Monday, October 27, 2008

Are your thoughts results of static cling?

Hey! So the title to this blog is my favorite line in a song on the new Jason Mraz CD...great line. ANYWHO I have a lot of updating to do so let us begin!

My weeks are crazy as usual. I just turned in my weeks timesheet and I put in 58.5 hours last week alone! I have not had a free day since the 18th and I will not have one until the 2nd of November..oh how I am going to enjoy THAT day! The pace is fast but the work rewarding...we did the beach sweep (which I was in the paper for!) and it was so great to talk to kids about issues that they will have to deal with in the future (and that we are dealing with today) and its refreshing because they are so much more involved in environmental change than I ever was when I was their age. My COD day is now planning a recyclefest for a middle school on the Cape and we are going to do a puppet show (its amazing and I play the Sandwitch! Get it..Sand...witch...) I just like it because she has a green ribbon in her hair and I get to use her arm to pet it (being a puppeteer is WAYYY harder than I thought!! I kept closing her mouth when she should be talking and opening it during the other times..its weird. Either that or I am slow....NO COMMENT! :-) The other thing we are planning is a mural made out of recycled paper materials that will be off a clean earth like blue water (and foil to make the water shine!) and trees, birds, fish, the sun, etc.
I then went to a wind power conference in Plymouth that was really eye opening because I never thought that there could be so many opposing views on the side that SUPPORTS wind...I naively figured you were just for or against..but there are many more issues than that that add to the walls these wind people have to break down.
Friday we had another Wet-fest and I worked at a table called "Where Rivers Meet the Sea" and we talked about estuaries and did an experiment with layering water based on their salt content. There were some HYPER kids at the school and some of them just did not know how to keep their hands to themselves (Meredith got sprayed in the face with a water gun by a little boy...HA HA! I laughed at her) BUT there was this sweet little girl, Veronica, who was quiet the whole time and then right before she had to switch groups came up to me and said "I really liked this one, thank you" and it warmed my heart.

In OTHER news--I am learning how to crochet (sp?) from a lady in the senior residence next door and she is AWESOME..there is also a lady there from CORNING!!! Go figure...she lived on Ontario street for all those who know where that is!
We wont first place in trivia this week AGAIN..not that I'm bragging or anything but I had the save the day answer to the question "The word Numismatics referrs to what kind of tangible object?" The answer you ask? COINS! BOO YAH!!! FIRST PLACE HECK YES!
And I am sick..I had a fever of 101.6 yesterday and took Nyquil for the first time EVER last night and it made me dream things in weird technicolor. I'm lying about the technicolor BUT (for comic relief) I did drop my glasses in the toilet this morning because I was still feeling the effects (clean toilet..don't worry mom :-)

Last but not least...yesterday a group of us went to a Bioneers Conference in New Bedford and it was an extremely moving experience. It turned my life upside down in the best way. There were influential speakers there like Van Jones, Majora Carter, John Abrams, Simran Sethi, Lynne Twist, John Perkins etc etc. It was great and so hard to put into words but they all basically spoke about different aspects within the environmental change world and had some really cool quotes such as "If you are alive today, you have a role to play," "Waste is the sign of bad design" or "We cannot have peace on the earth unless we have peace with the earth." The theme of the weekend was a butterfly and the reason why is because the caterpillar (right before it goes into a cocoon) apparently consumes way too much and when this happens a signal inside the caterpillar triggers cells inside to form together that makes the caterpillar begin building a cocoon. They compared this change from a caterpillar to the butterfly to the change that is going to happen in our world and the cells are supposed to be us! It was really cool and I just want to leave you with a part of my favorite quote from the weekend by George Bernard Shaw:

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have gotten hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations"

Thank you.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changesss

Hey all!! WELCOME BACK TO THE SHOW!! haha justttt kidding!!

SO this week we started our Individual placements, which was at Self-Reliance. So far I have been doing a BUNCH of reading on all the forms of Renewable energy, and I also made an information poster on Biodiesel. Then I had COD day at the office (Community Outreach Development) and we are planning a Beach Sweep where high-school students go to a beach we choose and clean it up along with an environmental twist..likkeee having a game where each student is either an animal or a piece of plastc and the plastcs are trying to capture all the animals (kinda like sharks and minnows)..FUN STUFF! The two service projects we had last week were with the Brewster DNR (Dept of Natural Resources) Monday was Fire fuel reduction which is basically clearing out all the dead trees and brush from a conservation area so in case there is a fire it won't be as detrimental to the rest of the forest. Friday we were culling oysters all day which means seperating the large oysters from the aquaculture beds the DNR set up. THAT day was amazing because we were in the water during low-tide on the beach...ALL DAY and measuring oysters. Ryan, our shellfisherman is 28-ish and he's extremely knowledgeable as well as cool...he let us choose some oysters that were over 3 inches and EAT THEM RAW! I cracked them open and ate two...with a bunch of hot sauce. I couldn't actually taste the oyster...it was all hot sauce. The texture was slurpee..yum?

