Another blog post finally!

I'm so sorry it's taken so long for me to post. We didn't have wifi for about a week and a half recently and I didn't want to take as much time on the house computer as a blog post would have taken since all 13 of us had to share that computer. So a lot has happened, but I will give a quick synopsis of the most interesting things.

A few weekends ago one of my housemates and I went to the Cape Cod Beer brewery in Hyannis for a tour. The brewery is really small so we basically just stood and listened to the tour guide and also got to taste a bunch of the types of beer while the tour guide talked about the beer-making process, the history of the company and how each of the beers was made. It was really fun, and the beer was really good. And it's great that it's a local company so I feel good about supporting them. Here's a few pictures I took at the brewery. 

We also recently had a few holiday-related activities at our house. The first was the day we took our holiday picture so people could send out Christmas cards. We went to the beach and took some group pictures in our ugly Christmas sweaters. We took some serious ones and then some of them we got a little silly. Here's a taste of what went on.

This was our most normal pose...

This one shows a little bit of what goes on in our house on a regular basis haha

Then we got creative with the posing...

...and a little silly. 

The last one was just random haha. 

After that we decorated our Christmas tree! It's just a random pine tree we took from a service project where we were cutting them down in a field, but it turned out very nice. :)

Then this weekend the festivities continued with our Christmas Party which involved a potluck dinner, secret santa, white elephant swap, and a Jeopardy game that two of the girls put together to help us get to know each other. It was cool, they did interviews with each of us and then made questions about some of the things they learned and put us into teams to answer them for the game. For the white elephant, we decided that the gifts had to be free from the swap shop at the transfer station (the dump as I'm used to calling it, Massachusetts seems to like to make up it's own words for things lol), so everything was really random and hilarious. For the secret santa, we had a $10 limit but everyone ended up getting great gifts. Since we all spend so much time together, we know a lot about what each person likes so it was probably the best secret santa I've done since everyone got something that was great for them. I have a few pictures of this celebration also, but not very many. Here they are:

Meg got a green plastic knight suit as a secret santa gift. 

The knight suit was quite popular so Mike took it when it was his turn to choose a gift. 

So that's been our Christmas celebrations up to now, definitely lots of fun and gotten us in the Christmas spirit. Now for a bonus picture: this me and Meg and it was taken during one of our group service projects last week. It was raining and we were working outside all day so we were wearing our "foulies," which is our bright orange rain gear.

Even though it was raining and we were wet, it was still a great day and made me realize how lucky I am that I get to be outside all day, even in all kinds of inclement weather, doing work that I feel like really makes a difference. I'm so thankful that I was accepted to this program because I've met so many awesome people and had so many great experiences even just the few months I've been here so far, and I know the rest of the year is going to be just as amazing!

Boston trip

This past weekend Friday we all went to Boston for the AmeriCorps opening day event that all the AmeriCorps programs in Massachusetts went to, which meant that Danielle was there too! It was great to see her, and since we both had Monday off for Veteran's Day we stayed in the city and hung out for the weekend and then headed back on Monday. We spent a lot of our time just hanging out at Danielle's friend Hina's apartment, but we did do some fun stuff so I'll give you some of the highlights.

Like I said, Friday was the opening day for AmeriCorps. That was basically just a rally where some people gave speeches and someone from each program gave a short description of what they do. I had no idea there were so many people in AmeriCorps programs, there were tons of people and that was just all the people who serve in Massachusetts. I was especially surprised at how many City Year members there were, about a quarter of the people there seemed to be with City Year. Here's the best picture I could get of the crowd, there were even more people that I couldn't fit in the frame. (You can see Danielle and some of the people from my program in the foreground in the maroon polos.)

After the speeches, we got lunch provided and then moved on to the afternoon activities. The activity we were signed up for was a tour of the state house, which was really cool. I loved learning about the history of it and seeing the chambers where the state senators and representatives actually meet. I seem to have grown more interested in history recently so it was really cool to learn about, and the architecture in old buildings like that is always really fascinating so I enjoyed it a lot.

