Part Nine - Chores

Extra hungry for breakfast, I awoke to my alarm a little more easily the next day. A small plank on brackets, mounted to the wall near my head held my little travel clock, journal, bible, and a few ponytail holders. I wasn't much for makeup, so my toiletries were minimal. Although jetlag mixed with fasting is a tiresome combination, the light wooden frame of my top bunk was not a strong enough cage to hold me. The poofy pleasantries of my duvet were thrown off, and I climbed down. The expanse of mountains and trees and a new day coming through the window flooded my body with delight as I dressed and headed to breakfast- my third day at L'Abri.

In the hall that joined the foyer to the dining room, our communal schedule was daily pinned to a large corkboard. The clock beside helped to remind:

Breakfast at 8 am in the Bellevue dining room

9:30-1:00 Study Time or Work Crew

Lunch at 1 pm at various Chalets

3:00-6:30 Study Time or Work Crew

Dinner at 6:30 pm in Bellevue dining room

Evenings Free

Below this basic structure, specific work crews were listed with names assigned to each. There was, apparently, laundry to be done, meals to be prepared, chalets to be cleaned, tablecloths to be ironed, snow to be shoveled, incoming books to be organized. If your name did not appear on one of the scheduled crews, you had a study block.

On this, my first Tuesday, I was to be Cleaning Bellevue with 3 other people for the morning. I recognized one of the names as a girl who had arrived right around the same time as I. We met together with one of the Workers, named John, the day before. He asked us to describe why we had come and what we would like to study. I tripped and trampled on the words I meant to say, and said other boring things that weren't the real reason I had come. But he was gracious and only wrote a few sentences down. What he would do with that information I knew not. 

I waited on the corner bench in the foyer for further instructions. A tall girl stomped down the stairs towards me. (So many of the girls here were Amazon-sized, that even at 5'9" I felt medium.) With bulky socks pulled to full stretch and scrunching around the hem of her pajama pants at the ankle, she seemed very comfortable here. Her short, dark hair curled slightly in several directions. 

From the looks of it, she was a Helper.

I introduced myself, although she said we had met on my first night. Her squinted eyes looked suspiciously at my eager-beaver bright morning face. 

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