End of the year and graduation

My year with AmeriCorps Cape Cod came to an end this past weekend. It's hard to believe it's actually over. It was hard to say goodbye to people but not as hard as I thought it would be because I know that it's not goodbye forever. I've made many life-long friends from this experience and I know I will see them before too long. The last few weeks of the program were sort of a blur of finishing projects, doing things for the last time, and packing and cleaning to prepare to leave, but I will give some of the highlights that have happened since I last posted.

One event I went to during my IP was the grand opening of the new bathhouse at Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown. A cool thing about that event for me is that I got to see the prototype of a sign I helped design that is located next to the water bottle filling station. I'm all about refillable water bottles, so I was excited to be involved in a project like that to encourage people to be more green. Here are some pictures from the grand opening celebration.

New bathhouse viewed from the beach

Live music

Water bottle filling sign

Me next to the sign and the filling station

Bathhouse from the front

The next noteworthy thing is that we finished the mural! Even though it got rained out at Highlands Fest, we were able to go 2 additional days and finish painting it, and I was really happy with how it came out! Here it is.

Other than those things, we just tried to pack as much fun and new things into the last few weeks as we could. We went bowling as a group again, which we've done a few times throughout the year, some of us went to a Cape League baseball game, we went to see a sunrise over the ocean (although I overslept and missed the actual rising of the sun, but it was still pretty), we went paddleboarding (we were able to borrow 2 paddleboards from someone at Suzanne's IP and we went to Pleasant Bay in Harwich and took turns on them), and we went to the beach pretty much every day for the last few days. I was also able to complete the number one item on my Cape Cod bucket list, which was biking the entire Cape Cod rail trail, which runs 22 miles from Dennis to Wellfleet. I couldn't find anyone who wanted to do it with me for the whole year, but then when my dad came to the Cape for vacation he did it with me! It was a lot of fun and I felt very accomplished. It was definitely the longest bike ride I've ever done.

Then there was graduation. It was a nice ceremony, and there were 3 speakers instead of just one keynote speaker, which I liked. It was pretty surreal trying to grasp that it really was the end of the AmeriCorps year, and I got a little choked up a few times while people were speaking. It was an amazing year and I made so many good friends, it was hard to leave that all behind. But I know we will stay in touch and that when we see each other again it will feel like no time has passed. And I'm excited for Nevada, although now it seems like even though I have 2 weeks until I fly out there that I have so much to do to get ready that 2 weeks doesn't feel like enough. So even though I was sad to leave this chapter of my life behind, I'm excited for what's coming next.