barista days

what an interesting turn of events.

charles and marie randomly decided on thursday evening to drive to bandung (about 9 hours away) for vacation friday morning, leaving the coffee shop in the capable hands of yohanes. sadly, yohanes has only actually worked in the coffee shop for 6 days and just learned to make some of the drinks about 2 days ago.

so marie asked me if i'd be willing to go down friday afternoon and help out for however long i was able. i was more than happy to. all the dorm students and many of the teachers are out of town for the long holiday weekend, and besides church, i have absolutely zero plans for the weekend. i was glad for something to do, and especially glad for something useful to do. the fact that it was with yohanes, one of my more favorite people, also didn't hurt.

i just didn't want him to feel as if i was stepping on his toes in any way or that i'd been sent to "check up" on him. so we talked about it, and it was all good. he handled things spectacularly, and there was only one drink that he didn't know how to make - the sunrise smoothie.

when we were cleaning up at the end of the day, i looked at him and said, "you know that i know that you could totally do this by yourself and you don't need me here, right?" and he looked right back at me and said, "are you kidding? i need you here! can you come back tomorrow?" naturally, i said yes.

so i came this morning. since it's a holiday weekend, i expected it to be quiet here. i brought my laptop along for entertainment, and it proved helpful. only a few customers trickled in and out. yo made drinks, i handed him things, took money, made change, delivered drinks, and did dishes as often as he'd let me. mostly i just got, "mbak. sit down. that's MY job." and i also drank the drink leftovers (sometimes you accidentally mix just a little too much for the size of the glass), the best part of the job!

about an hour and a half ago, all the power went off. so that was nice. we opened the doors and let a breeze go through. shortly after that, yo got an sms from his sister, saying that his grandfather was not doing well and he needed to come home. so promising to be back shortly, he took off. about 15 minutes later the power came back on and yohanes returned saying he needed to go to the hospital with his family. his grampa's body is swollen, and they are not sure if he will live through the night.

he asked me to be in charge and gave me a 5 minute tutorial, which included how to drive charles' motorbike, as it has to be moved into the coffeeshop at nighttime so that nobody steals it out of the driveway. so here i am.

naturally, the first customer ordered a sunrise smoothie. after asking if they had ever ordered that drink before and finding out that they hadn't, i made it. mostly i just threw some fruit and yogurt and milk and ice into the blender and prayed that it would taste alright. but if it didn't, well... they had never had it before so they would never know, right? i've made three more drinks and two cinammon rolls since then, and no complaints so far.

i'm praying the korean moms don't come in, as they often do on saturday afternoons. i only know 2 korean words, and "hello" and "duck" won't get me very far. they know some indonesian, but i'm not too sure how much our indonesian overlaps. i'm pretty sure i can't say, "i'm sorry, i don't know how to make a raspberry truffle iced mocha", in indonesian though.

the highlight of the day was when yo and i were goofing off on wikipedia this morning. yo always jokes about how "village" he is (kind of the american equivalent of redneck/backwoods) because he is from one of the smaller kampungs (neighborhoods) in town and because of how super dark he is (the lighter you are, the classier you are). i did a wikipedia search for my hometown, and sure enough, i got a hit. yohanes read the whole entry, as i was explaining to him what the town has and what it is like. he just started laughing hysterically, and eventually managed to get out, "...... you are more village than i am!!" he was pretty amused, and i couldn't help but join in. apparently, my hometown is more backwoods than indonesia. well, at least we win at something.