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 :)