want to try it; every time there's a dropped, surplus or slightly deformed muffin, it's all mine. "It's a really important part of getting familiar with the food," said Danny. "I'm making it my personal mission to put 20 lbs on you by the end of summer." I don't know about that, but it's pretty darn good. So far, I've sampled the spring rolls (raw and vegan and served with yummy peanut sauce), carrot muffins, coconut cupcakes, brownies, carne guizada and chicken guizada and rhubarb upside down cake. Man, this summer is going to be rough. I can already tell. NOT.

The Arrival

I'm finally here. After weeks of anticipation and (mis)adventures on the T with a giant suitcase, I finally arrived at the Haley House soup kitchen in the midst of the mayhem of a Tuesday afternoon elder meal.
The House itself is really pretty charming. It's got 5 floors plus a basement where food is stored. The first floor is the soup kitchen, the second is offices and the top 3 are the live-in community housing (I'm going to have great legs by the end of the summer from going up and down the stairs so many times a day). Eventually I'll be sharing a room with 2 other girls, but only 2 of the 5 interns are here so far, so we've got our own rooms until next week, and the first pick of beds. Everything in the building is functional, but it's old and has character, which is what I love about the place. My bathroom has bright pink trim and one of the other rooms has purple walls. The sheets don't match and there is artwork all over the place. Likewise, the 5 year-round live-in volunteers don't take themselves too seriously and seem helpful and pretty friendly. They like making conversation-- especially about food-- and don't seem to mind Emily's and my thousand questions a day.
There are 2 cats who live here with us: Blackberry and Sherpa (who likes to climb things) who keep our basement mouse-free and provide us with entertainment.
The area is great. In the '60s, when the building was purchased and the soup kitchen was opened, the real estate was a $30K investment which is now worth $1.5M someone guessed. Back then this area of Back Bay/South End was the Skid Row of Boston but in the '80s entered a period of gentrification which has made it a friendly, quiet neighborhood, though it's quite close to the center of the city.
When I arrived at the the T stop yesterday, I was impressed walking through the neighborhood to the Haley House-- just a bunch of people commuting by foot, pushing strollers and walking dogs. Then when I saw our quarters with the big windows and fun colors, and went upstairs and the other community members asked if I was hungry (oh man was I ever) and then announced that there was rhubarb crisp in the oven that would be done in ten minutes, all I could think was "I'm home. This is going to be awesome."

The preparation

How do you pack 3 months of your life into 1 suitcase? It's harder than I'd expected.

Since speaking with my Haley House contact, Dahye, I've been trying to take the organization's self-proclaimed emphasis on simplicity to heart, trying to separate necessity from materialism, what I like from what I'll actually use. However, with the little information I have about what I'll actually be doing, the best I can do for packing is guess-- sneakers for kitchen work, cardigans for chilly evenings.
A big thanks to Mum & Dad for schooling me on New England weather and suggesting I dig into the back of my closet for some cardigans and a denim jacket (in May??). If I could survive half a year in London, tromping through the snow to work more than a few times, I'm sure I'll be fine.
Maybe it'll be a nice escape from the Florida heat-- I went to the beach this morning at 7:30 and was already sweating by the time I got home an hour later. Won't miss that.
So you add my kitchen-working clothes to my casual, around-town clothes and my pjs and mix in my girly love for strappy sandals and big earrings and you get one stuffed-to-the-brim, just-at-the-50-lb-weight-limit suitcase. whew. at least it rolls.
Tomorrow I bid adieu to the Sunshine state for the time being and say bonjour to my new life in Beantown!