Then my mom and my grandparents came up to visit for Columbus weekend!!! (Oh and I forgot to mention that Whit and Lynsey came to visit me the last Sunday in September for their Rosh Hashannah break and it was amazing :-) ) <-- double chin. ANYWHO--so I showed them the Knob, Woods Hole, Martha's Vineyard and then the Outer Cape like Seal beach, the Truro winery, etc. Sunday we went on a sunset hike to the top of a Sand Dune on Great Island and watched the sunset with a bunch of strangers and it was so much fun. Some of the people from the Wellfleet house came as well as Amanda, Ash and Phil from my house. One thing I thought was really cool is that everyone clapped when the sun went down! Apparently its a nightly tradition there to enjoy the sunset and they clap every night which is a great tradition in my opinion..I feel as though people don't stop and appreciate those natural beauties, myself included. Working on it!

In other news my trivia group won 3rd place this week..and we are going again tomorrow to try and reclaim first place! Also there is a group of us that are going to run a relay marathon at the end of October (I'm hoping for 10 people in our group so we each only have to run 2.6 miles :-P) ALSO I joined a singing group called the MasterSingers by the Sea and we have a bunch of concerts throughout the year that I am pretty pumped for.

That's all for now! I hope everyone is doing well and are enjoying the fall foliage! Get outside! Take a hike! Bike ride! Run! Whatever! Just enjoy it because in January you are going to wish you had.
TTFN :-)

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Say what you need to say

I'm going to try and condense all that I have to say about the weekdays since it has been awhile and a lot has happened!

To pick up where I left off... Wetfest was soo much fun! The Wet Festival is something that Americorps does in all the school districts on the Cape throughout the year. Basically we set up 12-15 activities in the school gym that all have to do with education about water- the water table, septic systems, watershed management, the water cycle, pollution in the waters, habitat destruction, etc etc. The activity that I was in charge of (with Tim) was Flush the Kids. Basically there is this huge toilet (made out of wood) that the kids climb through into tubes and make it to the "septic system" (one of those blow-up Fisher price houses) and come out on the other side in their "backyard." Before they are flushed they are given clean water (a clear plastic cup) with pieces of paper in it that say solids (or "pooppieee!!!" as the kids like to say) nitrogen, grease, and bacteria. There are places in the septic system where they drop all the pieces of paper off and they come out on the other side with nitrogen...illustrating that the water is not completely clean on the other side and it contributes to fish kill and eutrophication. It was so much fun and the kids LOVED getting flushed and some of them had spontaneous dance parties in the septic system.

The week after that we had the rest of our trainings and met our service partners..I am only four miles from my individual placement which is COMPLETELY bike-able! I start there this Wednesday.
Thursday of this week a group from my house went to trivia at a bar called The Beach House...and four of us girls won it!! Meredith, Jenny, Maria and myself were a team and we DOMINATED...not really though...we almost lost to a bunch of older gents that were not too happy with us by the end of the night due to our success BUT we got a $25 gift certificate that we are going to use this Thursday (I mean..we have to protect our title!)

Friday after training Alex, Jenny, Meg, Brian, Abbey, Amanda and I went camping in Martha's Vineyard!! We took the ferry over and brought our bikes and looked ridiculous with all of our tents, book bags and sleeping bags ALL on our bikes...it was a blast! The reason we went to the vineyard was to see Entrain (that awesome band we are now groupies for) and camping was the cheapest thing on the vineyard (still $80 for a four person campground!). HUGE SIDE STORY (so you may want to skip it)..So friday night we got to the bar and I went up to the bar and asked the bartender for water and then I threw out a tissue in the garbage behind the bar...THREE POINTER!! So I hear the guy standing next to me say "Wow nice shot" and I (being the smart alleck that I am) turn my head while saying "Yeah..I'm pretty impressive.." and as soon as I fully turned my head I noticed the guy as the LEAD SINGER OF ENTRAIN! So he laughs, complements me on my "Green is Sexy" shirt and we talked for the next 20 minutes while my friends are in awe that I am talking to this guy. Turns out, his name is Jeff, he is 27 and from Pennsylvania. He went to Bucknell and get this... in college he was in a group that opened for an A CAPPELLA GROUP at...SUNY BINGHAMTON!!!! I (of course) boasted about Rhythm Method at this point and he said he wanted to hear some of our stuff OHH YEAHHH. ALSO I asked him to play the song "Dancing in the light" that my friends and I loved at the last show and he said yes. It was the last song of the set and before he started it he said "This last song goes out to Jaclyn and Americorps Cape Cod!" And we all screamed our heads off and danced like mad, which was awesome.

PHEW so anyway Saturday day we biked all around the Vineyard and it was so much fun. Saturday night we were back on the Cape and my house went to a Town Hall in Woods Hole that was holding CONTRA DANCING! For those of you who don't know..that is a lot like square dancing. So we went, and danced with about 50 random strangers and it was AMAZING. It's safe to say that I'm pretty terrible, but the dances are a lot more difficult than I thought..and if you mess up you mess up everyone because its all about order. By the end of the night I improved and there were some younger people there that taught us a lot and needless to say we are going next month!

ALRIGHT...thanks for sticking through with me..and I welcome any comments on the blog..or emails because I am interested in what and how others are doing as well!!!

Miss you ALL!
Jaci