Before I get into my backpacking trip along the northern California coast, I have another piece of interesting news...

So I was riding my bike across campus to the Mac lab where I was going to work on my final project for Visual Studies...I turned to head down the hill at the bottom of which was the Journalism building but what I was confronted with as I came around the corner was flames, pouring out of a car that was nose deep in the trunk of a tree off the right side of the road. As I took it in for a moment (noticing immediately that the driver's door was open and that no one was inside) before I got hit with the thought: "I'm a journalist! This is news! I have a camera in my pannier!" So I frantically dug out the camera that I had checked out from the Journalism equipment room. I remember my hands were shaking. I threw (well, lovingly placed) my bike down on the grass and started to snap pictures of the flaming car as the distant sound of sirens produced a huge fire truck that pulled up and out of which poured several firemen running with the hose to douse the fire.

In minutes, a huge steam cloud filled the immediate area. Meanwhile, I moved across the front yard of a frat house where a bunch of boys were standing in a group snapping pictures with their camera phones. I went into professional mode and moved in closer (right in their view) to document the rest of the scene.

Then I noticed a group of paramedics and firemen crowded around an older man who I realized had been standing on the corner where I parked my bike, casually talking with a passerby as I pulled up. I didn't see until now the blood coming out of a cut on his forehead as I approached and started taking photos of the paramedics speaking with him.

I felt so slimy!! But at the same time, it was exhilarating...

Finally, as the action died down, I took a few more pictures of the front wreckage of the vehicle before making my way down the rest of the hill to the computer lab.

Thinking how I had a camera full of pictures that were The News of the Moment, I pulled into the parking lot thinking, wouldn't it be classic if I just totally fell and broke the camera.

Which I promptly went and did! Well, the camera was okay but I totally came in and, in the process of pulling my foot out of the toeclip (which I installed on my pedals for my 100 mile ride the previous weekend) I got caught and totally fell straight over onto the side the camera was on! Flat onto the camera. Well, somehow the bike and I managed not to crush it and that's all I was worried about, as opposed to a passerby who rushed to help me up, making sure I was okay...Absolutely. Classic.

So I got up and dusted myself off and rushed into the lab where some of my cohort were working on their own project. "I'm gonna be famous!" I announced, neglecting to include that I had just ate it big time on my bike.

After showing off my pictures, I called Morrison to ask him what the heck I should do. He is good friends with a man who works for KVAL.com who is in charge of breaking news on the website. Dan came in (he was going to meet with us later that night to be around to help us with our projects) and showed me how to send the pictures and the short video I'd shot (unfortunately after the fire was out..) to KVAL to be posted. I formatted the pictures, just like I'd been taught in class, for the web and sent them off to Mark Furman who is in charge of the news station's website.

What was supercool (in addition to the fact that as I was sending him more pictures, they started pulling up with a short description of the occurrence on their website...crediting me as the photographer!!) was that the next day it just so happened that Morrison had arranged for Furman to come in to talk to our class. So when he came in that morning to our lab, the first thing he asked was "So which of you is Stacey Hollis?" Famous, I tell you!

Okay. So aside from that excitement, the final days of class wound down with the completion of our final projects-an edited video of our chosen event. Mine turned out okay, there are a few glitches I want to smooth out when I have access back into the lab. It certainly wasn't worthy of submitting to KVAL like some of the others', but I can put it into the "community news" section where people post videos of their kids. And cats.

So it hardly sunk in that we were on "summer break" before we headed south to the Lost Coast Trail for a 26 mile backpacking trip along the Pacific Ocean. My partners in crime were Clare (the brains of this operation), Chris and Ted

Drove 6 hours to Arcata where we stayed with Clare's friend from college. We went out to dinner but were pretty exhausted to care about much more than eating!

The next day we drove to Mattole Beach -our starting point- dropped off the boys and drove both cars to Shelter Cove to leave my car for our arrival at the end of the trail. Unfortunately, it ended up taking muuuch longer than we intended because we had to search the secluded beach town before finding the parking area where we were to leave my car for the next 3 days. We didn't get back to Mattole until around 5pm (Chris and Ted amused themselves by throwing rocks at the mammoth bear canisters that each of us were required to carry, as mandated by the Bureau of Land Management). Finally, packed and more than ready to go, we hit the trail.

About 15 laborious steps into our trip, it suddenly became apparent that a coastal backpacking trip meant walking 25 miles through the sand. Oh yea.

Walked alongside the Pacific Ocean which crashed beside us, with a strong wind at our backs. The view was fantastic. Endless ocean to the right, and various shades of yellow and green foothills to the left. We did only four miles before finding our first camp site near an abandoned lighthouse. As we walked up to a several driftwood windbreaks where we intended to set up for the night, I looked over to the rocky coast and saw a small tan seal waddling into the sea. As I was about to call out to the boys who were ahead of me, I looked in the direction he moved and there was a huge group of seals waddling off the beach and into the water in a boiling, roiling, scooting frenzy. "Look look look look!!!" I cried as they splashed into the water, a motley crew of various earth and stone hues. They swam out into the shallows and dozens of heads turned to stare at us as we stared back.

It turned out to be an awesome campsite, above the intertidal zone, constructed with huge pieces of driftwood serving as perfect windbreaks for our tents and a firepit that was soon aflame as we sat around and ate a delicious gnocchi stew premade by Chris.

I awoke in the early morning to the sound of sealions barks. I had had dreams of cougars stalking around our tent so I didn't dare to venture out of the protection of my tent until the morning rose. Clare and I emerged to be greeted by a full moon settling into the far reaches of the Pacific. It wasn't long before I noticed the huge solitary sealion down the beach a few hundred yards away. Chris got some video footage as we snuck, not so sneakily, in for a closer look. Clare, Chris and I checked out the lighthouse and ascended the spiral staircase for a view from the top.

That day we hiked from about 8-12:30 and rested for a bit while lunching beside a small creek. This is where we started to misjudge the amount of miles we'd traversed...

That evening, we camped out where there were some spans of flat land between the mountains and ocean and we decided, based on the landscape and our map, that we were about 16 miles down the trail. For the amount of time we'd been moving along that day, we couldn't imagine that we weren't that far. We collapsed in the sand, exhausted, until we finally got up the gumption to follow Endless-energy Ted to a more secluded and comfortable site along a creek where it drained out to the ocean.

It felt good on our tired toes to wade into the frigid water. Clare and I sat on a half-submerged log in a pond that was formed by a sandbar blocking the creek from the lapping waves. There we watched a little pharalope make its way around us, half-walking half-floating along the pond's edge. Like a miniature seagull with sandpiping tendencies.

Clare had mac and cheese for us that night and Chris foolishly (if anyone is to blame..) left me to stir while he went off for firewood and, while talking with Clare, I managed to make some gesture as I spoke that ended up tipping the whole kit over into the sand: pot, water, noodles, stove and all.

Luckily Clare had saved 1/2 the noodles to cook if we wanted leftovers. I ate a bagel for dinner…

Exhaustion. Sleep came instantly.

The next morning we were once again treated to gorgeous weather. It was fortunate that the marine layer once again neglected to roll in, in wet morning blanket form. We broke camp and hiked a-ways until we came across a trail labeled trail that confirmed what we had been dreading: we were 6 miles behind where we thought we were and we had to do a total of 15 miles in the unforgiving (forgiving? all too giving..) sand before the end of the day.

We picked up the pace.

It was a beautiful day and we put our bodies to the test. For quite a stretch we saw endless bear tracks imprinted into the soft sand. There was definitely more than one and they were darn big! Our bear canisters were never bothered over the nights we spent out, although one hiker mentioned to us that a bear walked into their camp before they went to bed the night before! Furthermore, they'd heard another camper had had his canister inspected the night before, as evident by the gashes in it the next morning!

We came to some long, wide flats that ended up being the ones that we had assumed we had reached the night before. Slowly the coast rounded out so that we could see Shelter Cove, our destination, in a distant misty haze. In fact, it beaconed to us throughout the entire day!

We sat up on some rocks right above a more rowdy stretch of beach and lunched while we waited out the tide because the water was too high on the beach for us to go farther.

Finally we got moving after two parties moved ahead of us. This area on the map warned that it couldn't be passed at high tide and we were about 1.5hrs past and hoped we'd be able to go on. There were definitely some sections where we had to dance quickly around some corners between wave sets but we were able to continue on, only getting doused once. We hiked hard for hours. If the terrain wasn't soft, sinking sand, we were rock hopping which also slowed us down considerably. Lucky for no sprained ankles!

Shelter Cove teased us, looking as if it wasn't getting any closer as the long hours passed...

We. were. tired.

Nonetheless, we carried on and I looked out and saw some seals in the waves, their heads poking out of the swells, watching me as I lumbered along. It was beautiful out there.

At 7:30pm, we rambled up onto the end of the Lost Coast Trail. My car was still there, loyally awaiting my return. I laid down on the pavement parking lot, happy to be done as well as satisfied and proud that we'd done it. What a trip!

Okay! Back online! Sorry 'bout that. I've been a bit overwhelmed with various projects lately (of which you'll be seeing some of the results!) so that's my genius excuse for not posting lately.

So I'm going to backtrack to the 30th, where I left off, which was when I said I was going on the hiking trip to Iron Mountain. I didn't end up having to drive because there were enough people going this week that offered...so the hike was fairly short but it was the most perfect day for it and the wildflowers were out in force! It was a fun group, lots of interesting conversation. There was a pair of New Zealanders who were in the middle of a US tour, checking out our crazy country before it self-destructed (they were following the debt crisis, probably moreso than a lot of Americans!). There was also a very in-depth conversation on the philosophy of knowledge and what it is. Common sense, is this something that is set in stone? Is common sense knowledge? How does something become known as fact and what if it is disagreed upon, does the majority win? What if the minority is right? Like the few people that believed that slavery actually IS a sinful act and black people aren't less than human?

Interesting stuff to think about.

Oh, and then there were the views! We lunched up at the top of the mountain, which was well-named for the layer of red iron that could be seen as its own strain contrasting against the dark gray rocky top of Iron Mountain. We also meandered through some open meadows that were dotted in wildflowers that glowed under the early afternoon sun.

The next day (my weekends seem to go by so fast and, instead of recharging, I'm depleting my batteries down to the quick!) I went on a 65 mile ride out to Rattlesnake Butte with Cathy and GEARs. It was a good long one, which was what became the deciding factor for us to do next weekend's Blackberry Bramble, a century ride..100 miles in one day! They also have a 100 kilometers, metric century option-which was what I'd figured I'd do until that evening when Cathy said we should do the real century. Woo!

Oh yea, and that evening I dragged myself (via automobile..) down to Washburne Park where I did my photography assignment: 5 sets of 3 pictures, each set having a closeup, medium and far away picture of basically the same thing. This lovely Sunday evening the park rang with the sound of...tubas!

The next day, was classes (well, class). Dan Morrison, our teacher for Visual Studies...I don't know if I've described in enough detail. The man is a trip. He is a seasoned photographer, having done work in other countries including native tribes where he was the first person to have documented their daily lives (I need to ask him about where I can see those images..) and war-torn Afghanistan. He actually showed us some video he took during one of the troops' outings where there was constant gunfire and he was out there, armless, and completely dependent on the soldiers he followed. I can't imagine being one of those guys, having no idea if the next day- or minute- would be their last. All in the name of patriotism.

Anyways, Morrison happily tells us about his insane experiences as well of some of his less insane ones and giggles about the idiots he's worked with (or taught!) and doesn't hesitate to tell us that he's been talked to by the dean more than once about how he needs to stop swearing (seemingly every other word..!) in class. He's a tough guy and can pretty much belittle anyone in less than five seconds if he so chooses. Nevertheless, he obviously is passionate about his work and is a genius at what he does...and winning his respect is something that I'd secretly wanted to do from the moment I met him.

Anyways. So Melissa, who is in my program cohort and was the third of our 10k Butte to Butte trio, asked me to join her in the Women's 1/2 Marathon that would be held the first week of September here in Eugene. I accepted, knowing that the most I've run is 10 miles and that was only two times in my life..but hey, as long as I have a partner in crime for these crazy adventures (I know my brother is shaking his head at my lunacy right now...) I'm gung-ho to go!! So anyways, that was my reason for doing a 6 miler after class that day (we're on the 31st now..) and 4 miles the next day with Chris down by the river. We were waiting for his car to be looked at (it's been acting odd lately..) so what better way to spend idle time than running, right?

Wednesday and Thursday was nonstop work: in addition to class, I worked on setting up and editing my photo project and Morrison held a Final Cut Pro party-he bought us pizza and helped us figure out the video editing program which is pretty darn tricky. It's usually taught over the course of 5 weeks...we had 5 days.

In addition to that, I also squeezed in a couple of rides with Cathy to get us ready for Sunday's century (!!) so we did around 30 miles both thursday and friday evening. I just want to say, I think Fox Hollow goes on forever. It is a loooong uphill. It was actually my first ride here in Eugene, two months ago (wow, only 2 months??) where Cathy took me on the very same ride out Fox Hollow and I am happy to report that I feel like I've really improved and gotten stronger over the course of the last 8 weeks.

So that weekend was another jam-packed one..as ususal. On Saturday I attended a canning demonstration downtown where a group of master food preservers showed the process of canning green beans to a small audience. I did video interviews of both the demonstrators and audience and took photos of the process, which carried over several hours. It was really fun! I love learning while "working"...journalism is such a good excuse for that!

I was up way too late on Saturday evening (the night before my 100 mile ride) watching Sherlock Holmes at Clare's house (another fellow cohort-er). She lives just up the road from me and is interested in ecotourism journalism which is something that is very relevant to the times as people visit other countries and don't realize the detrimental impact that tourism and travel can have on the earth. Not to mention the fact that someone can travel to another country and be completely walled off from the actual culture. Sipping margaritas in Mexico on a gorgeous hotel patio makes it easy for a traveler to completely overlook the fact that they are being made completely ignorant of what the country is really like and what its people are really going through. That is something that I've talked at length about with my Nicaraguan spanish teacher while I was visiting his country. I discussed this with Clare and we were excited about the possibilities that our grad program was preparing us for: to contribute toward informing the public (travelers in particular) of these issues.

