"Life, don't talk to me about life" or hot dogs

Thousands of hot dogs later and I'm still here. I actually like this job now. Not the job itself, obviously, and not the hours. But these are great people. I wish somebody would make a better option fr people like them instead of just coming to America and spending twenty or thirty years in a miserable factory for the sake of your children or significant others. Everyone I've talked to save one or two is working here to create an opportunity for their children to do something better, which is a much nobler sentiment than I'm used to encountering. Maybe I'm jaded, maybe my whole generation is, or maybe just my social sphere. But these people are such GOOD people. They're unnaturally patient and good-spirited. My mormor (Norweigan for mother's mother) used to say, "People can get used to anything, even hanging." I see what she meant here. And I've learned some stuff very worth the space in my head. Spelling I don't know, but my Croatian friend Diana (who is 21, but she left her country at the beginning of the year to follow her American-Croatian husband back to America, thus abandoning her college career for, as she says, "working in a freezer") taught me to say, "Moyah leija boleh" (spelling be damned, in any language) which is Croatian for "My back hurts." Also "Ne Isnam" = "I don't know" and other such gems.

I've already made a thousand bucks in only half a month. It's money I worked hard for and i am proud of it, but I still can't wait to finish at the end of July. I count days.

Oh -- a good Spanish phrase I learned: "Cuidado! Mantenga las manos fuera de la maquina!" = "Caution! Keep hands out of the machine!"
It says that right next to a little opening in a hot dog machine which everybody sticks their hands into. I memorized it as I spent a good five hours sticking little nutrition labels into the opening. Very ironic. :-)