Snow, cold weather, and MLK

As most of the northeast, we have been experiencing some pretty cold temperatures and several days of snow recently. Today was the coldest it's been by far (it was 11 degrees with a -6 degree windchill when I woke up) but luckily it was a day that I didn't have to be outside, so I was comfortably warm inside and just had to listen to the wind gust against the building. We did have our coldest outdoor service project to date last Friday after it had snowed the night before. It was about 25 degrees for most of the day and we were in Brewster clearing invasives from a piece of town conservation land, which is a pretty standard task for us on our group service days. The day started out feeling like it was going to be brutal and that everyone would be miserable, but I wore tons of layers so once I got moving around I was a comfortable temperature the whole day. Also, it was a day that people from all 3 houses (Wellfleet, Bourne and the Fire Crew) got to work together, which doesn't happen often, so it was fun to get to spend time with each other. Overall it was a great day, and it was really cool to see the freshly fallen snow all around us while we were working. I took some pictures of it to share, although pictures never do nature justice.

This is what happens when all 3 houses get together...lots of chainsaws!

We also had another encounter with snow this week when it snowed Monday night into Tuesday morning and we got temporarily snowed in. It didn't snow enough for anything to get cancelled, but we had to wait for our driveway to get plowed before we could go anywhere so we had about an hour delay while we waited for that. It made me realize that I'm really back in New England, not in Maryland anymore, because people here actually know what to do with snow and the chances of getting a snow day are a lot lower haha. And as always at our house, if there's downtime there's going to be some shenanigans going on, so I took a picture of what happened when Jared tried to take a nap on the couch:

Collin loves tickling people and this morning was no exception. I just love how at peace Jared looks at the bottom of the pile. 

Our service project this Monday was a special project for MLK Day that a group of my roommates planned (each COD Day has a specific volunteer recruitment project they are assigned to plan and this was Thursday COD Day's event). The main focus of the day was "Serving those who serve us" and doing things to help people who serve in the military. The event "hub" was where everyone checked in and there were stations to make care packages for soldiers and families of soldiers who are deployed. Then there were other sites for different projects. The site I was at was helping a veterans center redo their basement which was flooded during Sandy, so I spent the day putting in insulation in preparation for a group of volunteers to put up drywall. It was a good day, everything went very smoothly which was great and really showed that the group of members who planned it had done a really good job. It was fun to work with other volunteers and do something different from what we normally.

Now for some bonus photos of some other goofing around that happened recently when we were working on fixing shellfishing cages during COD Day on Tuesday:

Suzanne decided to get into a shellfish cage

Steph wearing one of the cages

Well that's it for now. Everyone try to stay warm in this crazy weather!

Since Christmas Break

So since Christmas break, our days have been pretty routine in terms of service (IPs, COD Days, and group service projects). One thing slightly out of the ordinary is that we have more Wet Fests this month than usual, and two of them are pretty much back to back, so we had one on Friday and another one tomorrow. I'm getting a little bit more used to Wet Fest so I don't dread it like I did for some of them, and the group of kids we had on Friday was really well behaved so I'm hoping that trend continues tomorrow.

At one of our group service projects, 2 reporters came to find out about what we were doing and interview some people. I thought they were just going to be writing an article about it, but it turned out that they were video taping for a website called CapeCast. The video ended up being kind of funny and silly, so I'm guessing that's the editors style with these videos he does. Here is the link if anyone is interested in watching it. I'm pretty sure I'm in it at 0:24, but it's sort of hard to tell if it's actually me.

One new thing that is not service-related is that I joined a gym. It's the first time I've ever joined one because I was usually pretty active with dance and sometimes went to the gym at school which was free, but I felt like I hadn't been active enough recently. A gym in Orleans, which is about 20 minutes away, was having a deal for a 3 month membership and if 3 or more people signed up you got 15% off, so me and two of my roommates decided to join. I just signed up on Thursday and I've gone every day since then, so I'd say I'm off to a good start. It's feel good to be getting more exercise again, and I think the fact that I actually paid for it will be a good incentive to go if I ever feel like being lazy haha.

Well I think that's all for now. I'll keep you updated on anything else exciting that happens.

Christmas Break bonus: Shellfishing video!

Hello all! I just got back from Christmas break so there's nothing new to write about at this point, but I just realized that I never posted the video of us shellfishing that one of my roommates made. I just found out it's on YouTube so I can actually share it on my blog now! It's from the most recent time we went shellfishing, in the beginning of the day before we all got ridiculously cold haha. So here it is! Click here to watch it. More blogging to come soon as we get back into the swing of things here.