Inside the state house

The senate chamber

The house chamber

The hall of flags. Each town has a flag hung on the wall, I tried to find Wellfleet's flag but the closest I came was finding the Falmouth one.

Then a bunch of us played paintball on Saturday, which was really cool. I had never played before and it was a great experience. I don't have any pictures of us during paintball because I left my phone in the car so it wouldn't get paint on it, but I do have some pretty impressive bruises to show for it. I knew it was probably going to hurt to get hit by paintballs but some of them hurt more than I expected. Getting covered in paint was kind of fun though haha.

Other than that, the highlight of the weekend I think was the IMAX show Danielle and I went to see on Sunday at the Museum of Science. It was about the arctic, and had a lot of cute polar bears. :) I always enjoy seeing IMAX shows, and they always have great ones at the museum so I try to go whenever I'm in Boston if I can.

So that's the basic overview of my weekend. I'm not sure I'll have anything very interesting to write about between now and Thanksgiving, but it's possible that we could get called to help with a dolphin stranding tomorrow morning. My roommate who works IFAW, the group that responds to strandings, was working with them all day today monitoring dolphins who they thought might get caught on shore when the tide went out and that possibility stills stands for tomorrow so I might have something exciting to write about tomorrow, but maybe not. Hopefully for the dolphins we won't have to go, but it is bound to happen at some point so I'm sure it's an experience I'll be writing about eventually.

Poison ivy is evil!

So for the first time in my life...I have poison ivy! Since I never got it before and had been exposed I thought that I was immune, and that was reinforced by the fact that I made it this far without getting any when we're around it on a regular basis, but unfortunately that turns out not to be true. So far it's just on my arms so it's not as bad as it could be but it still really isn't fun! I had to get up in the middle of the night last night to put anti-itch cream on it because it itched so bad. So in my opinion right now, poison ivy seems evil. We don't do anything to it, it's not even one of the plant species we're trying to get rid of, and it just feels the need to torment us! Not cool poison ivy!

Anyway, some news. It turns out that the group who was going to go to NY isn't going anymore. They found out today that the Red Cross doesn't need them to go. It's too bad that they don't get to have that experience, but now it won't be weird and quiet around here for two weeks.

Also, today was quite a day at our service project. We were doing shellfishing, which I usually really like, but it's the first day so far that the temperature has been in the 40's so being in the water was really hard. My hands were cold after about 10 minutes and it just got worse from there. We ended up leaving the site early because people were too cold, and by that point my hands were so freezing that I could barely move them. So we went back to the Shellfish Department's storage area and did some maintenance work on their equipment. We were inside for some of that but I was still really cold, and I still couldn't move my hands that well when we left. I didn't completely warm up until I took a gloriously hot shower at home and put on comfy clothes. And now I'm happier. :)

Also, just a random bit of news, not very important but it makes me happy: I finally got a new battery for my laptop, so now I can actually carry it around without running from outlet to outlet and hoping it didn't die. And I only paid about $10 for it on Amazon. Don't know why I didn't think of that before, it's awesome!

Halloween (sort of)

So on the night of Halloween we didn't actually do anything holiday-related, since trick or treaters don't come to our street and it was a week night so none of us really wanted to go out. It also didn't really feel like Halloween since we celebrated on Saturday. But then yesterday we finally carved the pumpkins we'd had for a while. It was really fun because I hadn't carved a pumpkin in years so it brought me back to years when I always used to do it. 3 of my housemates carved pumpkins with me and we chose a seashore theme for our carvings. Here is the process and the result.

Mine is on the right in this picture

And on the left in this one :)

Also Halloween-related, I forgot to mention the last time I wrote that last Friday I helped out at a haunted forest at the Wellfleet Audobon. I got to lead walks through the forest so I got to see all the skits. They weren't actually scary because they were geared towards little kids, they were more educational and it was all about animals that live in the area. It reminded me of being in the forest of mystery that BEEC used to put on. It was a lot of fun.