Blackberry Bramble!! So the fact that I'm typing about this means somehow I survived the day. It really wasn't bad!! I was really a bit worried and actually didn't tell anyone outside of Eugene (particularly my Dad, the Century champion!) about it because I seriously wasn't sure I'd be able to finish. Well I did! And let me tell you, I feel very proud of myself for having done so. It was a looong day..about 7 hours of riding total (with about an hour total of breaks, rest stops where they had great food spreads). Cathy and I were together for the entire ride, which we averaged at 14mph. We killed the hills, particularly the Wolf Creek hill which we were dreading ("We're at the top already!?" -Cathy) and the long rolling hills we took in stride. The course was a gorgeous one, with beautiful views. It actually wasn't sunny out, in fact we were enshrouded in clouds for about 3/4ths of the ride which made it the most perfect temperature for the strenuous climbs and fast-going flats. Ha, we even had a "draft-line" with this one guy who for some reason kept right on our tails, passing us and then we'd be right on his tail until one of us decided to take him. Finally he pulled ahead but we were flying for that stretch!

Cathy called out when we hit 100, based on her bike computer, and we cheered as we finished up at Amazon Park where we were greeted by music and blackberry pie with a huge scoop of ice cream. I called my dad that evening to tell him the good news :)

monday: final cut exam-bigfoot, cafe w/ damien, FIRECRASH! kval clip

tues: finished project

Okay I just need to start this post one something pretty random that I just heard.

Crow just did what!??

It seriously sounded like a soft little 2 syllable owl call and I heard it twice before it clicked that I was hearing something birdish that I had NO idea what it could be. My first thought was that it must be some kind of weird dove, although there really aren't any around here (the band tailed pigeons are up in the forests) so then I was wondering if someone's fancy domesticated dove got loose..but who has domesticated doves around here? My host mom in Guate had some but I don't think it's too common here in the states. So-keeping in mind these thoughts were all within a couple of seconds-I looked up from my computer to see a crow sitting on the corner of Market of Choice's roof. Well, I dismissed him immediately, thinking the dove must be on the awning under which I was sitting. But then the crow did this little gulpy movement with his head twice in a row and I heard that soft musical double-note coming from him! Twice in a row!

Then the bugger flew away.

I am not kidding you that I'm a bird dork and I am NOT kidding you my jaw dropped. After he flew away and I got to closing my boca, I wondered if anyone had noticed it suddenly drop open and wondered what the heck problems weirdo girl at her computer might be afflicted with.

I know crows can make some wacky noises, but that was the first that noise I'd ever heard one bust.

Anyhoo! I'll get down to business now and try to ignore the crow cawing back behind the parking lot. Maybe it'll come back and I can get a pic.

So this week we've started our third class, Visual Studies, which has taken the place of Suzi's Reporting and Information Strategies. To let you know what I think of it, I'll simply say this: I came here with the intention of pointing myself in the right direction for a career in writing and yet now I also want to be: an editor (both in print and audio), a graphic/web designer and now a photographer! I have the editing/design ambitions thanks to my Newspaper Editing class where we have learned not just the obvious (thanks to the title) but also html and page design; the audio editing was something we did in Suzi's class and now I totally want to be a photographer too as we learn (in bootcamp style...as are all the classes: short, sweet and JAM packed) how to work digital SLRs! Our teacher is quite the character (aren't they all, aren't we all) a gruff guy with years and years of experience under his belt. He's done a huge amount of work overseas, including areas in war.

We've spent the week learning and practicing how to determine shutter speed, ISO and aperture. It's fun to climb up the steep learning curve and feel slightly more competent each day. A lot of that I'll attribute to Chris. Although he is no longer my partner since the last class ended, that didn't stop me from recruiting him to give us an in-depth tutorial in Washburne Park after class ended. Ted, Ryan and I bopped around taking pictures each taking turns calling Chris over to help us understand what the heck we were doing. It juuust happened to be his birthday that day so he, Ted and I headed to Bepe and Gianno's for an authentic Italian dinner.

The food was IN.credible. We did the meal family style (which is how Chris, who is half Italian, told us his family would do it) and ordered all different courses, completely driven to ecstasy over each one--crostini with bree and roasted garlic cloves; pesto penne, eggplant parmesan, and almond cake-piled high with mascarpone. Glorious. Oh and you can't possibly forget the red wine!

Wednesday I enjoyed another fantastic GEARs ride along McKenzie View and Sunderman. Gary asked me an interesting question: would I like Eugene as much if I wasn't a cyclist? Well at the time I said yes, thinking of all the hiking around here and the perfect size of the town, the nice people, the coffee, the foooood...but, on reflection, I think I should have said no. I'd still love Eugene, don't you dare question me on that, but. The absolute bliss that settles upon me as I'm flying along on some winding country road on a perfectly cloudless day with a large group of the most friendly and dedicated riders, I just can't say that I don't love it here a huge trashcan's worth more than I otherwise might.

Speaking of great bike rides. I had another today! We went out to Franklin Firehouse by way of Meadowview and had another mindblowingly perfect day. It's funny, people keep joking how we've hardly had a summer here with all the rain and "cold" but honestly, I've yet to feel any need to complain!

So the rest of the week involved taking photos, learning how to use photoshop, laying out in Hendrick's Park with the dudes (my program posse) and eating a lot of Clif Bars (I need to stop buying those things...).

Well I was going to post this blog earlier but then I had to run off to work. Work has been fun but I haven't been called in much because they're really down this year, customer-wise. Aside from the usual difficulties of being on-call, working less has been okay for me because classes are a great big heap on my plate at the moment, but money is always nice...

Tomorrow I'm going on a hike up in las montañas with the Eugene Hiking meetup group. I offered to be a driver for the carpool so it probably would be a good idea to get some sleep so I can drive with all my faculties tomorrow! So, I bid a fond goodnight.

ps. Sending strong, supportive thoughts to Norway <3

So last week went by in a blur, good thing I keep sticky notes on my desktop that recount the week's event so I can then elaborate (and elaborate, and elaborate...) on them.

Now. What better to start the week off than a resounding, cringe-inducing "CRUNCH"?

Well a heck of a lot, actually.

So the next thing I hear behind me as I'm locking up my bike is "Oh no, were those yours?" I look down at the sidewalk where my war-torn glasses lie, completely smooshed.

If I recall correctly, there was an "Oh ****" uttered as I picked them up, staring at them through my prescription sunglasses that I always wear on my bicycle. The girl looked really uneasy and after attempting to bend them back to life, I let her take the cue to flee with an "It's not your fault".

My prof told me where I could go to get them bent back into shape because luckily the lenses weren't broken. I found my blurry way to the eyewear/doc store/place and in minutes I had my glasses back and in much better condition. No charge!

That afternoon we had what is known as a Grammar Party; it was organized by Melissa who was here last year. Tom Wheeler was ever so kind to give us a 2+ hour grammar review with a full on power point presentation. It was absolutely what we needed, although not everyone stuck around to find that out! Melissa (it was her birthday!) brought snacks and we munched on those while getting the grammar breakdown. I thought it was really awesome of the prof (to whom this was our first introduction) to put that time in for us. Grammar is hard, especially when you didn't get much of it in school. I attribute mine to reading and my Mom for always correcting me.

For Tuesday, Chris and I spent the entirety of our afternoon editing our video interviews on the river trail.

It's pretty neat to reach the finished product, after matching up video with audio, putting in background sounds and doing the voice overs. Took a long time, though! Turns out this is a lot of what we'll be doing in my next class, Visual Studies. Oh yea, and it rained. And everyone says how it's "so unusual" this "never happens" summers are "always sunny". Well sitting in class soaking wet, I was feeling heavy doubt in these Oregonians. Maybe that means the winter will be sunshine city??

Wednesday I made brownies for the following day, our last class with Suzi. I went on the Wednesday bike ride and it was fantastic out. It seemed like cyclists were coming out of the woodwork as we made our way over Bailey Hill (a doozie) to the Loraine, Spencer's Hwy crossroads. We met another group of about 30 who passed us by and Gary, our fearless ride leader, says how he loves to see more cyclists than cars on the road. Both ahead of us and behind, there were just loads of us! I loved being a part of that.

So Thursday Suzi had a movie for us and we ate all variety of baked goods brought in by only the girls of the group, I totally called that one in my head. Chris brought a handful of cheeze-its in a sandwich bag, but that definitely doesn't count. The movie was about this crazy journalist that wrote all these amazing stories and then the question comes up of whether he didn't make them all up..I love how Suzi says at the end "Don't do that." because hey, who knows, if I hadn't seen that movie, I might be embellishing left and right!

...I'm sad the class is over.

So Friday I went on another awesome ride (I think it'll be not awesome if I get hit by something...like the pavement. They won't let you join the rides if you don't wear a helmet and believe me, that is never an issue for me!) this was with my new cycling friend Rachel who I met through GEARs. She mapped out a really great route with three big ol' hills and lots of beautiful tree-bedecked slopes. We saw a bobcat! A little one, but there was no doubt as it bounded across the deserted highway. Just after it disappeared, a turkey chick scrambled across the road in the opposite direction! We saw the mother at the edge of the woods into which the bobcat disappeared and wondered if we'd just interrupted a hunt in progress!

For the afternoon, I worked on my profile on Tilke Elkins (check it out here!) at my coffeeshop/office. They have live music every Friday so I sat outside and typed away while listening to the band.

Saturday I slept in because it seems like the tired that I don't feel during the week hits me like a million tons on the weekend. I didn't go on the ride because it was raining and I couldn't get my tired body moving at 7:30am so I skipped out (and felt very guilty about it later...I let the rain get the best of me!). In the afternoon I joined Cathy and her work friend Jasmine for the Symphony in the Park, which I won ticket to via Twitter! Mind you, the event is free but it has limited spots and there were no tickets left available except through a Eugene radio station that tweeted something about being one of the first 5 to email them, you could win a pair of tickets..well it had been tweeted 45 minutes prior but I for the heck of it shot off an email and not five minutes later they wrote back saying congrats and come pick up the tickets at the station headquarters! Pretty flippin' cool if I do say so myself!

The concert was awesome, the Eugene Symphony played in the outdoor Cuthbert Amphitheater and we sat in the grass, ate pizza and drank wine while listening to a very talented group of musicians. There were several songs sung as well, by a pair of opera (?) singers who were phenomenal! I really loved watching the conductor work his baton as if he were drawing the music out of the instruments before him. The rain, which had been pretty heavy all day, somehow neglected to drench our evening and everyone was pleased of that.

Not a bad venue!

Yesterday I woke up to...more rain. I feel like the more rain right now, definitely the more sun during the winter, it just has to be. Right? So Rachel and I had planned a hike and I invited Ted and Chris from my class. We took basically all morning to rally up because we all were tired and not eager to go tromping in the drippy woods but after some Supreme Bean persuasion, we piled into Rachel's car and headed east. The drive was gorgeous and so quickly it seemed we were in the mountains. The trunks and branches of the trees seemed to materialize more and more moss the farther we went.

The rain stayed with us for a good part of the drive but gave up while we were trying to decide on a trail (and where that trail may be..they're elusive!). Finally we settled on Hardesty trail near Oak Ridge. It was beautiful and mossy...and muted in a way. I guess the thick ground cover and the lushness of the forest does that. We did 5 miles or so out and then started back upon the start of a slight, sprinkling rain. That and the rumbling in our stomachs quickened our pace. It was fun to spend time with my new buds and do some serious hiking. I'm feeling like I once again evaded the rain and now it's going to sneak up on me and wreak some havoc soon...

After class on Thursday I rode over to The Whittaker area of Eugene..the artsy hip side 'o town. I had a 4 o'clock one-on-one interview with the art-maker who's gallery show I attended last week. I had decided to do a feature piece on her and I am so glad that I did, the interview went great! It was fun to just ask her all about her art background, methods and what inspires her. We talked for more than two hours and I got a wealth of notes to work with. It was nice because we really got to a comfortable space where she was really open in speaking about many fascinating parts about herself and her work and I felt good with the questions I'd prepared and the whole thing went so smoothly.

Interview is too much fun. We've been doing that a lot this week for our various assignments and just really find out such interesting things about people and their backgrounds. Being able to approach someone and just get their story is something that I somehow can do with confidence when I'm "on the job". I was worried about how I'd do, since my journalism leanings was more focused on the writing with the interview part of the work looming darkly over me. Well it sure isn't looming anymore now that I've taken off the water wings and taken the jump off this crazy world!

That's not to say I won't be getting the dreaded Bad Interview Experience. I just gotta deal with it when it (or many of 'it') comes.

So this weekend has had its interesting spots: let's see, there was the GUH-orges Saturday ride that had a great group. We did 50 miles and I was enjoying feeling much better than I did on the Wednesday ride. I'm making some cool friends and getting really familiar with the regulars so that I feel more part of the group each time. It's nice feeling that community feeling, corny as that sounds!

That evening, Chris and I went down to do interviews on the River Trail for one of our many class assignments. I was pretty exhausted and it seems like the week has compounded the lack of sleep and hard work to result mush for brains. Somehow that was enough to do the interview as Chris worked the camera. We had a good time with it, though, and talked with this one couple who had 7 foster kids! I was pretty impressed, most of the kids they took in were "problem" (translates to badly treated) children. They have their hands full but seem like they're absolutely made for it and, hey, if they're willing in able, more power to them.

So the thing about being mush for brains on Saturday? Well, not having a chance to rest and recuperate made it so that Sunday morning I was absolutely completely MUSH. I met Chris and Damien at the bus station to catch the shuttle for the Oregon Country Fair. Well, Damien was a ball of excited energy. Chris walked up and exuded that very same aura of exhaustion that I'm becoming so familiar with! We bobble-headed onto the shuttle for the 40-ish minutes to Veneta.

The fair is something that anyone who has been to it will tell you that if you're in Oregon when it's on, you absolutely MUST go. No questions, no arguments, just go. So we went.

And let me tell you.

This guy did The Labrinth David Bowie crystal ball hand thing!If you're ever in Oregon and the Oregon Country Fair is on, GO. It was so freakin' great, I can't even describe so bear with me while I try. We get to the grounds and for the first stretch, all you saw were tents. People from all over come for this thing. I'm telling you.

So it is basically a verdant maze with hand-built wooden booths, of all variety, that are just too charming for words and blend perfectly into the forest-setting. The artistry that is represented is phenomenal and the people watching is Out. Of. This. World.

