Food Food Food

Not only did we work hard on this trip, we certainly did eat well on our missions trip. I already typed about our gyros and Belgium waffles we had. Plus, the McDonalds we ate in. On work days, there was a group of ladies who came every morning and cooked upstairs and served us lunch. Every day the tables were decorated beautifully, and the meals were 4 courses. It usually started with the main course, then salad and/or vegetables, then bread and cheese, and last dessert. I remember the first lunch was lasagna and they brought out a completely covered dinner plate sized portion. I thought we were all to take a part of that and pass it on, but nope, that was all for one person. The food was just too much, and most of us requested smaller portions and I think we might have upset the ladies, but good grief, there was no way I could eat a whole plate of lasagna. Plus, considering this was day one, I didn't realize we had 3 courses coming after the lasagna. The food was delicious though and I don't know what the guys thought, but as a lady it was so nice to walk into the lunch room and see the pretty decorated tables. I didn't take pics of everything, but here are the ones I did take.

See the tall lady in back? She did all the decorating--doesn't she look artsy? The lady in the glasses and hairnet and I communicated in French a couple of times. She heard people calling my name and told me she had a granddaughter named Rebecca. She always had a smile on her face. She even waved goodbye to us and blew us kisses as we drove off on our last work day. I liked her--so sweet!

Red and white decorations

Look at the tall bottle of Coke

Cheese tray

Dessert with a sparkler

Green and brown decorations

Purple decorations

Olive bread--there were other breads offered at the same time

Tiramisu

Since our hotel was in Germany, some of the team wanted to eat real brats and sauerkraut (Not me, I don't care for either of those). One night we stopped at a little roadside eatery and we all got brats. You'll see in the pics below that they were very long and served in a burger shaped bun, not a hot dog bun. I ate most of mine, and I don't think it was any different than a Johnsonville brat. But, I think a lot of people enjoyed theirs. Perhaps it's just something about eating food in it's home country that makes food taste better and more authentic? Anyways, I also tried a Coke with orange flavoring in it. At least I liked that!

Every night after work we headed to a downtown shopping area in Saar Brucken. Sometimes we went there for dinner, but every night we went there for dessert--gelato. Every night! I guess this getting ice cream every night is turning into a tradition on these MAPS trips. They started it in El Salvador last year, and the guys from last year wanted to see if it would happen again this year. They succeeded. Somebody new every night (those of the crew who could afford to buy everybody dessert) would pay for everyone's dessert. The first night was one scoop. Then when night two came, someone asked if we could all get two scoops and we did. Well, you guessed it, the third night was three, and the fourth night was four scoops. Someone in our group actually got five scoops on the last night--the most scoops the store did. We went to the same place and since we were such a large group the guy instantly recognized us on the second night. By the third and fourth night, the same guy just laughed and smiled whenever we showed up. He was so nice. I kept always saying "Merci" (thank you) when I would receive my dessert, and he would politely say "Donke". I just kept forgetting that we were in Germany. Yes, even though we were right on the border of France and Germany, believe me when I say that the German and French languages were not intermixed. If you were on the Germany side, you were expected to speak German, and speak French on the France side.

I was very excited to see that my favorite ethnic food was served everywhere we went in Europe--Italian. I think we ate a total of five Italian meals in our travels. Even our last meal in Paris was at an Italian restaurant. And, the best part...we ate outside. I had been waiting for this the whole entire trip--to eat outside. The weather was gorgeous, it was on the famous street Champs Elysees down the street from the Arc de Triomphe, and to me it seemed magical. It was a perfect way to end our trip to Europe!

Work Work Work

After spending a day traveling to the towns where our work site and hotel site were, the next few days were hard work. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning we would arrive at the job site at 8 am and leave at 5 pm, except leaving after lunch for Paris on Thursday. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about what the pictures are showing, but our team worked on tearing down wallpaper, tearing down walls, painting, putting up textured wallpaper, electrical wiring, mudding and patching, and building a stage.

I was on the team that worked in the hall and stairwell taking down wallpaper.

The walls up the stairs to the second floor were quite high. In order to reach the wallpaper, the guys had to make a homemade scaffold. At the top of the stairs on the 2nd floor landing was put a step stool. Then a very high ladder was put on about the fourth step from the bottom. Across these two ladders were put some boards so the men could stand on them in order to be able to spray the wallpaper with water and scrape it off. The following pics do a better job of showing you what I am trying to explain. I stood by the bottom of the tall ladder and kept an eye on those boards to make sure they didn't start to shift and slip through the rungs.

 

On another day, some of the guys put up a textured wallpaper onto these same walls. Once this paper was put up, it would be painted. I guess this is pretty common in Europe.

 Two and a half of my days were nothing but painting the basement. There were 4 large rooms that had to be primed on the walls and ceilings and then painted. These walls were all holey, porous cement--not smooth drywall. But, before painting could begin, some electrical wiring and mudding and patching had to be done.

A few walls upstairs were torn down and some new ones built to expand the sanctuary on the main floor. This is where Roger spent most of his time. There are no wooden stud frames built for walls. They glue large, heavy gypsum blocks onto each other just like you would bricks.

You can see in this pic where a wall was knocked down and all of the space behind it was a separate room. That space would be turned into a stage which you will see in upcoming pics. This lengthened the sanctuary.

Hauling out all of the rubble.

 Another wall knocked down. A new one was built a few feet back adding width to the sanctuary.

 

 

 

Another wall knocked down that would be rebuilt a few feet back to widen the sanctuary. You can see how it came up to this pillar and in the next pic, it has been knocked down showing the space between the pillar and a bathroom wall.

Any rubble/trash we had would be piled up in this area on the sidewalk in front of the church. I wish I'd gotten a pic of the mountain of rubble that grew here.

New walls.

Building and wiring the stage.

A before, middle, and after shot of the sanctuary.

On our half day of Thursday, since the dungeon painting was done, we Cinderellas set about cleaning up wherever we could.

Here is our awesome team.