Spring is in the air! (Sort of)

It's now officially spring, my favorite season! But since it's New England, and especially since it's Cape Cod, there has been a very mixed bag of weather so far. A few days ago we got several inches of snow, which turned the landscape into a beautiful winter wonderland...

...but by the end of the day most of it was gone, in normal Cape Cod fashion. There's still a small amount of snow on the ground now, but the past few days have been beautiful and fairly warm. Yesterday was especially nice out--clear skies, not too cold or windy--so I decided to bike to the library, which is a few miles away in the center of town. Little did I know, the library didn't open until 2:00 pm, so when I got there I was about 2 hours early. I wasn't sure what to do so I biked down to the harbor just to sit for a minute and try to find out if there was anywhere else with wifi nearby. A plus to living near the beach, even if your plans don't work out, the view is great!

My search for wifi was a bust, so I just decided to bike home. On the way back though, I randomly decided to turn down a different road just to see where it went, and ended up biking down that road for a while, admiring the views of the harbor that I could catch around corners and at the top of hills. Eventually, I got to an area where the harbor ended and turned into salt marsh, and I turned into a parking area to decide if I wanted to turn around. It turned out that the view from this parking lot was amazing, so I started walking down a trail that went from the parking lot around the water. It was a beautiful walk, and the weather was perfect for it! I eventually found a path between the dunes and walked out onto the beach overlooking the bay, and enjoyed that view for a while before turning around. Here are some pictures:

It was the most beautiful walk I've ever been on, and I felt so calm and peaceful, there was nothing in the world that I would have rather been doing at that particular moment, and that's a great feeling to have. The ocean is always a great place for self-reflection, and I also realized during that walk that there's nowhere else I would rather be and nothing else I would rather be doing with this year than on Cape Cod doing this AmeriCorps program with this particular group of people that I am with. I feel so fortunate to be doing work I enjoy and living with a group of people who I get along so well with, and even though I try not to think about it, it's going to be so hard when it's over.

After my self-reflection during my walk, it was almost time for the library to be open, so I decided I would go there after all. I had successfully spent enough time taking in the sights that the library was just opening when I got there, 2 hours after I first realized it was closed. Even though I only spent about half an hour at the library, the day was definitely much better than I had initially planned because of my impromptu adventure around the back roads of Wellfleet.

I went biking again today, this time on some different back roads near the house. I went to a different bay-side beach called Ryder Beach, which is closer even though it is in Truro, and just sat for a while admiring the water. The weather wasn't quite as nice, but still warm enough to sit outside comfortably, so it was very enjoyable. I'm going to try to keep the biking trend going because it's a great way to get exercise and also see new places around where I live. I'm also planning on biking to my IP once it gets a little warmer, so I'm excited to save money on gas too!

I failed to mention this earlier on, but this week is our spring break! I decided to stay at the house for a few days before taking a trip to NJ to see friends, and there's only 2 other people here over break, so it's been great to have a lot of quiet to read. I definitely have my work cut out for me in the reading department because I just got a whole bunch of free books this weekend. Every year a group in Chatham does a media swap where people can donate books, movies, music, etc., and then anyone can come and take them for free! I got more than 20 books, so there's no way I'm going to finish them all before the end of the corps year, but it's so exciting to have so many options for reading now. I haven't been reading as much as I would like recently, and this is definitely going to jump-start my reading again.

Well, that's all the updates I have for now. I'll end with this picture I took today, a sure sign that spring is coming (even if it is supposed to snow again tonight).

Catching up, goodbyes, and my first marine mammal stranding

Ever since the shelter things have been pretty busy around here. The weekend after the shelter was my vacation to Florida (I won't write about that here because it's not AmeriCorps related but there are pictures on Facebook for anyone who wants to look at them), and then the week after that was our AmeriCorps winter retreat. We all went to a camp in Sandwich for three days and got to hang out with everyone from the other houses and we also had some sessions about "Life After AmeriCorps" to help us prepare for what we're going to do after this year of service. It was fun, and the space was a lot better than our fall retreat because there was more space for us all to spread out and we weren't all on top of each other the whole time.

Then the week after retreat I had a lot of catching up to do at my IP because I had missed 3 weeks of it, but that meant that the two days I was there this past week were very productive. I had a lot to catch up on but I was able to get a lot done and now have several things that I can start working on more in the coming weeks.

There have also been several other events in the past few weeks, such as our last Wet Fest! I've written about Wet Fest before and I think I made it clear that it was not my favorite service project to do, but now we are done with all 12 of them that we had scheduled. Although we found out at the last one that we're going to do something similar in June at a larger event in Western Massachusetts, but we will only be doing certain activities and some of them will be new so at least it won't be exactly the same thing we've been doing. And we'll have some time to take a break from it for a while before that.

Another cool event was the Owl Show with the Harwich Conservation Trust. It was similar to the wolf show we did earlier in the year, so we helped out and then got to sit in the front, this time to make sure the kids sitting there didn't get too rowdy. We didn't get to touch the animals this time unfortunately, but it was still fun to see them up close. Here are just a few of the pictures from that.

If I remembered what each of the types were called I would write them with each picture but I don't. I know the white one is a snowy owl, and there were barn owls and barred owls, but other than that I can't remember haha.

Also, a few weeks ago I joined a community chorus in Truro, which is one town north of Wellfleet. I've gone twice, and it's been fun. It's nice to get back into singing and I'm excited that there's a performance in the summer. The first day was fun because I was by far the youngest person there, which isn't surprising given the demographic of Cape Cod, so everyone I was sitting near noticed that I was new and was very friendly and welcoming.

Now onto the bad news of this week. Last week we found out that one of the girls from the Bourne house got a job in Louisiana and will be leaving in a few days. Then on Wednesday we found out that one of my roommates, Senja, also decided to leave for a job. She left early this morning, so today has felt really weird. Since we just found out a few days ago I don't think it's really sunk in yet. It's just so weird that she won't be coming back. So needless to say today has been sad.

On top of that today has also been significant because around noon we got a call from IFAW saying they needed our help with a marine mammal stranding. It was a single pilot whale that has stranded in Chatham and died, and they needed our help moving it because it was so heavy (they estimated it was about 2,000 pounds.) So that was cool because it was my first stranding experience, and it was hard work because even though it was only one animal, it was huge and we had to move it several hundred feet to get it into the truck. Here are some pictures from that as well.

That's all the news for now, after the stranding we all came home to relax because it was more tiring than I expected. I hope everyone weathered the recent storm ok.