You've got stilt walking can-can "girls" (the quotes signify that you want to take that term loosely); elaborate, colorful costumes and quite obviously thought-out-specifically-for-the-fair outfits, hats, hair, etc.; beautifully intricate painted bodies with no holds barred on the sparkles; musicians and bands playing at random throughout the area; really the whole thing was stimulation overload but it worked out because it brought me out of my zombie coma.

We wandered, ate yummy food, marveled at the crafts and artwork, and I reveled in staring to my heart's content at anyone and everyone.

Random yoga "room" in the forest. Our teacher was gracious enough to grant us the permission to "cover" the fair for our news piece this week since Chris and I couldn't find anything in our beat. I ended up interviewing a mandolin-maker, did you know that they call stringed instrument-makers luthiers? Well I didn't and now that's my new favorite word. It has such a beautiful sound to it. His works were similarly beautiful. Check out his time lapse video of making a ukelele on his website!

So my favorite part of the Eugene Country Fair was....storming the drum circle. I'm talking with, probably a hundred something people, a full-blown march across the entire fairgrounds, through the winding maze until we reached the drummers and waged war. For serious!

Well, it all started at the accordion guy's show. Jason Webley played to a huge group of us, all under this huge multi-colored tent. The guy was fantastic, a complete goof and really talented. He asked for recommendations and would burst into whatever song was called out with his accordion and complete enthusiasm. Near the end, he had us all stand up and he threw out the contents of a big huge bag to the crowd: tons of water bottles with beads or rocks in them. He told us he was going to storm the drum circle and show them that the Accordions were number one! So he seriously got everyone all jiggered up and started started a huge parade across the grounds, winding their way through the forest and lines of artist booths chanting for everyone to hear: "We're number run, the drummers better run, something something something Acooordion!" Well, wasn't about to get left behind so I got right in there and took up the chant with Damien, and Chris (daggummit!) who cleverly claimed it for his fair story ran ahead taking pictures. Somehow, all these accordionists appeared out of nowhere and melded into the crowd, playing away as we all marched forward, nothing but energy and good completely off-the-wall goofy fun! We made it to this bridge and there was our first battle, a line of drummers beating overturned buckets with sticks but they were no match for our force nor our volume. We broke through and made it to the drummers, who were ready for us. The accordionists played hard and we cheered them on. Webley climbed up to this crazy treehouse type structure (there were lots of these around btw) and played on and totally keeping us cheering, chanting against our foes. It was pretty incredible, the accordions and the thundering drums and the multitude of bodies. Very much what you would call a rush, yessirrie. Quite an experience, let me tell you.

I think we lost, though. *Sigh* .....But not for lack of spirit!!

PS. If you ever happen to be anywhere within some several hundred miles-or even more for that matter-of the Oregon Country Fair:

Just Go.

I hope everyone had a great Independence Day! I will admit, though that I felt the most patriotic today, the 8th of July, when I watched the space shuttle take off this morning. It was just an absolutely incredible sight, and emotional as well. I definitely felt some tear well up but they were those of excitement, wonder and pride. Just imagine what must have been going through the minds of those astronauts as they listened to the countdown...

In other news, well there's a boatload of it. I'll try not to get too carried away. (I got carried away..)

On Saturday I did a GEARs ride up to some covered bridges, it was a perfect day and I made a new friend! Her name is Rachel and we have an incredible amount in common, not to mention that we live really, really close to each other! She is a nurse at the hospital in town. We've both been too busy this week to hang out so I'm excited to see her again tomorrow.

Painting by Noelle DassOn Sunday, Chris and I went to the Arts and the Vineyard festival on the north side of the Willamette River. It was a huge craft festival and I was covering it for my next story. Chris came alone to be my photographer (and good thing too, his pictures were far better than I could ever dream of taking). I interviewed a handful of artists and we both were totally enamored by our own chosen painting in one booth...here's mine, a turtle by Noelle Dass. Can you honestly blame me? I mean really.

It was really neat to hear the stories of the artists and how the world of festival hopping is not an easy one..constantly having to find and apply to new festivals and pumping out new work to have fresh supplies for buyers. It's not easy, but they love doing it, doing their chosen art and seeing people appreciate it.

It was a beautiful day and my photographer did a fantastic job of getting some really great shots.

Photo Credit: Chris M. Scotti

We watched a folk music duo play their various stringed instruments and sing in harmony to wind up a nice afternoon at the festival.

I met my friend Holly at Prince Puckler's, a homemade ice cream shop and we enjoyed rich creamy goodness and she got me back on track with my knitting. I'd say I progressed since I last saw her (which is when she got me started), but I pretty much missed a stitch not five minutes into trying it on my own when I got home that it's been pending until today where she had me start all over! Haha, she just slipped the whole thing off the needle, not that it was much at all..three rows? But it had the essence of a bandaid being violently ripped off!

On my bike ride home, when I passed Washburn Park on Agate St. I heard jazz music so I peeled off to check it out. The whole field was filled with people out on lawn chairs and blankets and a band played on a concrete patio "stage" on the north end of the field. They were a brass quartet and I pushed my bike up and plopped down on the grass to watch as the evening slowly closed in, breezy and golden.

Monday Chris and I met up to do the Butte to Butte 10k! We tried to find Melissa (also in our program) who was also signed up to run..we imagined finding her at the start line. There was absolutely no chance, the crowd of 4,500 runners and walkers and their significant whatevers just did absolutely nothing to help us find our running-mate. Rude, right?

So after milling about for awhile and warming up, finally all the 10k runners lined (massed?) up behind the start line. We shoved ourselves in the mix. Then we waited some more...til' the shot went off and we smacked pavement. Like, with our soles I mean. Although when we faced Donald Street which should be called Donald Mountain, I sure felt like my face might smack pavement! After a mile of steep uphill, we were greeted by first a sign that said "Free Donuts Ahead!", I laughed, thinking it was a funny joke and hoping for water. Nope. Boxes and boxes of donuts piled on a table at the end of a driveway full of cheerers on. I didn't see too many runners opt for what might have been a wonderfully kind gesture in any other possible circumstance. I skirted around them, trying not to think about fatty sugary goodness forming a solid rock deep in my shell-shocked innards.

But truthfully, it was a great run. Chris left me in the dust about 20 meters in and for the rest of the race I watched people with longer legs and wider strides fly past me in a never-ending stream, even on the downhill! I felt great though, enjoyed the run, the people-watching; and smiling, waving and saying thanks to the almost constant presence of onlookers cheering us on. That was definitely awesome.

In the last mile there was a man playing a big standing xylophone, a band playing either Under the Boardwalk or a song from the Little Mermaid, I can't remember which. As the song faded behind me, a second band was set up and playing a couple blocks down from the first! When I could finally see the finish line in the distance, I went into a sprint and somehow held it til the end, almost not able to stop in time at the crowded bottleneck of runners ahead. You can actually watch me come in at 1:01:20-something in this video...you can scroll/fast-forward to 1:15 and watch me narrowly avoid running into the camera...

We were given bagels and water and energy drinks and I went and sat on a picnic table on a hill overlooking the final stretch and watched the never-ending flow of runners come in.

Melissa found me! But then she went to find water and we didn't see each other again. Chris found me! We watched for awhile and then pretty much walked the opposite of what we had just run (minus the hill) back to my house where he parked his car. It made for a good cool-down!

Later in the day we met back up for food and fireworks. Before we got to the fireworks, though, as we walked through campus I saw three guys playing soccer on one of the fields and after seeing if Chris was game, we walked up and asked to play with them! It was so fun, we played for around 45 minutes with these guys, two of which had arrived not long ago from Dubai. They were all really good so Chris and I made sure to let them know that we'd be "so much better" (pahaha..doubtful!!) if we hadn't run 10 kilometers that morning. Finally on the verge of cardiac and what I'm just going to call body arrest, we limped off after shaking hands with our new friends and heartily agreeing that it was a pleasure to play with them.

We joined some fraction of Eugene on the bike bridge above campus and saw some far off fireworks there and then decided to walk (limp) over the Autzen Stadium (yea yea, go ducks) to watch what ended up being a great show and we were able to get real close! I think I blacked out from exhaustion after that. Buuut, t'was a super long but super fun day!

Monday Suzi had us interview (gah!) students around campus. That was nervy (I use this word in place of nerve-wracking, not gutsy, just sos you know). Nevertheless, it ended up being really fun and I loved hearing how they responded to my list of questions about what they thought of the news, if it was trustworthy, how they obtained it (tv, internet, paper), how much they followed it, etc. It was fascinating! Asking random people questions is fun. I did get some heavily annoyed looks when I came up to a table or two, though, and backed away pretty quickly to search for friendlier faces. I talked with one guy from Saudi Arabia who was working on his English so it was hard to get him to exactly understand my questions but just hearing a bit about him, assignment aside, was really neat and I would have stayed longer if I didn't still have more interviews to do.

This week we started our Newspaper Editing class with John Russial, who use to be an editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer which is famed as one of the best edited papers. The class is really interesting...to me. So I'm the dork of my group that really gets a kick of spending an hour editing articles, what of it? I'm not saying that means I'm good at it, though. It's not easy! We have to not only check for grammar, punctuation and spelling, but also fact check. Now that is not easy and is very time consuming (or consuming of my time because I always seem to be the last one to leave after the clock has struck end o' class). I'm learning tons about AP style..which is basically a way to keep your publication standard between articles and authors, as far as making sure everyone complies with a single certain way of abbreviating, punctuating, etc. even if there are more correct ways than just one. This way your publication looks more professional, less haphazard. There are a lot of rules though, and they're definitely not all intuitive.

Did a GEARs ride on Wednesday! It was super windy and we were heading straight into it for probably 10 or 15 miles. This wasn't a particularly long ride and the entire way home had the wind at our backs but I sure was wiped out by the end of it. I was still getting through the soreness from the Butte to Butte and my legs were pretty much down for the count when we finally wheeled back into Alton Baker Park. Sterling, a 70-something man with a long white beard who had remarked on my pace a couple of weeks ago brought me some old clip in pedals of his that he had promised to bring. I was really taken by his generosity, as these are not cheap! It'll be great if I can hunt down some shoes now that aren't over the top expensive. This way I'll be able to pedal more efficiently, getting forward motion not only on the downstroke but the upstroke as well. Course, how many times I'll topple over for not unclipping in time to catch myself on a stop is yet to be determined but I'm betting I might be cursing those pedals for the week or two of trying them out...!

Feet at an artist opening we covered on ThursdaySo I've been working for the past two nights at my job at Chef's Kitchen. It's really been fun, my co-worker Chelsea has taught me how to open. The day after learning how to do it, I was made to do it again, but this time solo! I found that I really enjoy working as a server (not that I'm taking orders yet, I'm happy for that to come in time!) because I like the act of prepping everything-like setting up the salad station, getting the ice, restocking the wine shelves, wiping down the restaurant, etc.

Nevertheless, I'm no pro. After proudly shelving the last bottle of new wine, The Chef comes out, with a serious look on his face, "Did you just restock the wine?" Yes! and don't you see me, such a good little worker, taking initiative over here and sweeping the floor when no one asked me to?? "Did you put the newest bottles in the back?" Uhhhh..ermm... " You always have to put the newest wine bottles in the back so that the oldest get used up first, and it's not just the wine bottles either, it's everything. That's how it works in a restaurant, it's intuitive!" Oops.

So yea, back down I go, this time taking ALL the bottles out and, with the supply receipt, carefully making sure to re-shelve the bottles so that the ones that had just been bough were at the back.

Yea, you've seen this before. So pretty.Ya live and ya learn and ya make stupid mistakes...but hopefully only just once.

The rest of both nights went great though! I love it when there's actually a good number of customers and Chelsea and I are wildly running around trying to refill waters and clear away finished plates while our prep cook yells out what plate is ready to go to what table. And when that plate is ready, you gotta drop everything to get it out there! It is just too much fun!

Classes have been fun, we're learning audio this week. Chris and I went out and did interviews along the river trail.

He taught me a good deal about audio editing which is so. cool. I don't know why, but I'm finding I really enjoy computery stuff. In fact, the other night I was up til 1:30am (which is actually late for me out here, no laughing!) completely enamored with this HTML tutorial. I made my own webpage...from nothing!!

It was just so darn neat to follow the directions and type out all this code into my computer's notepad application and save it and then open up a web browser, type in the address I made and there it was!!

Mind you, this took about 1 1/2hrs of tutorial-ing...and it doesn't look really much like anything...but this is a screen shot of my web browser (cropped so I could zoom in on the most important part)! Course, now I can't figure out how to get back to it...otherwise I'd give you a link, but still!

Hey, bear with me, I'm a beginner! But it was really fun to feel like I was behind the scenes and seeing how much work goes in to even just something as simple looking as what you see above. Very cool and I have Mindy McAdams, her Journalist's Toolkit and HTML Dog to thank!

Yesterday was busy, after class we enjoyed a cohort get-together which extended from a late brunch into the entire afternoon! We moved to a cute park on Monroe and sat and talked and kicked around a soccer ball, chased Tucker (Amber's puppydog), watched the park-going kids chase Tucker...it was a fun time and a great chance to relax and have fun together. We're bonding! I think our group is fantastic.

A goofy pic of Tucker on the move! My new bff, btw.

That evening, Chris and I finished editing our audio postcard and rushed down to The Whiteaker neighborhood to cover an Artist Talk at The Voyeur. I've never been to a talk before and it was fascinating to hear her talk all about her inspirations around her art, which was really quite beautiful. She had a very interesting perspective on nature and how she let her art present itself. Tilke Elkins, was the artist's name. I decided that I'd love to use her for my final project in my Reporting and Information Strategies class. We have to write a feature on someone and I think it'd be really fun to do a more focused interview on her and her work, and turn it into my feature! She was totally open to the idea and we are planning to do it sometime next Thursday!

Wow, so it was less than a week that I last posted but so much has been going on, it seems like ages!

The weekend was eventful, I went on a hike with Damien on Saturday up Spencer's Butte and was really impressed with the view and the steep climb up to a long rocky top. It was the absolute best day to do it! Clear blue skies and we could see out to Mt. Baker and the Three Sisters, all covered in snow. Between the rocks grew an array of wildflowers and the few trees that had taken root near the top were covered in lichens and moss such that you felt like you were looking at an underwater ecosystem. We picnicked on burritos courtesy of Damien and some crazy everything but the kitchen sink muffins I'd made.

The Wildflowers were amazing, you couldn't help but get so close.

