Busy weekend

This past weekend was a busy one for me. Two of the events I had been planning and working up to for several months both happened back to back on Friday and Saturday, which meant that I had a lot to think about throughout the week, but it also now means that the stress I had from having to think about both of those things at the same time is now over.

The first of the two events was Highlands Center Clean-Up Day on Friday, which I was working on through my IP. The Highlands Center is a place in Truro that used to be an air force station during the cold war, but many years ago it became part of the National Seashore. Nothing was done with it for a while, but now the Seashore is working on refurbishing it and turning it into a center for arts, science and education. Right now there are several partner organizations that are involved in getting things going there, including a theater company that does performances at their tent there in the summer, an art center that has a wood-fired kiln on the site, and a lab and classroom used for research, among a few others things. Most of the buildings are still empty though, and many of them aren't fit to be used because they are either too rundown or have asbestos in them. So the Seashore Planning Department, where my IP is, does an annual clean up, and planning it is one of the responsibilities of the AmeriCorps member each year, along with Lauren, my service partner, and with input from the Highlands Center Partner organizations. We did a bunch of different things, including painting the facades of 3 of the buildings, which was my main project for the day. I really wanted that to happen because the buildings look so old and rundown with all the peeling paint, and I thought a fresh coat of paint would help them look much nicer, which it did! There were several other groups doing other tasks like general debris pick up, fixing vandalism damage, doing plantings, and helping clear out some of the buildings that are used for storage. It was a good day, and the weather was relatively nice, a little cloudy but warm. It felt good that something I had had a large part in planning went so smoothly and was so productive.  I only have one picture from that day because I was too busy running around checking on how different groups were doing, but here it is:

How many AmeriCorps members does it take to fold a tarp in the wind? haha

Then on Saturday we had Canal Clean-Up, which is the community outreach and volunteer engagement event that my COD Day was responsible for planning. It took place in Buzzards Bay (part of Bourne) along the Cape Cod Canal, and we recruited volunteers to help with several projects, including general trash collection along the canal, replanting some garden beds, clearing fallen trees, trail maintenance, putting up signage, and a few other assorted tasks. The weather was not so great that day, it was kind of cold and it rained in the morning and stayed cloudy for most of the event, but it didn't deter people from showing up to help, which was great to see. For me the day was kind of stressful especially in the morning. That was partly because while I was working at my project on Friday, everyone else from my COD Day was in Bourne preparing and setting things up for Saturday, so I missed out on an entire day of the planning and just had to jump right into things on the day of the event. Add in the fact that the supervisor was late and we didn't get a chance to prepare much before all the other AmeriCorps members got there, and the morning started off pretty hectic for me. I was responsible for registration, and by the time we got to the site to start setting up, volunteers were starting to show up early and I wasn't ready to deal with them because I still had to familiarize myself with the forms and how the process was going to work. But luckily I had a great team signed up to help me with registration and once I told them what they needed to do, they just jumped right in and got things done, which was a huge weight off my shoulders because I could then oversee other aspects of set up and getting the area ready for the official start of the event. Once the initial registration rush died down I was much less stressed, and I was able to relax more and take in what was going on around me. Even though the weather was less than ideal, the volunteers I talked to all seemed to have a good time, and all the AmeriCorps members did a great job with the tasks we had assigned for them. So although not everything went perfectly smoothly, I think the end result was good. And now I don't have a big event again until the end of June, when I have another one for my IP called Highlands Fest. It's also at the Highlands Center, but focuses more on getting the public to the site and engaged in what happens there as opposed to specifically cleaning up the site. I will write about that when it happens as well.

Here are pictures from Canal Clean-Up:

Registration area at the beginning of the day

Crafts and booths tent

Volunteers setting out to pick up trash

Jared was very popular with the kids when he started making popcorn

The Falmouth Fiddlers, who played at the event

A train went over the railroad bridge while we were there so it got lowered, which was cool because I'd never seen that happen before. 