Now a hurricane update, things are still fine here but we just found out today that the Red Cross wants half of us to go to NYC to help at a shelter for two weeks. I probably won't go because they don't need all of us and other people are more excited about it, but if I did end up going I think it would be a good experience. If I stay here it will be really weird to half the house fine for so long. We've gotten so used to being around each other all the time.

And now just some bonus pics of some things I've baked recently, scones and pumpkin bread. I still seem to have the baking bug :)

Red Cross shelter, day 2

4:00 am: I got to sleep for about 5 hours and now I'm on shift again. The storm hasn't been as bad as I think people expected since it turned so far inland so we don't have any more people than we did last night. It sounds like we'll close the shelter in the morning since the storm had pretty much run its course here. I'm not sure exactly how the area is doing in terms of power outages, hopefully we have power back on at the house or the generator is still working. I guess we'll find out in a few hours. Now I'm just sitting waiting again to hear any news.

7:30 am: Breakfast is starting now and my shift is almost technically over but I think we're going to pack up and close down the shelter soon. So we might be back home pretty soon, but then I'm not sure what they'll have us do for the rest of the day. Hopefully they'll just let us rest.

8:20 am: After being asleep for only 20 minutes I was woken up to help pack up the shelter. With everyone helping it didn't take long at all and we were out of there by a little after 9.

9:40 am: Now I'm in bed at home ready to take a nap. Luckily we found out that we don't have to work the rest of the day so we just get to relax. We don't have power back yet and we might not for a few days so now irks a whole new adventure. But that's it for now, time for me to nap.

4:00 pm: Not only do we still not have power but our generator stopped working, so now I'm at the library to use internet and just to get out of the house. We should have power back within a few hours though so we're hoping for the best.

5:15 pm: The power is back on! Yay!!!

Red Cross shelter, day 1

So like I mentioned could happen yesterday, we ended up being called to help at a Res Cross shelter. That's where I am right now and I'm typing this post on my phone. The reason the title says day 1 is that we're going to be sleeping here, we packed clothes for two days and brought sleeping bags, so we could end up being here for 1 or 2 nights depending on how bad it gets. I figure I'll do a timeline style post about what's happening throughout the day and update it every so often. So here goes.

6:00 am: Left the house to go to the shelter. There are 3 shelters throughout the cape, 5 of my housemates went to the Dennis Yarmouth one and 7 of us are at the Eastham one, which is at the high school.

6:15ish: Arrived at the shelter. We signed in and got a tour of the shelter., and got ourselves settled. We split up shifts and helped with some last set up.

8:00 am: Shelter opened. I'm on the second shift which starts at 2pm so I have some time to relax. No clients at the shelter yet.

9:00 am: After having some Dunkin Donuts the Red Cross brought in for us, I take a nap.

10:30 am: Done with my nap, now I just have to sit and wait. Apparently that's what a lot of today will be, even when I'm on shift. At least I'll be able to catch up on some reading. The weather still hasn't gotten that bad. It's just some wind at this point with some occasional rain.

1:00 pm: So far we have 6 clients at the shelter, and weather-wise it's still just windy here. I've been checking the progress of the storm online and it's slowly moving up the coast but hasn't hit land yet. It looks like the worst of us will miss us but it will definitely get worse later today.

2:00 pm: My shift has started and
I'm at the registration table. I'll be helping check people in once things pick up but right now we still only have about 10 people so there hasn't been a lot to do yet. The storm is moving pretty slowly so it looks like the worst of it will start around 6:00 instead of noon like they originally thought. I just heard that places in Chatham are flooded and there are power outages in parts of Hyannis but here it's still not even raining.

5:00 pm: Still waiting at the registration table but no more people have some yet, the weather hasn't really changed for a few hours. I got to go pick up dinner and we rode in the Red Cross's ERV, or emergency response vehicle, which is pretty much like an ambulance, it was cool.