A view of the mountain coming out of the driveway, that's how close!Damien and a view towards the southThat evening we met back up and drove to Corvallis (45 minutes or so away) for a Swing and Blues dancing event! The swing was a blast and, since I'd done it before I was able to pick up fairly easily but it had enough differences that I asked each guy who danced with me that he have patience with me! We had an hour intro lesson and danced for 2 hours and then they turned the lights down and we danced blues for the next two hours. No introductory lesson. I hadn't even heard of blues dancing til coming here! So I kind of just dove in and did the best I could. The idea is to mimick your partner, and the lead would improvise these slow artsy moves. It took me a while to get use to it, especially with each guy's different style, but I loved it!

This is my underwater scenery...This stuff was so bright and the knots in the tree were just crazy accents.A congregation of knots.This is at the event I covered: a worm compost expert explains the process and gives advice.

Saturday I went to cover an event that was going on in my coverage area, a garden tour. There were booths set up outside of the River House community garden so I just kind of went up to the people behind the tables and asked what they represented and why they were there. I ended up learning a ton about the Master's Garden extension program because many of the booths were some group within that extension: master gardeners with a specialization, like compost, food preservation and just pure gardening. It was a fun afternoon learning about this program and the people were really interesting to talk to. They all are just so knowledgeable. There is a good story behind this cake..or inside it!For the afternoon, Cathy and I had the pleasure of restaining her enormous deck! Neither of us had been looking forward to the job but we sucked it up and got to work. It took 2 1/2 hours and we got a system down and enjoyed talking as we worked, with music playing in the background...it was done before we knew it! So that was nice to get out of the way, especially since we knew if we didn't do it then, we'd have to do it on the long weekend of the 4th and couldn't even be out on it til it dried! We were very pleased with ourselves. We are having fun in our class, it's neat to be able to read others' stories to get an idea of different writing styles, but also a little intimidating! If you want to have a look, we post it here to our class blog.

A beautiful residential garden on the garden tour.For Monday night, while I should have been writing, I was instead eating cupcakes at Divine Cupcake. I met my friend Holly there, who really liked their cupcakes and suggested it. We both got the chai with vanilla/cinnamon icing. I tried not to gulp it down in four bites, but rather savor it with my soy latte while we talked. She is very passionate about knitting and I had said I'd love to learn. Well, wouldn't you know it, she pulls out a pair of needles and a big ball of yarn and set to teaching me right in the cupcakery! She taught well, I did a row or two before we were kicked out at closing time.

I got home before the night's rain and I turned my article on the Master's Gardeners in a half hour before it's due time, midnight!

Happy girl on mountain.

So, despite starting grad school in the summer, I can’t think of anything better...

My first day, we collected in a room in the library for pastries and coffee and a kind of welcome/introduction from Petra Hagen, who is in charge of Graduate Programs in the School of Journalism and Communication. We got a better idea of what we were to expect in the coming months and how she, along with the rest of the Journalism grad faculty crew are all very much available for us. What is happening right now, is that the journalism school building is getting a total makeover over the course of the next two years so our classes will be held in the Library as well as other buildings. The faculty will be stationed in Agate Hall (where I’m told the Vaux’s Swifts swirl out of the sky and down into the chimney in the evenings at a certain time of year!). So it sounds a little scattery, but I’m flexible..plus it’s easy to zoom around from one side of campus to the other on my bike. I think the faculty really wants to make extra care to be accessible to us, what with these changes going on just as we’re coming in.

Funny that Boulder, my other choice of school, was going through very similar changes, it was just their bad luck that the situation blew up in their faces with the audit falling right in the middle of it all.

I have no regrets, though. Just seems like I’m coming into grad school for Journalism just when the educational movement is making sure to keep up with the changes that the field is experiencing. What I like hearing is that we are going to have classes available to us now that keep us right up there in the running.

Willamette River TrailFor example, our first class has us each in front of a huge Mac computer learning about blogging on Wordpress and how to navigate Twitter and use it as a journalism tool. Suzi Steffens is our teacher for this class, Reporting and Information Strategies. The name just sounded boring so I didn’t have much hope for the class.

Not til Suzi walked in the door.

This woman pretty much blew us all away. Not five minutes into class she had us all cracking up, talking about her obsession with twitter and flying from one interesting topic to another.

Before we knew it, we were on our first “assignment”. Like, she literally had us choose a part of town based on our interests, partnered us up, and kicked us out onto the streets to “find some news”! Way too cool.

So I was partnered with Chris and we took off on our bikes (good thing I got a fellow cyclist!) and headed off along the river trail. Chris is a California native and comes from a background in photography and just graduated a few weeks ago! So in a whirlwind, now he’s in grad school.

This couple was just too charming not to capture in a picture.We tooled along the trail and checked out some of the various sites just off the trail, the Rose Garden which is now in bloom. I got to talking to this one man and we discovered he was the father of Chad who led our Mt. Hebo trip yesterday, haha, so I got to see him again and he seemed a little horrified that I was meeting his father who had opted to go to the Fairy Festival over joining our hike. His father was a very sweet character.

Chris and I carried on and pulled up to the River House where there was a community garden. With the intention to ask someone about that, we discovered the house itself was run by the Eugene Outdoor Program. After asking where we might find someone to talk to about the garden, we struck up conversation with one of the employees of the program and ended up finding a good story lead in him! He’s the Lead Kayak Instructor and told us about the program and how it caters to the youth of Eugene. Chris manned up and asked if we could get some photos of him (as a photographer, this is something he is use to..and something I’m going to have to work up to!) and took a couple great shots of him in the boat shed with the colorful array of kayaks lined up behind him.

Afterwards, we were outside and found a woman filling up a bag next to the garden and we asked her what she was up to. Turns out the compost is free and she was getting some for her own home garden. The city provides the various community gardens around the city with the fallen leaves and clippings they collect in the fall which is something gardeners drool over.

We rode on and talked a bit with a man in a motorized wheelchair who called himself Scooter. He was outfitted in bright orange reflective clothing and said that even that didn’t keep the cars from hitting him! He’s been here for decades and told us how much change he’s seen as Eugene has developed over time. Nice guy, once he found out we were riding on the sidewalk because we were lost and a little afraid of the road construction that was going on where we had intended to ride.

In an attempt to find a reclaimed farmland (unfarmed and let to return to natural landscape) that Suzi had told us about, we got hopelessly lost. A map would have been helpful, something I usually tend to have on me but of course not today. So we road in what we swore was a straight line but crossed Coburg Rd about three times (despite the fact that I’m pretty sure it is in a straight line as well…). Meh. Smh…

Somehow we found our way home and that night I wrote up my article on the kayak guy and the outdoor program.

That was all just Monday!!

Okay, so I don’t really remember all what happened on Tuesday. Suzi gave us a big tutorial on Twitter and Wordpress and we went over each others’ articles. I’m discovering how cool twitter is after half-heartedly giving a dang about it for however long I’ve been a member (aside from posting links to my articles and blog posts..). You really just constantly have a stream of real-time news right at your fingertips and you can follow whatever you’re interested in and get updates all the while. So I’m excited about my local resources, it’s fun to see what’s going on in Eugene from various different perspectives (including the police, my teacher, classmates, Eugene new resources, Eugene bikers…pretty great. So suddenly I’m understanding Suzi’s obsession and am suddenly realizing I’ve developed one quite similar…

Oh yea! I went on a jog up the trail to Fox Hollow and then on toward Dillard..it’s my second time and will be a long time before I’m not gasping like some desperate, flopping fish out of water as I “run” (aka, put one foot in front of the other, if barely) up the path.

One of the lush, overflowing plots at a Eugene Community GardenWednesday Chris and I made another news-finding expedition. We hung out sketchily outside of one locked community garden that had its gate ajar ‘til we got up the nerve to just walk on in. Well after watching us amusedly as we walked up, one of a trio of gardeners asked us what was up and we told him. “Did you come on bikes?” he barked, we nervously pointed at them propped up near the gate. But no, they were actually really nice and eager to talk. Pat Bayes told me he’d been at that garden for two years but has been a gardener for fifty. He pulled me off to show me the various plots while Chris took pictures and talked with the others. Bayes’ dream is to run this garden as a community, rather than having it under the control of the city. In essence, they want “control over our own existence and how we do things”, sharing crops as a community and paying dues with “sweat equity”.

Both days out in search of news, Chris and I have marveled over how open and friendly people here are. We’ve learned so much from this handful of people we’ve encountered who were more than happy to stop for awhile and just talk with us. It’s been really quite an experience..especially for the introvert in me. I definitely have had to give a little extra shove to urge myself toward that next unsuspecting interviewee. They won’t all be so nice, right?

After covering our “beat” for the afternoon, I headed home and met Cathy and we got ready for our Wednesday GEARs ride. I’d had it in the back of my head all day, knowing we’d be doing Gimple Hill which Cathy had told me weeks ago was pretty rough! Well, we met up with the group under some slightly ominous skies and headed up Loraine (which sure ain’t an easy feat in itself!). The ride was pretty flat for the majority after that and the clouds broke apart, allowing for another golden evening that will only be a vague memory in four months or so.

The beautify of the sunlight cannot begin to be fully expressed hereGimple Hill loomed ahead and Gary, the ride leader told me to just shift way down, take it slow and “enjoy yourself”. Well I made it and am not any worse for wear. Cathy was right there too and I didn’t hear her complaining..talk about hard core-she just did a big ride only yesterday! We were both very happy we’d gone. The skies were phenomenal on the ride home.

For Thursday, Suzi told us she’d be in class for our scheduled block but that we didn’t have to come in. Well, I was glad to see about five or so of us showed to take advantage of another opportunity to learn something new from Suzi. Well, we are definitely being introduced to some interesting slices of the internet! Sorry, I’m not going to divulge all my secrets! Not yet!

We had a little cohort lunch get together, my classmates and I. It was nice to enjoy an opportunity to bond as a group on the patio at Agate Alley. We’ve got some characters! It was great to sit back and relax as we laughed, related to each other and shared our stories.

One thing we all had in common is we are so excited that this adventure is starting and are looking forward to what is to come.

Well let’s see, I don’t know if I can really remember all that’s gone on in the past five days, but I do know Friday involved a picnic up in Hendrick’s Park (there’s this grassy lawn that is surrounded by rhododendrons, shaded by tall beautiful evergreen, nothing could be more perfect) and my second day at work. The kitchen was about as busy as my first day (a week ago) so I was able to start feeling comfortable knowing what to do (something, anything, all the time!). I met the other “new girl” whose name is Laura. We got along super well and ended up talking while we ate our glorious meals at the end of the shift. Since neither of us had anything to do that night we went along Willamette to find somethin’ happenin’.

We actually heard live music and rode our bikes in that direction, discovering Holy Cow, a small restaurant with a colorful patio and a band in full swing. We got drinks there and enjoyed the music, a local Eugene group who played that night for their dinner!

I took so many pics of my hike that I couldn't fit them all below Afterwards we found a restaurant next door with a nice bar and really friendly staff. We ended up hanging with those who’d just finished up their shift, they were a fun bunch and I learned that they have this crazy bike group that I should check out.

On Saturday it was rainy and Laura and I rode down to Morning Glory Café to meet my friend Damien for brunch. It was a busy but really great breakfast spot. They had some great vegetarian (sorry, ovo-lacto-pescatarian) options and I enjoyed introducing my new friend. I was pleased Laura agreed to ride down so I could get the real ‘riding in the rain’ feel…I try to jump on that opportunity anytime I get it! We were soaked but no worse for wear.

Afterwards, Damien and I climbed Skinner’s Butte and sat up in his perfect climbing tree. It was misting but really nice out. We decided after awhile of talking to go to a bookstore where we grabbed coffee and looked at coffee table books. We learned about space and the solar system as we slowly dried off. We finished the day by going to a cheap movie and riding home to a really pretty sunset.

On Sunday, Cathy and I met our Eugene Hiker’s meetup group and we carpooled about 2hrs northwest of here for a hike up Mt. Hebo. The day was gray but the lush greenery of the forest understory was bright and rich. The hike lasted several hours and wasn’t very taxing. I enjoyed getting to know some Eugeners who like to hike, it was a group of about 9 or 10 of us. At the peak, we munched on our snacks and our trip leader Chad handed out pieces of chocolate. The sun broke through for a moment and we even got to see down into the valley from whence we just came (or so I assume).

We drove to Pacific City which is, as you might imagine, right on the Pacific! There’s a nice pub with a patio that ends in the sand so, after I ordered my drink, I threw off my muddy shoes and ran across the expansive strip of beach to the water. It was crisp and I ran along the shore to the sandstone cliffs, looking out at the massive rock that busted out of the sea around which tiny pinpoints that were seabirds rode the air currents and came to rest at one of the many nests on the rock face. I couldn’t see it too well but memories of working with Andrew off the coast of Washington were vivid. The dinner was great (salmon had to be involved, of course) and we enjoyed each other’s company while overlooking the great Pacific Ocean. Cathy and Me!

On Wednesday, I spent the morning writing out on the deck in the beautiful weather. The mornings and evenings have been chilly and it warms up in the day. Nonetheless, it’s always cool in the shade and on the bike so I try to remind myself to take a jacket wherever I go even though it’s June.

I made a trip to the market and picked up some necessities. I really like our store, it’s called Market of Choice but Cathy still calls it the old name it went by, PC’s, which always comes to mind before M.o.C. and she knows exactly what I’m talking about. Kind of like how People’s Drug changed to CVS back in MD and we called it People’s for ages after.

Anyhoo, I had my fun strolling along through the aisles. I really, really like grocery shopping. Whenever I’ve lived on my own, it’s always been an event I looked forward to. I just like the process of thinking out my week’s feasts and trying to find the healthy but relatively cheap options. And now, having read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, I’m trying to find the corn-free options, and that’s not easy!

I noticed a sale on what looked like a really great root beer and saw that all but one had been snapped up by all the eager shoppers before me. Well, upon closer inspection, I noticed one of the main ingredients: High Fructose Corn Syrup. The cheap, plentiful and highly processed “sugar”. So I looked around at my other options and realized that this “gourmet” soda was, at sale price, the same price as some of the other good looking 4packs that used cane sugar and that were fairly local as well! So you can imagine the swagger this smart shopper employed as she pushed her cart on down the aisle.

