my new favorite day of the week is thursday, based solely on the fact that it is omelet day for breakfast

Not to brag or anything, but on my seventh day of working for the man, he put me in charge of kosherizing the machine. To clarify, the so-called “machine” is just one of the many new words I’ve learned in the last two weeks:

Machine – noun – a fancy word for dishwasher. Oh, but this is not your ordinary dishwasher. It consists of a conveyer belt of trays that rotate around and around so I can sit back and watch everything come out all clean and sparkly, no scrubbing necessary.
Pub – noun – a fancy word for barn. It’s kind of like when your neighbor installs a light bulb and a mini-fridge in his garage and then suddenly it’s referred to as a den or a boom boom room, because the pub on Kibbutz Ketura is pretty much a former stable with a counter on one side and a disco ball in the corner.
Pub Night – proper noun – an excuse for volunteers, students, and kibbutzniks to drink beer and mixed drinks out of water bottles in a dark room with loud music every Thursday night. Oh, and it’s BYOB; no cash accepted.
Kosher – adjective – when we say kosher, we mean, “Ha, that’s what you think!” You have no idea how many times I’ve unloaded meat trays from the machine during dairy meals and found dairy utensils in the salad bar during meat meals. But I guess what they don’t know what hurt them.
Kosher for Passover – adjective – see “Kosher.” For the rest of the Jewish world, this means something along the lines of dishes and cookware that don’t touch bread. I haven’t quite figured out the Ketura definition though.

Anyway, back to the machine. On Tuesday morning, my boss in the cheder ochel taught me how to kosherize (kashrut?) the machine, which has to be taken apart and hosed down in between meals to play along with the whole “kosher” theme. This complex job is usually entrusted only to members of the kibbutz who are spending more than a two or three month time frame in the dining hall, but due to my undeniable hotness he decided that I ought to learn how to do it too. Or maybe it’s his way of getting me to move here permanently, but regardless, this is the kibbutz way of being promoted to something more meaningful than wiping tables and sweeping the floor. Didn’t I tell you before, I’m queen of the dining hall! At least now I know that I can always fall back on a career in manual labor, because apparently I’m just so damn good at it.