8:00 pm: I'm off my first shift and have a few hours till I'm on again. So I'm gonna kill some time and then sleep before getting back to work.

Fort Hill and Hurricane Sandy

So a few interesting things have been happening recently, some good and some not so good. The other day at my IP my service partner let me go to an archaeology walk at a nearby site in Eastham called Fort Hill, which I have driven past many times and wondered what it was. Turns out that it is a place where there may have been a fort back in the time the settlers were first here because when the English were worried about the Dutch coming and taking their land they told every town to set up a fort to watch out for invaders. Eastham chose this hill, which they called Fort Hill, but it's unclear whether they actually build a fort there or just said they did haha. It was a beautiful day to be outside that day and it was nice to get to see the view. Here are a few pictures of it.

Then onto the not so good things, our housemate Brian left yesterday to go back to California. It was really sad to see him go and it hit me a lot harder than I expected. We've all bonded so much already that his absence is going to be very noticeable. I think the suddenness of it made it worse too because we hardly had any time to come to terms with it before he left, and we all assumed we would have many months left to spend with everyone here and get to know each other even better and all of that is just gone now with Brian. So yesterday was a very sad day, with some crying involved, but we were able to distract ourselves pretty well by going to Hyannis and shopping for Halloween costumes for going out in Provincetown last night. Danielle and I decided to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss even though we're not going to be together, so I bought some red clothes and pinned a piece of paper to my shirt that said Thing 2. Here is all of us in our costumes last night.

In Provincetown, we went to a haunted house that was really fun, and kinda scary at a few points when people jumped out and scared us. They sent us through in groups of 5 and the 4 other people I was with were a lot more scared than I was so they made me go first and were squeezing my hands really tight the whole time. It was lots of fun, and I wanted to go through again lol.

After that we went to the bar we've been to a few times before that has karaoke, and we hung out there for a while and sung some songs. The drag queen that hosts it had an awesome costume, and everyone was dressed up. It was great, Provincetown is really into Halloween so there were lots of cool costumes.

Drag queen in her awesome costume. 

Senja and Suzanne (as Ila and Ethel) singing karaoke.

Then, the most recent of the interesting things that's been happening is the approach of Hurricane Sandy. It looks like at this point the worst of it is going to hit New Jersey, but we still have to do some preparations for it. Since we live in a house owned by the National Seashore, if the seashore decides to close during the storm we would have to leave the house and go somewhere else until the park reopens. We're hoping it doesn't come to that, hopefully we get to stay in the house. Even if the power goes out we have a generator so we'd be ok. Also, part of our job as AmeriCorps is to help the Red Cross if they have to open shelters during the storm, so we might have to go do that today or tomorrow. The Red Cross if already setting up shelters now, so we just have to wait and see whether they start sending people to them, in which case we would have to go to the shelter and help check people in, which I think would require us to stay at the shelter too because our house supervisor said we should be prepared to pack clothes for two days. So that's two situations in which we might have to leave the house pretty soon, but we'll see what happens. We have other prep we have to do as well, like this morning we had to cut down some trees in our yard that are dead and could fall onto the shed if the wind gets bad. So today could end up being a pretty interesting day, but for now we're just hanging out at the house waiting to see what happens. Hopefully the storm doesn't turn out to be that bad and we can just wait it out at home.

Sad day

So today we got some sad news. We found out that one of our housemates, Brian, is leaving the program, and his last day is going to be this Friday. He has some family issues going on at home in California, so it couldn't really be avoided but it's still really sad. We've all developed such a great dynamic and we've all bonded so well that not having him here is going to be so weird. And it's early enough in the program that they can still replace him, so on top of adjusting to him not being here, soon we'll have to adjust to a new person living with us. I just really hope the new person is as awesome as Brian and that we are all able to get along well so that things go as smoothly in the house as they have been going. Apparently it's not unusual for people to leave the program, last year they lost 3 members, I was just hoping that we would be the exception and everyone would stick it out for the whole year.