Cathy and I had planned to go on the 6pm GEARs ride that evening and we knew that for today’s ride they’d be coming from the meeting location south so we decided we’d intercept them before they hooked onto Loraine Rd. Well we weren’t sure exactly where they’d pop out onto it so we parked at a cross street looking back and forth. Suddenly Cathy saw them ahead of us and we rushed to catch up. Well, just our luck, the last in the line just barely made the light between 29th and Willamette and we were far enough behind that they hadn’t noticed us. We waited out the loooong signal and they were far ahead of us as we pedaled our hearts out after them. Where 29th turns into Loraine there begins a long uphill so we labored our way up, hoping to see the group around the next bend. After a great deal of exertion, we made it to the top, and there was the group! Apparently, they’d already broken off from the slower half so we pulled up (utterly spent!) and it was several minutes before the rest of the group arrived! Ha, well we weren’t too worse for wear and, luckily, the rest of the ride would be fairly flat.

The evening light worked it’s magic while we pedaled between the hills. I’m slowly getting to know some of the other regulars, there’s Garry who has my same bike (color too!) the Surly Long Haul Trucker (oh, love of my life..), and Gary, a friend of Cathy’s from when she biked with the group 10 years ago. He lives a couple streets north of us. Rick is a cabinet maker who built a perfect little wooden bench with drawers for shoe-storage that Cathy wanted for the front entrance of the house. There’s Mike, a big guy who coordinates the ride schedule and Sterling, a short man with a long gray beard who said he’d sponsor me as a racing cyclist, haha. There tend to be more men and only a handful of women, none of which I’ve seen more than once. I have only been out for three rides though. I am determined to keep it up, I absolutely love getting out for these treks and doing some longer distances. With the group, I’m challenged to go faster just to keep up. I hope my school/work schedule allows for me to continue with them!

That evening Cathy shared some of her fresh garden greens and we both made delicious salads.We were pooped!

For Thursday, I started my day out making muffins! I had gotten various ingredients from the market yesterday with just this in mind. Cathy made some of her really great ones a couple days before and shared one with me last night and that truly was the inspiration for today's endeavor.

I of course had some company helping me along, giving advice and making suggestions...

In the early afternoon I went down to campus to tend to some matters and I decided to head to the downtown area from there. I parked my bike and strolled around so I could get a slower-paced idea of the streets. It’s a nice downtown, seemed pretty quiet that afternoon. I think the whole of Eugene is much more low-key during the summer. Graduation was this past week and it seems like the visiting families, graduation parties and moving-out commotion is winding down.

I got a veggie bagel from Bagel Sphere and ate it in the park where they hold Saturday Market. There’s a big fancy fountain and some large fir trees that I enjoyed the company of while I ate and watched the people go by.

This will be one of my last lazy afternoons for awhile!

Wow, this week the days we keep having slow cloudy morning starts but then the sun comes out and it warms up and turns just gorgeous! On Monday I went on a jog on the Rexius trail as it began to get sunny and enjoyed listening to an NPR Fresh Air podcast on my Ipod…learning while jogging!

Later I met up with Jordan and we biked out Fern Ridge Trail, which I’ve been meaning to do for days. It follows Amazon Creek which runs west out of the city. Initially we work our way through neighborhoods but then the valley opens up and you look out across a wide expanse of grasslands. The trail heads to Fern Ridge Reservoir but first there is a big marshland, and that’s where Jordan took me for some bird watching! Turns out he was a big birder when he was younger and, since he grew up in the area, he knew just where a good spot was. We were able to get up on this platform overlooking the pondy marsh area and we saw some really nice stuff: cinnamon teal, osprey, marsh wrens belting out their wild mechanical sounding song from the thick cover of marsh grass, and a group of about 300-40 huge white pelicans! Sure didn’t expect that! Jordan told me that when he came here in his early teens, the birders made a big deal when they saw just a single pelican. Well apparently populations are on the rise!

I did notice there was a weird half circle extruding from the middle of the top mandible of some of the birds’ bills. The first one I saw, I assumed it was some piece of trash that had gotten stuck on the bill but then I saw it on several more individuals. Well, I looked it up online and it turns out that it is a natural protrusion called a horn which grows anew every breeding season! It seems like both male and female adults have this feature which is shed after mating. Pretty weird! I was more ready to call it some kind of human caused thing before thinking it could possibly be something natural!

We watched the pelicans shuffling along in groups in the shallow water, heads submerged as they herded and caught small fish. They are huge birds, even from far away, when they take flight they look the size of a crane.

We also heard a great deal of activity in the grasses, including Virginia Rail, Sora and Least Bittern. Some other spots included beautiful Black Terns which seem silver-lined, Caspian Terns and a Black-Crowned Night Heron. It was gorgeous out and warm except when the sun went behind a cloud for a moment or two. I still need to get use to this completely different climate (and remember a hoodie wherever I go)! The Eugeners tell me this is still quite cold for June, that it really should be much warmer. I’m not complaining!

For Tuesday, I met up with a new outdoorsy friend named Damien. We went up Skinner’s Butte and it was so clear and blue that we had a perfect view of the snow-engulfed Three Sisters; peaks ranging above 10,000ft! It has been so fun meeting new Eugene people, I feel like I have so much in common with a great number of them. I feel really lucky to be enjoying Eugene in the summer while everyone is out and playing sports, cycling and soaking up the sun. I definitely won’t be taking this perfect weather for granted, though!

On my way home, I decided to turn up Fox Hollow and go up into the hills a ways. It’s a definite climb, but once you get up about a thousand feet, it’s just so lovely..the purple lupines and the dark green conifers against a brilliant aqua sky…it’s also very peaceful up there. I road for about an hour and hurtled back down the hill with supper in mind. As I pulled out my fixin’s to make a killer salad, I remembered my lack of carrots and was thinking “Darn, I can’t have my salad without carrots! Wait. I’m suppose to be picking up my local foods produce today. I’m suppose to be picking it up right NOW!” With ten minutes to go, I dropped everything and ran out the door. I drove down to the pickup spot with a minute to spare and there was my nice local foods lady, waiting to distribute the last of the pickups-mine! Whew! They give your food away to charity if you don’t show up, which isn’t the worst thing to have happen but man those carrots just made my salad. Not to mention the Tokyo White Turnips and the sugar snap peas, as well as the farm fresh egg from last week that I hard boiled. Put some greens under it all, throw on some onion and pumpkin seeds and Annies Papaya Poppy Seed Dressing and you’re good to go!

Breakfast out on the deck this morning under a sunny blue sky. I had planned to make it a lazy coffee shop day.

Cathy had other ideas!

She asked if I wanted to go for a bike ride. Why of course! She suggested out to a couple of the nearer wineries and back. Well I'd seen a sign for them when I came back yesterday from dressy clothes shopping for work. They didn't seem far at all.

Today's bikeride.

Off we went, under oh-so-slowly clouding over skies.

It was a gorgeous ride. Anything south of Eugene is guaranteed to be mind bogglingly beautiful. I was boggled.

And yes, I need to have my camera attached to me at all times. Today I didn't.

We pedaled on, encountering one hill, among many smaller ones, that did NOT want to end. We crawled up for what seemed like ages. Meanwhile the scenery was lovely, lots of evergreen hills and the forests revealed wild gnarly maples that were adorned in lichen and draped with moss. There were always houses tucked in along the way, some yielding gorgeous gardens and meticulously tended vegetable gardens. The rhododendrons are still flamingly in bloom. The fields were either grasses, cover crops or livestock. On one hill in the distance a moving white cloud of sheep moved it's way across the green slope.

The rain couldn't decide if it wanted to have it's way or not. We kept getting sprinkled upon and would belatedly notice it stopping again.

The vineyard we passed looked like it had been long harvested, the vines were cut way back.

We made a long loop and joined back up with the road we took out into the country. Here was where the rain made it's final decision, accompanying us all the way home. It wasn't cold, though, especially with the work we were doing. My biggest fear about riding in the rain was that I wouldn't be able to see, being glasses'd and all. Seemed, though, that my prescription sunglasses are the best solution: they protect my eyes from the drops and they didn't get anywhere near obscured enough to not feel like I could ride. Well there I go! That was my biggest fear of the rainy winter to come and I just found out something promising! Not to mention the visor on my helmet, when I cocked it lower, also proved to be great protection.

Three hours after leaving, we pulled back into our driveway, completely spent!

A warm shower and a late lunch did the trick, though! I enjoyed the second half of my Chef's Kitchen Plum Curried Hallibut which I got for working and ate half of last night. A night in the refrigerator and that hallibut is still to die for!! The curry sauce and firmness of the meat, MM! It's not a huge dish but I think it's worth the whopping thirty dollar price tag! Nice to get it for free!

Now what for dessert...hmmm...

I was jogging the Rexius Trail yesterday I was thinking of how dehydrated I've been after my jogs lately. I don't like carrying water with me while I run and, as I neared the end of my jog, I was thinking maybe next time to fill a nalgene and hide it in the woods near the playground before I started to have at the end of my loop. Well, I was done and was walking on the sidewalk to cool off when I saw a sign in the grass at the edge of the front yard of the first house after the park. Walking closer, I saw a big cooler and a bowl. The sign read something similar to: “Water for Dogs and Humans, Help Yourself!”. Well I never....I never would have dreamed!! I opened the cooler to discover three jugs full of water and 2 bags, one with fresh paper cups and the other for the used cups.This was too much...

Where else but Eugene?!

That afternoon I met up with Jordan, my new friend, and we played some frisbee and tossed the softball. The day was glorious. You can simply look around at the amount of people so thoroughly enjoying the outdoors to understand how sun deprived these people can get. I wonder how it will affect me?

Afterwards we got dinner at this Thai place in the western section of Eugene (not anywhere as cute as my stomping grounds, I’m glad I researched thoroughly to know the good places to look for housing). Nonetheless, I will definitely go back thattaway for more Thai!

Afterwards, he showed me Skinner’s Butte, which was a few blocks away. It rises up next to the river and there’s a paved road to the top so we biked up. The long summer days are easy to get use to, I’ll be sad when they go. We could see the entirety of Eugene below us and sections of the river as well as the mountains beyond. There were lots of people up there enjoying the scenery as the sun went down.

Today was the most packed full day I’ve had yet. It started with a 9am GEARs bike ride up to Harrisburg, 20 miles north of here. The group this time was a bunch of speed demons! I was panting hard for an hour straight, giving it my all to keep up. I fell behind far enough at one point that the “slower” group realized they could slow it down a bit. The funny part was, all four of them were saying how fast it was, like they wouldn’t have been going so fast if someone else hadn’t set the pace so fast but no one claimed to be the pace setter!

It was a cloudy morning that persisted into the afternoon. There was a shroud over the mountains that was really lovely and the chill in the air lasted for the entire ride as the temperature settled into the sixties. Apparently it’s been 10 degrees cooler than it should be at this time of the year, but you don’t hear me complaining, no, you only hear me boasting to the poor easterners who are all suffering in the 100 plus degree heat and humidity!

There was a younger couple that rode with us who had just moved here from Georgia. They had charmingly twangy accents and I liked them right away. I appreciated them as the ones who made sure that I didn’t get left too far behind!

We took a different way home which I really like, GEARs always does loops rather than out and backs. Keeps the scenery changing! It’s cool, we were able to see Spencer’s Butte (the butte up above where I live) from so far away! It slooooowly got closer. We all parted ways at the river trail to go to our respective parts of town and I felt the way Cathy and I did after our Wednesday ride: like the 4 miles home was the hardest part of the entire trip!

The blue sky had emerged from the clouds, so I stopped for a picture on the bridge..

For the evening, I had my first real obligation since I'd arrived to Eugene: I was scheduled to go to work. Yep! I got a job! Didn’t even really have to apply. I found this restaurant that is about a mile down the road from the house called Chef Bruno’s Kitchen. It sounded neat-only Bruno is the cook and he changes the menu weekly based on seasonal local foods. Well, I thought I’d email and ask if he had any employment he could offer, explaining that I’d been a hostess at Ella’s Restaurant in DC (where my favorite brother works). He wrote back and said he had “an opening up front” and to bring in my resume. Well I dropped by yesterday and saw him out back of the restaurant, coming out of the kitchen and I walked up (knowing it was him from the pictures of the big guy with the grizzly white beard. I introduced myself as the girl who’d been corresponding with him and he sticks his hand out and just before I took it in a shake hello he says “resume!”, so I put that in his hand instead. He glanced at it and asked me what my class schedule would be and I bumbled out the hours of the morning class and he says, “nonono, I don’t care about the morning, I want to know when you’re done!” so I flusteredly gave him that and he says, “when can you start?”..um, sometime next week? “What about Saturday” (tomorrow!?), um..I guess if you really need me.. “Can you be available tonight?” Guhhh..um, I guess? “I’ll have my manager call you at six and tell you if she needs you in”. Um okay…thanks..? “See you soon. Oh and good luck on starting classes!”.

I felt like I’d been mowed over by a tornado!!

So the manager (his wife) calls at 6:30 yesterday while Jordan and I are biking to dinner and tells me she could use me in a half hour “Uh, I’m not really close to home..” “Oh, well then tomorrow is fine, be in at 6” “Erm, can I ask what you want me to wear?” “White on top, black on bottom..ironed!”So after eating lunch today when I got home exhausted from my bike ride, I turned right around and went back out to find some halfway nice clothes because nothing I own is white or black, much less dressy…

I had to drive, since the mall where I got the clothes was too far to get back in time (not to mention the fact that I had absolutely no desire to set out another 10+ miles on my bike that day..).

So my driving fast has been officially broken!

I got home with time to drink some coffee to keep my brain in operating mode and make a sad attempt at ironing the new button up white shirt I’d bought. I had 6 minutes to run out the door and pedal my little heart out to make it just in time to the restaurant.

Walking through the kitchen, I was welcomed by Bruno and introduced myself to the prep boys. Chelsea and (?) were the two servers, two wonderfully sweet and silly U of O undergrads. They were great about telling me what to do as we went along…which soon became evident that I was destined not to be a hostess, but a server! They didn’t even have a hostess position there! Well damn, suddenly I’m becoming a waiter! As scary as it’s always seemed to me (I never understood how my brother could do it) it was a blast! So much more fun than being a hostess. I was all over the place, busy every second and having fun interacting with really nice customers who ALL raved about the food. I mean, they were beside themselves!

The kitchen is basically right around a corner from the server’s station so there was a lot of interaction between us and the kitchen boys and Bruno, lots of joking and it was laid back in a really fun way.