Then on Sunday, one of my roommates and I went on a walking tour of the 3 Sisters Lighthouses in Eastham. It was a free tour led by a National Seashore volunteer, and he gave us some history of the lighthouses and then we walked over to where they are now (they've been moved several times) and got to go up into the top of one of them. It was really cool, and it's nice to learn more of the history of the area I'm living in. 

This week is Orleans Green Week, a week-long set of projects that two of the members organized through their IPs in Orleans that involves getting volunteers involved in things like plantings and trail maintenance. Yesterday we worked with a group of high school students to plant shrubs on a conservation site, and today we invited the general public to help us with trail work and building a foot bridge over a wet part of the path on a trail. It rained pretty much the whole day so not many volunteers showed up, but we still got a lot done. The culmination of the week will be planting gardens at the middle school in Orleans, and we've done some work the past two days to prepare for that as well. Here are some pictures:

The beginnings of the footbridge we built

In progress

Finished!

Well, that's all the updates I have for now. I'm about to go celebrate my birthday with my housemates. We're going to a Mexican restaurant in Orleans, so it should be fun! 

Post-spring break awesomeness!

So it's been a week since we got back from Spring Break, and we've had some great projects in that time, and mostly great weather for those projects! Spring is definitely setting in now, and I'm loving it!

The first day back from Spring Break, we had a project with my IP doing some erosion control work at ponds in Wellfleet. The weather was gorgeous, and we got a lot done, so my service partner and I were very happy. It was great to see all the planning we put into the project come to fruition. We spent the morning at Dyer Pond laying down jute netting to catch soil from storm runoff on the paths, planted native plants to slow erosion, and installed fencing to direct visitor use to specific areas. In the afternoon we went to two other ponds, Spectacle and Slough, and installed more fencing at those areas. I didn't take many pictures that day, except for one of Suzanne with her arm in a hole we dug for a fence post:

Our next group service on Friday, I was part of a group that went to Orleans to plant beach grass. It was the third time I was supposed to go to this project, but the first two times it had been scheduled it got snowed out, so I was excited that I finally got to do it. The weather wasn't so great that day, but it only rained a little bit so it wasn't enough to make us stop working, and it actually helped make the holes in the sand for the grass because the wet sand held together so the holes didn't fill in as soon as we made them like some of them were doing in the morning when the sand was dry. It was a fun project, and it was great to see our progress at the end with all the little clumps of grass covering the dune. Here are some pictures of that day.

Then on Saturday we had an optional service project, which was an event Joelle planned for volunteers to come build bird boxes for bluebirds to nest in. Our task as AmeriCorps members was to assist the volunteers who came, and we also built some of the boxes during downtime. People who came to build them could take them home if they wanted to, or they could donate them to be placed on town conservation lands in Wellfleet, so the boxes that the AmeriCorps members made are part of the number that will be donated (I made 2!). It was a little cold and windy that day, but it was lots of fun, and the finished bird boxes look great! Here are some photos of that event as well.

Then today we had a project at Monomoy Island in Chatham that so far is one of my favorite projects we've done this year. We went out to South Monomoy in a boat with people from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and installed signs saying that the area was closed because of shorebird nesting. This involved carrying 4 signs at a time, which each weighed 8 pounds, and putting a sign up every so often along the beach. Then we'd go back to the pile and pick up more signs, and each time we went back for more the walk to put them in got longer because we had to walk past the signs we'd already put up before we got to the next area to place a sign. It was hard work, but it was so much fun because it was a beautiful day and we were out on the beach the whole time, and riding to and from the island on the boat was so fun! I was standing on the boat holding onto a handrail while we were speeding across the water and I thought to myself, I love my job! It's days like today that I really appreciate the things that I get to do in this program and how much fun I get to have!

Out on the boat!

We had to wear exposure suits while we were on the boat so that if we fell in we didn't get hypothermia. We looked like astronauts!

Me rocking the exposure suit

It was a gorgeous day to be out on the beach!

Carrying signs

Well that's it for now. I'm sure we'll have plenty more awesome service projects in awesome weather to update you on soon now that spring is here! Yay!

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.