So that's the news for now, I have some other things to write about but those can wait because this has overshadowed other things at this point, and also it's getting kinda late and I need to go to sleep. I seem to have fallen back into my habit of staying up unnecessarily late, which was fine over the summer, but now that I have to wake up between 6:30 and 7:30 every morning, not getting enough sleep has been catching up with me. So I'm trying to make myself go to sleep by 10:30 pm again like I was doing at the beginning, which is right now so I have to end here. Goodnight, and hopefully my next post will be a happier one.

Wolves!

So as I mentioned in my last post, I went to see a wolf show on Saturday. It was awesome! It was a group called "Mission: Wolf" and it's a husband and wife who own a wolf rescue in Colorado who travel around showing wolves to the public to educate people about wolves and about how the idea that people have of wolves as vicious is a misconception. This event was one of our Saturday service options, so a bunch of us from AmeriCorps were there to volunteer. We helped set up a little bit at the beginning and then I checked tickets as people came in the door. Since I was still working when the show started I missed some of it, but the man, Kent I think was his name, started by giving a lot of background information about wolves and wolf behavior, and talked about how his wolf rescue came to be. The wolves he takes care of mostly come from people who decided to try to keep a wolf as a pet, or from movie studios who use them in movies and then don't want them anymore.

After that came the best part, when the wolves actually came out. It was so cool when they walked into the room, everyone was transfixed. And they were definitely not scary, they looked a lot like dogs and they were even not as big as I expected. The really great part of the show was that we actually got to touch the wolves! Apparently Massaschusetts has a stupid law that says that the public cannot interact directly with wild animals so the wolves weren't allowed to go up to audience members to say hi, but luckily for us in AmeriCorps, we got to be special "greeters" for the wolves, which meant that we sat on the floor in front of the audience and the handlers brought the wolves around to us. Kent told us the correct way to greet the wolf, which is bring your hand up from underneath them, not on top of their head, and scratch their chin, and look the wolf in the eye and the wolf will usually touch it's nose to yours. Apparently if you don't keep your eyes open the wolf will get upset because it thinks you don't like it or you're being rude. The first wolf who came around to us was named Abe, and he was actually a wolf-dog mix so he looked pretty much like a husky. When he came up to me I scratched his chin and he started sniffing my face, and then he licked me right on the mouth! It was so cool, and I can now say I've been licked by a wolf. :) A few people go really kissed by the wolves and got their whole faces licked. The second one who came around was a 2-year-old named Zeb, and he seemed to like to sniff people's laps. I had my phone in my lap to take pictures and he reached down and tried to take my phone. I had to reach out and take it out of his mouth haha. Which also goes to show how gentle wolves are with people that he let me do that. The third wolf was name Magpie, and she was the alpha female of the pack. She was a little bit tired, she had been sleeping right before the handler got her to walk around, so she was more reserved when she walked around to us, but it was still awesome to be so close to a real live wolf.

So without further ado, here are some pictures:

Magpie (or Maggie), the alpha female, rolling around on the floor when she first came in the room. 

Maggie on the floor still, Zeb is the one standing behind the woman.

Maggie and Zeb sitting while Abe makes the rounds

Abe greeting people

Maggie greeting people

The boys, Abe and Zeb

Close up of Zeb as he walked by. This is the only close up picture that I got because I wanted to be able to pet them while they were close to me. 

So that's wolf show pictures! It was a great experience and it made me want to go visit the rescue in Colorado. He invites anyone who wants to to come visit the wolves there and I think that would be awesome! At the end of the show he tried to get the wolves to howl, but since they were tired it was only a little half-hearted howl, and it would be amazing to hear many wolves howling all at once which he said happens all the time at the place where the wolves live. Maybe I'll have a chance to go there sometime. I certainly hope so.