So yea, I’ve got me a job! Pretty much out of nowhere, but suddenly I’m neck deep in it. I think it might be okay with my school schedule since the restaurant doesn’t even open til 5 and it’s closed at 9. They are closed on Sunday and Mondays. So I think I’ll definitely have a lot on my plate but I’d like to think it won’t be over the top…I can only wait and see, though!

Whew! What a loooong, busy day! Good thing tomorrow I can relax. J

Yesterday I cleaned out of my car the rest of the carnage left from the cross country trip. I road out on my bike on a mission to go grocery shopping. I still had yet to find a Market of Choice grocery store and am starting to question if they exist. Well, after a few u-turns and parking lot cut throughs, I finally found one. It’s a really great market! Much like Whole Foods but I don’t think quite as expensive.

First, though, I had to get my coffee fix and got to try out a new place called Supreme Bean. They make a delicious iced soy latte and I appreciated that it was very low key, comfortable and uncrowded. Many of the clientele seemed to be very familiar with the staff which gave it a community feel. It’s very close to me, so much so that I only realized I passed the shopping center when I was 10 blocks beyond it! I took my time paging through a magazine that featured the green businesses and other establishments around the area..like a green yellow pages, if that makes any sense.

I made my way slowly through the market, figuring out where my mainstays were and discovering a lot of new to me brands. Eugene has a lot of local manufacturers- a creamery nearby that produced Nancy’s Yogurt, there is Bob’s Red Mill, Stash Tea, Tillamook Cheeses…so I went extra slow finding all these gems. Buying local is so good for the earth and it’s so nice when it’s made easy. If only it could be that way everywhere.

At the checkout line, I watched the bagging girl expertly fill up my pannier and I lugged it out to my bike. I had to stop, though, coming out the door to take a few cloud pictures…

I’m always so surprised that it isn’t harder to ride a bike with all the weight on one side, but it isn’t. I got home easily and, because I’m a dork, weighed myself with the bag. 25lbs of groceries all fit in my trusty pannier! I love that thing. It’s funny, I only remembered at the end of my shopping expedition that I needed to cycle it all home. Now I know I needn’t have worried!

For the beautiful evening, I lounged out back on the deck listening to my music and drinking tea.

Oh wow, today was a day of polar opposites! I started it out at 2pm (seriously!) because at around 3 in the morning I woke up feeling feverish. Sweaty and freezing cold, monster headache and every part of me was achy, even my skin! Cathy hadn’t been feeling well the day before and heard at work that something was going around. I got up and drank a big glass of water and took some Advil PM in hopes of getting rid of the headache. Well that PM packed a punch! I felt better when I emerged from my mountain of pillows and blankets.

I took it easy for the day, knowing that I wanted to still be able to make the 28 mile GEARs (Greater Eugene Area Riders) ride that evening.

This'll get you to their website..

My (what turned out to be absolutely genius) idea was to cook up a big batch of millet mixed with coconut milk and some of my yummies from Eugene Local Food: kale, shitakes and carrots. I refrigerated it so that when I came back from the ride I’d have dinner ready and waiting.

Genius. I got home and only just barely had the strength to put some in a bowl and nook it in the microwave.

Despite being totally pooped, I feel elated after what turned out to be a fantastic ride!!

The meet up point was 6pm at Alton Baker Park (across the Willamette River, pronounced “Will-AM-it”) and the turnout was good, about 20 riders. The makeup was mostly age 40-ish (I’m guessing) and up, and only 4 females including my roommate Cathy, who road straight over from work, and me. There was a pair of undergrads from the U of O, a couple. The girl, Rachel, surmised that the lack of students was due to this being finals week, “everyone is either studying or out drinking”.

We rode out via the north bank of the Willamette river trail and made our way through a residential maze before getting out onto more country roads with farm fields and rolling mountain views. The majority of the ride was flat save for one uphill that showed me that I have some training to do before I feel confident that I can maintain some dignity on some of the more hilly rides!

Here's the route. I called it the Three Rivers Tour.

We kept our speed up the entire loop so even during the flat areas I felt like I was getting a good workout. Gary, the ride leader, stays at the back of the group ensuring that no rider be left behind. We talked for awhile along the way and he told me how he’s been here for three years and the man was just raving about how much he loved it. His enthusiasm, three rainy winters in, was definitely great to witness. He ensured me that I’d certainly be able to stay on my bike through the winter (I don’t want to use my car at all if I can help it, save for my out-of-Eugene excursions) he, along with everyone else, just says I need to be sure to have the right gear which is a synonym for good rain gear.

I also got to talking with Ruthy, a retired U of O professor who taught linguistics. Everyone was so friendly and wildly pro-Eugene. She had moved here 13 years ago from Pennsylvania and “never looked back!”.

The end of the ride took us through Springfield which is just east of Eugene. We hooked back up with the river trail around 8pm and said our goodbyes as pairs and individuals peeled off to head to their various home destinations. Cathy and I crossed the Frohnmayer Bike Bridge to Agate Street towards home. We stopped into her office building so she could pick up her belongings because she biked to work.

We groaned our way up the final hill to her house and peeled ourselves off our bikes. Exhausted and satisfied, we gulped down dinner (Mmmillet! I’ll say it once more: Genius) and crawled off to our respective rooms.

I have to say, I feel pretty great now! I am glad I started with this ride, though, instead of one of the 40 milers that are coming up this weekend. This way I was able to get an idea of the pace of group rides and where I fall in the ranks. I’m definitely going to have to work up to the higher mileages, particularly since they tend to get further out into the hilly areas. Being on my bike every day like I have been, hopefully I’ll get there sooner rather than later!

Gorgeous day, by the way, the evening light was so lovely. I managed not to ever ride off the road (as I’ve been known to..) while taking in the scenery!

Oh how the bed is calling…goodnight!

So I started out the week getting some things taken care of around the U of O campus, starting with the very important and official student I.D.!!

I meandered around campus for a good while, getting lost and found and lost again. It really isn’t so complicated; I just didn’t want to be the one kid holding her campus map upside-down trying to orient herself while walking off the path into some bushes. Oh wait, that was me.

I explored the library and it was very large and nice. I’ll be having my classes there this summer. I also found that the student life center was enormous and there are lots of nice little pockets to settle into for studying. At Warren Wilson, our student life center was a tiny basically basement room. I think so, anyways, I never went in there.

Monday was kind of my get-lost day, I tooled around the city just getting an idea of where everything was which was fun. There are so many cute little restaurants and cafes! I’m also figuring out bike routes through the city, like which streets are one-way and which don’t have a bike lane. I am glad that I’ve already become old hat at city riding in DC. I liked riding there but here, there’s less traffic, more bike lanes, people are nicer and actually stop to let you pass when they aren’t required to, and the trees, parks and phenomenally tended residential gardens are just the icing!

I ended up going onto the river trail and followed it for several miles, crossing from one side to another on the pedestrian/bike bridges. Violet green swallows nest under them and you can peer over the rail and see them zoom in and out. There was a pair of mouthy ospreys meanwhile soaring high above.

Cathy and I watched a movie before bed. She can project it up onto one wall so it’s like we’re in the theatre. Now that’s just classy!

Oh bicycle, love of my life how I adore you...Today I met a kid at the coffee shop who had a frisbee in his bag and I asked him if he played with a group of any kind (I’m desperate to find a leisurely, non-competitive pickup group) well turned out he didn’t but we got to talking and turns out he’s an aspiring writer! He just finished grad school for creative writing and went to U of O for undergrad, we ended up chatting for a long while about cool places to see around town. How could that not, you ask, lead to a frisbee tossing session? How not indeed! We threw it back and forth under the cloudy turned sunny day at a park around the corner for an hour or so. My first official Eugene friend!

On my way home I stopped by to pick up my Eugene Local Food share that I ordered last week..I can’t describe how happy it made me: a HUGE bag of frozen blueberries, kale, fresh eggs, snap peas that were so crispy and sweet, chives and carrots right out of the ground, and shitake mushrooms that brought memories of my college days inoculating logs and harvesting those tasty little forest dwellers. Ahhh. This is how life should be. And each thing was from one happy farm or another just a stone’s throw from Eugene! Well, perfect timing that my pannier, a sturdy bag that fits off one side of my rear rack had just arrived in the mail that morning! I piled in my produce and road happily home, the green carrot tops waving in the wind.

So since I wrote last, I’ve made a world of fantastical discoveries!

So Eugene has a good number of lovely hidden wonders that are slowly revealing themselves to me and the first that I came across was the Hendricks City Park. While the name sparks nothing in the imagination, I was told there was a rhododendron garden there I didn’t want to miss. So I hopped on to my Surly (aka the love of my life, aka my bicycle) and started down the hill toward Amazon. Well, my bike, which had spent the past week on the back of my Nissan Versa hatchback as we barreled across the country, was clicking and clacking. It did not sound happy.

After a quick adjustment, I was able to carry on although now I had Paul’s Bicycle Way of Life as my destination to give ‘er a look over. Nothing too ghastly, just that the derailleur needed some adjusting and the whole thing needed a good oiling. Five bucks later I was on my way, smoothly sailing.

I was delighted at the wide roads and the ability to take a residential bike route to avoid the busier roads. I went along looking from one side to the other at all of the cute houses and beautiful landscaping and carefully tended gardens.

After a few wrong turns, I found my way to the park. Surprisingly enough, the two dimensional map did not give any hint at the fact that the park was 800ft up! So I down-shifted and labored my way up and up and up. The foresty wonderland was beautiful, though not totally distracting. Breathing heavily and starting to sweat, I made it to the top of the hill and coasted down to the gardens. I parked my bike in a conveniently placed rack and locked ‘er up (I can’t decide if my bike is a him or her…somehow ‘er sounds right..). Then I walked through a winding network of pathways leading through a maze of rhododendrons. Many were past their prime but there was still enough in full bloom to take my breath away. I walked slowly and didn’t neglect to notice the tiny, delicate blue, white and pink flowers that covered the forest floor. All around were enormous dark fir trees that made for a stunning landscape. In the middle of it all was a large swath of grass where I resolved to have many, many picnics and reading/study sessions upon in the near future. I was enamored.

On Saturday, I enjoyed a long bike ride with my housemate Cathy. She was glad I got her out for the first time this season and so was I. She took me out on Fox Hollow Rd. which climbed higher and higher, out of the southern neighborhoods and up to the more forested landscape. There were farms and occasional houses and sometimes we were given a view of layers of hazy mountains, receding into the distance. The climbs were certainly do-able, but definitely had us puffing. I think, for me, the hardest part was the downhill. It. Was. Steep. I mean steep! And went on forever winding and twisting down and down and down. We were flyyying. I stayed on my breaks nearly the entire time while Cathy pulled far ahead. It was never scary, just a little nervousy, especially imagining how far one could fly were they to lose their bike for whatever reason out from under them! I was happy to grind down my breakpads to mere nothingness to keep from having to find out.

We were beat (but alive!) at the end of that ride! Such a great day.

Today I got up at 6am for a group birdwalk I’d seen a posting about that was held at Hendricks Park. I was the only one without gray hair in the group of about 15, which was of no surprise. It was a fun time, though, brushing up on these western bird calls and songs. I spotted a raccoon totally konked out, up on a branch high in a fir tree! It was the greatest pose: his butt towards us with tail hanging down and his body curled around to reveal his little face, eyes closed in a deep, deep sleep. Lil’ guy was tuckered! We saw hoards of cedar waxwings, feeding on Oregon Grape berries and the leader pointed out a Bushtit nest…the group was laid back and really nice, although I only talked to a few people. They were excited to tell me about all the upcoming walks I could come along on, I hope I can keep it up once classes start!

I biked to Vero, the café that Monica, Jarrod, Matt and I had tested out and had an iced coffee and a late breakfast of eggs, toast (homemade bread!) and jam, and fruit. I sat out on their brand new deck and read for a couple of hours in the shade. The weather was delightful.

I got home and tooled around a bit before deciding to take a short jog. I went along the Rexius Trail to the trailhead that leads through the forest up to Fox Hollow Rd. It was a mile long and an elevation gain of around 1000ft! Definitely a huffer, but it was spread out enough that I never felt like keeling over. Only almost. The forest was beautiful and lush! I can’t get over the moss covered tree trunks and branches. I made it up to the road and took another trail back into the forest that went toward Mt. Baldy. I didn’t go all the way, just a mile and walked back, taking my time, watching and listening to the forest life. I can’t believe this is practically a stone’s throw away from my doorstep!

Topping it all off, I've had multiple amazing sunsets right outside my sliding glass door... Imagine the pink to be multiplied in hot pinkness 100x..

So here I am, sitting at my small wooden desk and feeling comfortable in my snazzy office chair that I adjusted to custom-fit my stature. There is crashing outside of my closed door; shut to keep out the wild cats tearing through the house. Boscoe and William are their names; two long-haired Persians which fit better in the category of feral over domestic.

My huge sliding glass window looks out to the deck, with a fresh sheen of newly fallen rain. The droop-branched fir trees tower high enough that I cannot see their tops. It is cool and cloudy. Spencer’s Butte, a nearby 2000ft mountain is half within my view and tumultuous clouds of gleaming whites and grays contrast against the darker more ominous rain-bearers.

The neighborhood is charming and quiet. I can hear cars on Amazon Rd, but they are far enough to not be an annoyance. My room is large and cream colored. Cathy made the curtains which are cheery with designs of colorful birds and flowers.

I finally feel somewhat settled. My clothes are all put away and my various things somewhat organized. I have a long, shallow closet which hides my clothes dresser. I stow my tupperwares there so my room is left spacious. The wooden floor may need a rug, but for now I am content with my slippers. The bed is large and comfortable and was even already bedecked with a large feather comforter, sheets and pillows.

I went jogging along the 3 1/2 mile Rexius Trail which is about a block away and loops from the top (or "headwaters") of Amazon Creek down towards town. It is a mulch trail which cushions the crunching noise my knee likes to make. The trail has East and West Amazon Roads running alongside it so you're not off in the midst of nature, but it was a great way to see the neighborhood and the many joggers/bikers/walkers of the area.

My hope is to join in on the Eugene Audubon Club birdwalk this weekend so I can see some nature and meet some birding buds!

I sent off my monies. It's headed to Eugene, Oregon. University of Oregon. The tall dark trees and the fluorescent flowers broken open in spring greetings were an instant lure in a direction I already had found myself falling. I am going to begin the Professional Master's Program in the School of Journalism and Communication. It starts soon but not soon enough: June 20th. I will join my "cohort", the other students in my program (amounting to about 15 or 20) to start our journalism adventures in the Willamette Valley of Oregon state.

Not surprising, I'm finding myself now completely immersing myself in Eugene and all its intricacies, via the internet. It's so far away and yet right here next to me as I explore all the possibilities that await: countless parks, and forested areas with trails for hiking and biking, there are gardens and arboretums, a protected span of marshland that migrating waterfowl depend on, the city itself is charming and beautiful with bike friendly roads that I fully intend to take advantage of, there is a river with a path that follows alongside, the University is shrouded in towering fir, spruce and cedar trees...there is just so much that I'm dying to check out right now.

So I satisfy that need with the internet. And, in fact, I've found some really cool things. There is this blogger called EugeneCyclist who, aside from having an awesome sense of humor, really gives a great look into Eugene bike life. Through him, I've learned a lot about not only the bike life but a bit about the political atmosphere there and some local places that I want to check out as well as some of the yearly events and activities that I'll have to look forward to. There is one event they have that is on one of the pedestrian bridges over the river where everyone has a great big picnic to raise money for some deserving cause. How. Cool. He also takes pictures of bikers (unbeknownst to them) on almost a daily basis to illustrate some of his blog topics and so now I'm going to make it my life goal to one day be one of those pictured. Eugene fame is all I ask for.

Oh and I already have a place to LIVE!!! I totally found this woman online who Monica and I visited while I was there. I'll be renting a room with a private bathroom in her house. The house is about 3 1/2 miles away from campus, therefore yielding a decidedly sufficient buffer between me and the disdained undergraduates that form the perimeter of the university. Not only that but I'm going to be living in the "South Hills" which is where the southern end of Willamette Valley gives way to gorgeous dark foothills. There are some stunningly scenic roads that I plan to cycle out from the house. Get these legs a pumpin'. And not only that! The house is basically at the trailhead of a hike that leads up Spencer's Butte, a 2000+ ft hill that is said to be fantastic for sunsets which my housemate makes regular trips up to view. And even further, there's (if you believe it) a raptor rehab center right up the road from here. I will definitely be checking that out and hopefully have some time to volunteer too. Woo!

Ahh, so for now I sit in my coffeeshop and click my way through Eugene from afar. I hope to have some more interesting things to write once I'm there...biking adventures, visiting Monica in Portland, being a master's student (!!!)...

I've been reading Writer's Digest and some other writing magazine with some really not-creative name that didn't manage to stick in my head (Writer?). I can read the back issues in the community college library. So lately I've spent breaks between classes devouring one article after another. The majority of them are about starting your novel, how authors got their big breaks and their advice now that they're millionaires, dealing with rejection letters from editors, how to write comedy, thrillers, and so on. I think I'd like the magazines better if they were directed specifically at journalism and/or freelancing but I take what I can get. So anyways, all the talk about "writing your big novel" started to seep into my pores and now I'm thinking that, to be a real writer, I've got to have that unfinished manuscript always whispering to me in the background, plaguing me. Whelp, I've decided to get on that boat and start it now. The first thing that I know is that you need to develop your characters, particularly your main character. From there you can see where they lead you what adventure they may take on. While you may have an idea of the story plot, your character-once it has been developed-won't necessarily bring you down the road you intended. So I'm trying it out, to see if the magic of writing a novel will happen to me and if my character will really come to "life". Then, once I'm a full-fledged-freelancer (which very well may mean living under an overpass and fighting the seagulls for french fries) I can say," oh and I'm working on my novel, it's been in the making for three years now...".

So here I will show you my first writing exercise which may just be a peek into the makings of my novel..hahaha!..ehm.

Developing my Main Character

Her eyes shine hazel, ringed in midnight blue. If they weren’t always lowered, they would startle anyone into awakened curiosity. In this steely world of black and shades of gray, they are the single suggestion of the fantastical world that lay behind them.

The girl Larkin, when seen in a crowd, wouldn’t stand out in any special way. She isn’t particularly pretty and she has no outward reason to attract anyone’s attention. By most, she would be easily overlooked, what for her size and introverted demeanor.

She doesn’t mind that people pass her by. She passes them by too, a group conversing on the side of the path, laughing together. Even if she wanted to, Larkin couldn’t even summon the desire to insert herself into such a reality, she knows she would immediately feel uncomfortable. Nonetheless she does feel lonely, she desires human connections. But she often feels as if she belongs nowhere, is wanted by no one.

She sometimes wistfully imagines that some one person would notice her, see her there in her lonely corner of the world. They might covertly watch her expressions and surmise that inside her head is a place of magnetic intrigue. And it is.

In her mind thoughts are whirling and colors bursting, dreams and ideas intertwine and dance together creating designs and scenes detailed by pure imagination. She knows that what is portrayed on her outside self is nothing to suggest all that is going on within. Perhaps someone would somehow feel that and be drawn to her without exactly knowing why but knowing that she is a treasure chest full of every color imaginable that paint shapes, pictures and word, to tie them together to become entirely unique creations.

In a drab, colorless world she observes a population content with a life that consists of dull work rewarded with money to provide for nothing more than a monotonous lifestyle. Closing her eyes, she enters a world where there is so much more that awaits just around the corner. In her dreams, she rounds that corner but it only leads to another, and another, until she tires and cannot go on.

But something calls her. She cannot suppress the urge to break out of this sad place. She is restless. This feeling of fire inside her is hardly contained and, practically squirming with the desire to find out what is beyond the beyond, the world continues to run around her, oblivious. Black and white figures stream to and from work, living a life that makes her scream on the inside. On the outside, she is just as dull and the others look past her, through her. So she holds her eyes lowered, keeping her secret only for someone who really deserves it, who can discover it for themselves. Maybe then her loneliness will end and the path to the beyond will reveal itself.

Okay, in my earlier post The Great Climate Debate and Other Stuff, you might recall that I said I'd include the more-or-less-civil discussion that went back and forth between me and a hubpages author in response to an article he wrote. First I'll include his article which is almost enough in itself to get your hair on end but keep reading! It gets even jucier as you dive into the comments section where everyone is wholeheartedly (and spine chillingly) agreeing with his words and adding some of their own. I will save my own comments that I'm inclined to write right now since I wrote more than enough, as you'll see, in reference to his article and the commenters' responses in, you guessed it! the comments section.

Enjoy!

If It Weren’t Serious It Would Be Comical

By R.Talloni

The news is too good...I can’t help myself. The green theme is honestly not my favorite topic. However, when the news media puts it out there, what can a person do? They invite this on themselves, can we ignore the invitation?

Yesterday, I saw a news flash about how this January was the hottest January on record. One just sits there wondering about a lot of things while looking at the letters that form such articles. My first question was whether the listed author would use their real name or if they chickened out. I can say with all truthfulness that if I had to keep my job by writing such an article, I would use a pseudonym.

My next thought pertained to writing a hub on the ludicrousness of that news flash, what with the same news organization displaying flaming “East Coast Slammed With Snow Again” type articles on the same day. I mean, even if January was the hottest January in all history, how does it matter since this February has brought us such a volume of winter weather that the melting snow is going saturate the ground with freezing water for some time to come? Not very scientific, I know, but absurdity breeds ridiculousness.

Anyway, today I am compelled to write a green theme hub in spite of wanting to finish a book review. A man with a plan, Anthony Watts, has apparently been working with a group to find out how the scientific data for global warming records is being gathered. Compiling their own data, this group now has facts in the form of evaluations with photos and they have reported the results of their surveys.

This article reveals that out of the 1,062 weather stations they have investigated over the last 3 years “90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation.” To read that some of the weather stations are lighted with bulbs that could raise the temperatures that they report was eye-opening.

The article gives some interesting details on the proof of failed adherence to the guidelines, as well as a defense by researchers responsible for not following the governmental guidelines on how to do their global warming studies. Since they are set to soon publish a report on their findings in the Journal of Geophysics Research--Atmospheres their defense is not surprising.

I’m going to keep this short for a couple of reasons. First, you need to read up on this and get busy sharing the report. Second, I want to reread certain sections of my book so I can finish my review and figure out if I want to do several book review hubs. Third, I need to use my new energy efficient washing machine which I have yet to write a hub about.

In spite of the fact that Anthony Watts’ name could make one wonder if there is a conspiracy afoot, we have to admit that, pun intended, the wattage against so-called scientific data on global warming is being ramped up by people who are fed up. So here you have it, go now, do your part, spread the news.

__________

RTalloni 12 months ago

Will try to add links to the article as they come up.

Pamela99 12 months ago

Why aren't I surprised? The scientist that have disagreed about global warming were silenced all along and now we are finding out from the emails that people have definitely been dishonest. I think they should focus on clean water and not spend money wastefully until they have more evidence. I just got an energy efficient washer and dryer too. Oh well, I really do like them. Good hub

RTalloni 12 months ago

Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I'll look for your hub on your washer and dryer!

mynameisnotpaul 12 months ago

I am scratching my head as well over people who think our winters are getting less and less cold. Honestly, I live in Kentucky, and we were AMBUSHED with snow (which is definitely not normal), so I get the feeling that something is definitely not adding up.

Great hub, I'm glad somebody wrote about this! :)

RTalloni 12 months ago

So much in the news re this issue would truly be funny if it weren't such a sad reflection of the insanity that thinking we know more than our Creator has brought this world to!

We need to look past headlines then listen and read the news with an ear for keywords, phrases, and sentences that tell the truth about "the news" so we can help others learn to think about what they read and hear rather than swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

Out of curiosity I've been perusing global climate system articles. Take this one, for instance:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8538060.

"As if" questions came to mind:

As if animals have not always adapted to changes in nature and found food other places.

As if natural geographic changes have not always created changes for marine life.

As if the new iceberg is going to be there permanently rather than slowly melt away just like others do.

After an alarming title and paragraphs of supposition the article ends a little more honestly:

However, the researchers say the changes to the region triggered by the formation of the new iceberg will not shut down the circulation system or affect the world's climate.

"Large icebergs always attract a lot of attention due to their scale," observed Dr Michael Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey, who was not involved in the research.

"Bottom water is indeed an important part of the global ocean overturning circulation and hence climate," he told BBC News.

"There are also a number of other locations of bottom water formation, however. So, it's unlikely that a large-scale sustained change of the order of magnitude required for a global climate impact will happen from this one event.

"The more important thing, I think, is that this event has been closely and carefully monitored by scientists, who will now look at the processes whereby such calvings can impact on the ocean and the ecosystem - and studying this natural laboratory will add to our knowledge of how the Antarctic system works."

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment to help keep the dialogue open mynameisnotpaul. Always good to cross paths with you!

Petra Vlah 12 months ago

It is funny (or not so funny) that most experts could not predict accurately tomorrow's weather, but they speculate about 40-50-60 years from now.

That gives me just as much confidence in their "expertise" as the 2012 apocalyptical theory about the end of the planet.

Even if it is true (which I doubt), can we do anything about it? It seems that X or Y always give as one more thing to worry about so we can't think or do what is really important and it is in our power to change

RTalloni 12 months ago

Experts can be very funny. So much of what we are witnesses to in this day and time is designed to take our minds off of what is really important. Thanks much for stopping in and leaving your comment.

RTalloni 11 months ago

Knowing what kinds of changes are being planned by those who are putting global warming at the top of their agenda is important. Check out:

http://www.snohomishcountybusinessjournal.com/arti

RTalloni 11 months ago

New article to check out:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/01/al-gore-

RTalloni 11 months ago

One of the comments under this article had a novel idea that we should agree on--governments should be held responsible for creating a climate of fear:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-

gracenotes 11 months ago

You did a great job with this article. All of the global warming hype just makes me think of "ever learning, but never coming to the knowledge of the truth. Thanks for writing this.

RTalloni 11 months ago

How apropos! Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment, with a perfect quote no less! :)

RTalloni 11 months ago

Food for thought:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/02/als-late

Petra Vlah 11 months ago

Hello again RT,

Creating a climate of fear is what governments do best. Very interesting articles you found and post, thank you for the links

RTalloni 11 months ago

Thanks for the input, Petra, because it is invaluable coming from one with your experiences. Thanks for leaving a comment, too, for that helps keep the news articles highlighted and the dialogue open.

C Osborn 11 months ago

Two Thumbs Up......Glad to see not everybody is falling for the fear and hype.

RTalloni 11 months ago

Many thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment to help keep the dialogue high-lighted.

C Osborn 11 months ago

Al Gore has been unusually quiet. He must be off hunting for "Man Bear Pig" :)

RTalloni 11 months ago

:) Thanks for stopping by again and helping to keep the dialogue open.

From what I'm reading he's preparing a come back. "Their" latest excuses re the current winter's freezing temperatures proving global warming are an example of how science is ignored in order to try to make a point. The earth recycles the same amount of water through evaporation and precipitation. More water is not created by gasses of any kind. The earth's closed water recycling system makes for interesting conversation in the face "their" claims and excuses. Everyone agrees that it is wise to take care of the earth, our water, etc. but not everyone agrees that science should be based on facts!

One of my favorite quotes: Truth invites scrutiny; error demands tolerance.

stacebird 4 days ago

You are all doing exactly what RTalloni said that we Believers in Climate Change are doing, swallowing the news that leans toward your 'preferred' reality "hook, line and sinker".

Also, where Petra mentions how "experts can't predict accurately tomorrow's weather, but they speculate about 40-50-60 years from now"..well there is a different between global temperature *trends* tracked (over long periods of time) to build a more reliable data base for comparison and means for prediction while the daily differences in the weather are so short term that there is, as of yet, no way to be completely sure from one day to another. Climate and weather are very different things.

And, the government isn't the one responsible for creating that "climate of fear" she speaks of, in fact they are only just recently (finally!) accepting the fact of climate change. Rather, the government has been very busy funding certain agencies and paying underpaid scientists the big bucks to deliver (manipulate?) the data that your side of the fence is so desperate to cling on to.

With global warming, the key is to not focus on what the media is spouting. No matter which way it may be skewed, what is being said it is not necessarily all truth. Both sides (mine and yours) have made some pretty misleading allegations. What is problematic is that the media is causing us to focus on the more recent changes in weather from year to year, much too short term. And I've often heard people (some from this very comment section included!) claiming that a huge snow discounts or record hot days in February supports this idea of climate change.