Today we had a group project in Chatham which was working on a conservation land that needed some tending to so we were doing things like clearing trails, removing invasives, and moving brush that we collected. It was a long day but it was good, hard work that makes it feel like you really accomplished something. Then after dinner a bunch of us went to play volleyball at the local elementary school, which maybe I mentioned before but I don't think so. One of my housemates started a league for us to play, and this time we actually had enough people to play 6-on-6 unlike last week. We also had someone from the community come play with us, since the league is now being advertised as a community event, so that was fun. His name was Bud and he was actually really good at volleyball unlike most of us haha. I think I might be getting a little bit better, so hopefully that trend will improve. We also played dodgeball after volleyball. It was the first time I'd ever played and it was really fun, but it was a lot more tiring than I expected. I'm going to try to go every week so I can get better at both games.

Well I guess that's it for now. I'll post again whenever I have something exciting to write about.

HOT WATER!

So the title of this post doesn't have much to do with most of what has been going on recently, but one of the most exciting things that happened in the last few days is that the plumber came and fixed the water heater so we can actually take showers that are HOT! Ever since we've been here all of our showers have been lukewarm at best even with the water turned all the way hot, and if two people were showering at the same time it was actually cold. So this is a huge relief to everyone, and taking a hot shower today was one of the best things ever! Anyway, moving on...

Things have been going well, we're starting to get into our set routines now that we've been doing our IPs and COD days for two weeks. My IP is still just a mishmash of things going on in the department that I get to sit in on, but I know that within the next few months I'll get a better idea of the projects I'll be working on and what is expected of me and I'll most likely be doing more self-directed independent things in the office so I'll feel like I can plan out my time more efficiently. But as it is now, I think it's good that I've been spending most of the day doing whatever my service partner is doing so I can get an idea of how things run and what is expected of me.

Some COD day highlights, we accepted a proposal to help a middle school create a community garden that will also be part of their math curriculum for kids who need more hands on applications of math instead of just learning in the classroom. I agreed to be the lead for that project, and we've been to one site visit at the school and we'll be going next week to get a better idea of the scope of the project and to help them out with the beginning of the process. We're also going to be planning lessons for the kids for future dates, including teaching them about composting which they want to get started at the school.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, we have to do Saturday service at least once a month, so last week I went to Oyster Fest, a big annual event in Wellfleet where people go to eat oysters, shop, and have certain oyster-related contests. My job there was to help make sure the recycling process went smoothly because they were recycling the oyster shells back into the ocean so that the smaller oysters, or spat, that are stuck to the shells have a chance to stay alive and the population can be brought up for more fishing in the future. I was excited about getting to experience Oyster Fest, but honestly the 4 hours that I was there were pretty boring and by the time I got done working I was so fed up with the huge crowds that I just got one oyster and then left. I'm still not a huge oyster fan but I figured since I was there I had to get one haha. Here's a taste of what the crowd looked like:

Another highlight, one of our group service projects this week was with my IP service partner, and it involved installing a netting called jute on a trail near one of the local ponds to prevent more erosion in that area, because the paths have been worn down a lot by foot traffic and sediment has been flowing down the trail when it rains and contributing to a decline in water clarity in the pond. The pond is called Duck Pond, and it is one of the ones I will be working on a condition assessment for as part of my work at my IP, so it was cool to see firsthand some of the measures that can be taken to help improve these ponds. Here's what the finished project looked like:

And here's a bonus picture of two of my housemates doing headstands during some downtime:

And then finally I just feel like showing off my new-found interest in baking which most recently has resulted in trying a recipe for zucchini bread. I think it came out good, it tasted great even though it was slightly undercooked in one spot in the middle, but I think it was pretty good for a first attempt. Here it is (I had already taken a piece or two when I remembered to take a picture lol):

Well that's it for now, I know this entry was a jumble of different things, hopefully my next one will be more cohesive. Tomorrow I'm doing another Saturday service (I've been doing all of them for the most part because they sound interesting and also so I can get a jump on getting extra hours in), and tomorrow's is a live wolf show which I'm really excited about! I'm sure you'll be hearing about that in my next post. :)