Instead of obsessing over the month to month or year to year changes in the weather, what everyone needs to focus on is the fact that we are pouring carbon dioxide into our atmosphere at a rates that far surpass anything that has ever been seen. This is the reason we are certain that global warming is real, CO2 directly increases atmospheric temperatures. CO2 is what is going to get us in trouble and we're increasing its load in the atmosphere daily at disgusting rates.

The idea of climate change is something the world has endured and survived for its entire existence. The clincher is that we are changing the climate at a rate that is 100,000 times faster than past fluctuations have ever done. So now how are we, much less the natural environment that relies on evolving over thousands and thousands of generations, expected to keep up?

I appreciate the opportunity to comment, particularly to be the first commenter on the opposite side of a very one-sided discussion. Please visit my hubpage as I intend to address this issue for the wider public in the near future.

RTalloni 4 days ago

First, thanks for stopping by and commenting. I try to always appreciate open discussions.

What you have to say is interesting for a lot of reasons. You might like to do some research on the truth about how carbon dioxide has been poured into "our" atmosphere via "natural" causes at incalculable rates for centuries, yet the earth was designed to clean itself up. (Case in point, the most recent gulf oil spill, where the efforts of man cannot take credit for the fact that the waters have recovered so quickly so well, against all cries that the end of the gulf coast was at hand.) That is not to say that earth was designed to replenish itself interminably, but that point is another issue entirely and it involves the truth about how the earth is not ours, but we are stewards--a very big responsibility that requires attention to the concerns you raise in your comments.

It is a good thing for us to stop and think about the big picture, as you point out is our need. If one is to believe that our natural environment relies on an ability to evolve over generations ad nauseam then reality insists that we admit that it is impossible to know what is purported as fact re the so- called stats from eons ago.

The words evolve and adapt have come to be and are now far too often used interchangeably, and that's not a wise. Doing so has helped people swallow a lie hook, line, and sinker. I'm a big advocate of examining true definitions and how people misuse words to promote agendas. One of my favorite quotes is, "Truth invites scrutiny, error demands tolerance." Defining scrutiny is the key to getting to the truth of a matter and that's basically what this hub was about.

One reason I write about this type of topic is to exercise how to put thinking skills into writing, another is to help others exercise their thinking skills. So much opportunity for problem solving is lost when we lose common-sense thinking. Practically thinking through what the concerns really are includes setting aside emotion where rhetoric is concerned, examining every facet of the related problems (not just those that fit an agenda we may have adopted), concentrating on how to solve the difficulties from a perspective of leadership on the matter (which includes being responsible enough to be honest and check and double-check "facts").

On the issue of climate change we have some excellent data that is being ignored in the debate. However, my perspective is that common-sensical, practical thinking could spare many of us much distress.

stacebird 25 hours ago

Oh it’s my pleasure to engage in this discussion, interplay like this is what keeps the world turning!

I appreciate the advice, but I am content with my research done on carbon dioxide that is (and has been) emitted into the atmosphere. I know very well that gases given off by various natural causes are the main source of the gas levels in the atmosphere and I also am very well aware that they are “checked and balanced” by natural absorption. As you say, the earth is “designed to clean itself up” but, unfortunately, not to the exceedingly fast rate (by earth’s standards) as we humans are soiling it as referred to with the statistics in my previous comment. Our emissions contribution may not be a huge proportion to that which the earth naturally emits, but that is not the focus. It’s that we are increasing the amount to a point “over the limit” that the earth cannot support. We have thrown the earth out of its balance.

You mention the oil spill as your case in point, but I see no evidence in the fact that while the ecosystem might naturally recover faster than we expected it to, to suggest that the earth as a whole is capable of keeping up and nullifying the overall human pollution contribution. Not to mention the fact that the ecosystem hit by the oil spill isn’t back in tip-top shape quiet yet. Furthermore, what we humans are doing to try and clean up the spill are hurting the ecosystem more than helping it, which is exactly our problem here on earth..we don’t consider (or even have the knowledge of) the consequences that our actions could have on the environment. And because of that the earth is changing.

I don’t see what the gulf spill has to do with the issue we are discussing but I feel the need for people to know that it was a bad thing and still is a bad thing. You can’t just introduce harmful chemicals and expect the earth to happily go about its own business. Sure, bacteria may be able to naturally bioremediate the damage, but (bigger picture once again) the bacteria wouldn’t have been there in such force if it weren’t for the unnatural introduction of the oil. The suddenly-high abundance of bacteria is therefore triggered unnaturally and is sure to have an impact. You can’t tug one part of the ecosystem and expect it not to reverberate.

Everything is connected and there will be responses that mere humans have no way of predicting that could end up hurting not only the earth but us as well.

On to the next point…so, this loaded sentence of yours gave me pause: “If one is to believe that our natural environment relies on an ability to evolve over generations ad nauseam then reality insists that we admit that it is impossible to know what is purported as fact re the so- called stats from eons ago.”

I believe that the environment doesn’t rely on the ability, but rather it is nature’s innate ability to evolve. The cause of evolution is how species with ‘chance’ genetic differences either are better adapted to their environment or not. Those not will die off and the better adapted will survive and procreate, creating progeny with that advantageous variation that is genetically passing through generations. “Ad nauseam” is simply an overstatement. I don’t know about you, but I happen to, along with countless others, have a lot of respect for scientists and what they “purport as fact” about eons ago. Why don’t you?

Furthermore, I am curious..did your loaded sentence mean that you disagree with my statement “..we are changing the climate at a rate that is 100,000 times faster than past fluctuations have ever done. So now how are we, much less the natural environment that relies on evolving over thousands and thousands of generations, expected to keep up?”? Because, if so, I also would like to know: why? Why don’t you think that we can use the information that scientists come up with (the credible ones, at least) as fact? Do you just not believe in evolution?

I liked your quote you stuck in after mentioning the misuse of evolve and adapt but I feel you strayed from your point there. I was hoping you would expand on that thought and tell what it is that you think is so unwise and what lie we are swallowing. Who is promoting what agenda here by confusing the terms so that we the public take it as face value? What are these “lies” doing and what do they have to do with global warming?

I love that you wrote this hub, it definitely is putting my thinking skills to use and, as I delve more deeply into the topic I am able to share my thoughts with someone who has very different thoughts and see where you are coming from. What I’m afraid of is that you take a lot of your own information at face value..like the parents who killed themselves and their children for fear of global warming. Do you really believe that the government is scaring us to that point? How many cases have you found like this? Obviously this is a very outlying case that really contributes nothing to your argument. In fact these people, who I’m sure were not hanging on every word the government said about global warming (the few words the gov’t even were saying!), doubtless they were looking into global warming on their own accord, reading the very sad facts that have been stated for years now (and neglected to be addressed by the government) and their mental state, which already was obviously precarious, was pushed over the edge.

I just ask you to not get hung up on whatever error Al Gore may have made. He is not a scientist. He could very well have an agenda and maybe that is what is steering him in the wrong direction. Politicians are renowned for adapting information to their advantage. You keep referring to basically a lack of common sense thinking. Well, I have seen an abundance of it.

“So much opportunity for problem solving is lost when we lose common-sense thinking.” I am in complete agreement. Unfortunately, no matter which “side” people are on, mistakes are going to be made and common sense will fall by the wayside. Nonetheless, I think we should put a lot of confidence in science. A scientific approach is the most common-sense thinking of all.

RTalloni 3 hours ago

Thanks for coming by again. I’m always glad to see comments and to have the chance to interact with other hubbers.

I appreciate your concerns about “over the limit” emissions, even though your comment that you are content with your research gives me pause for thought. It brought to mind what 1950s scientists said about antibiotics. For all the lives that antibiotics have saved, how wrong could they have been to assure the world that their research proved that antibiotics would eradicate disease?

The gulf has and continues to recover faster than anyone expected. Common sense does suggest that this fact could mean that the earth’s other systems should respond in a similar manner when necessary. Yet, there is no doubt that we have a responsibility to be wise in addressing problems that develop for we have been given stewardship of the earth.

You make a good point in writing that what is done to solve problems is sometimes more harmful than helpful. We need common sense thinking on every level--scientifically, politically, and among “just us.” For instance, couldn’t it be likely that the gulf was designed to produce extra bacteria as needed and that the extra dies off when it is no longer needed, similar to how our bodies were designed to work at solving certain problems? All that is not to say, however, that it’s okay to tug one part of the ecosystem unnaturally and then not do what can be done to help set things right.

Common sense, balanced, practical thinking that is devoid of manipulation, hype, and fabrication is what I’m promoting. The earth was not designed by humans and we do not understand all of its interconnections, therefore, it does not make sense to dismiss what is known about the earth as we explore concerns and possible solutions. Straightforwardly, I do not believe in evolutionary theories. “Ad nauseam” is not an understatement in the face of the facts that a) what is known about the earth is so often ignored, and b) what is presented as fact when it should be presented as theory continues to be publicized.

It makes sense to believe a written record of historical events that have stood the test of time by way of corroborated research to confirm or invalidate older writings throughout history rather than to believe in testing practices that have not only been called into question by modern scholars but which nature itself has refuted. My goal for touching on this is to answer your question about whether I believe in evolution and to encourage anyone reading this to stop and think about the rational of the two positions as they consider what I write.

I am not an evolutionist. I believe that God created all things just as He states in His Word. Beyond that, experience with trusting Him according to His Word has convinced me that He is bigger than anything we can imagine--completely omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, and that no matter what problems any part of His creation may ever face He infinitely rules and overrules. He has proven the counsel of His Word to me many times over thereby increasing my confidence in what He has revealed to us in creation and in His Word. At this point I refer readers to my other hubs for the time being, and I am going back to the main focus of this hub.

The issues related to this hub’s mention of supposed data that proved to be grossly flawed could tentacle out for miles in every direction. What I know about the parents who murdered their children and themselves is that their motives and consequent actions were wrong. Whether the government or scientists or the media have any responsibility for those deaths is something we should give a good amount of consideration to for the information those people were operating from had a source. The question of whether they were researching “facts” is underlined and highlighted by reports of dishonesty among scientists, as well as politicians and the media.

Al Gore certainly is not a scientist and it’s a pitiful thing to watch him pretend to be one. It’s even sadder to see how he uses his money and influence as a climate activist as he promotes himself as an expert. From what I can tell, his words and actions point to a picture of someone who lacks common sense but is being used by others who are shrewd business people. He does nothing to create an atmosphere of confidence and trust in either the persons working to address valid concerns or their efforts.

I think I understand what you mean if you are speaking of a “true” scientific approach, but what is called science does not always constitute common sense. We have too many examples that give us good reason to stop and think. Look at the supposed proofs of evolution that were debunked by the examples that the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The effects of its explosion as well as the remarkable recoveries of the areas it affected are just one example of truth being ignored by evolutionists. Every branch of science needs what common sense thinking we mere humans can bring to it, but the scale of dismissiveness toward facts and some outright deceptions, possibly in the name of research but at times for self-advancement, have been nothing short of a colossal betrayal to the very word “science.”

Please understand that I’ve moved along here with no expectation of thoroughly covering any of these issues, just making a diligent effort to focus on our need to exercise common sense. Besides mentioning that I try to display an attitude of being careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and, therefore, I do not dismiss the importance of science, I want to wind this up by pointing out that from the title of this short hub through to the last paragraph I wrote with a tongue-in-cheek spirit. Seriously, though, I understand that you are very concerned and I do not believe that there is anything comical about the responsibility of our stewardship of the earth.

You’ve given me some food for thought and in the future when I consider a lack of common sense, a lack of character, and a lack of willingness to pursue truth regarding any issue, scientific or otherwise, I believe your words to the effect of “what is done to try to solve problems can cause more harm than good” will ring in my mind.

Okay it's me, Stacey again!

So basically I decided I should just let it rest there. I must say though, I sure enjoyed myself here. It was a good learning experience and, while I'm no expert, I felt that I could at least speak up to some degree so that these people weren't all just happily nodding in somewhat ignorant agreement.

I'd love to hear your all's (yay grammar!) opinions, so leave a comment, start another discussion even!

So we have finally found ourselves in the month of March. It's about time! This is the month that I find out if any of the schools I've applied to think I'm graduate student material. I am bouncing off the walls inside my head, there is literally a tiny me in there pinging from one side to the other going crazy waiting to hear if she's been accepted. Will life lead me to Oregon? To Colorado? As long as one of them decides to throw me a bone, I'm set. If they both do (this is the cocky side of me talking here, better to ignore that one) then I'm screwed because I have no idea how to choose between the two. I talked to a professor at Eugene who got me all jazzed to go there and I have a phone appointment I set up with a prof in Boulder on Monday and, unless he's a jerk or he thinks I'm a tool, then I potentially will be even less capable of making a decision.

Journalism. That's what I might be neck deep in (as if I've not already thrown myself gleefully into it already...http://hubpages.com/profile/stacebird) for the next two years and, if things go in any way at all in the general direction I keep daydreaming about, I'll be in it for the long run! Yipes! It's so exciting and yet it's something so different and twisty turny and crazy insano!

Look at her, scribbling away notes as Jane Goodall lectures..like a real journalist! 2003.

I just got out of zumba earlier (pretending like I know even remotely what I'm doing in a room full of gyrating hips..) I got to talking to this lady who teaches spanish and when I told her my "life direction" her response was "ohh, that's a hard field"..yea, not the first time I've heard that. Buuuut that's the thing, yea things are changing and print media is a shrinking industry but that's why it's the newbies like us who have a knack for the internet (haha, knack..me?!?) are coming into the field at a "very exciting" time. I'm sad and totally understand how the print journalists scorn the media move to the internet but it's obviously a tsunami that cannot be stopped. It is taking over and if you don't change where you are, you're liable to get swept away.

Nonetheless, I'm nervous!! Yea, going for the grad degree will be a leg up, I just hope that I can maybe get some experience in a structured environment (maybe a magazine that does both online and print..?) for a few years and then go solo, freelance style. If I can support myself as a successful freelancer, I think that might be pretty darn great. Not easy, but great.

...gurgle

Ooooookay. So I think I jinxed my stinkbug winter companion. The next morning after writing my last post I found him kind of sprawled out on the carpet right in front of my mirror-- stone dead.

I decided not to take a picture.

He's still there, though, if you want to come by and pay your respects.

In other news, I have been busy with the classes I'm auditing. Spanish is rolling right along. Globalization Issues is a new perspective for me. I haven't taken many classes like this before, studying humanity rather than nature! But I find it fascinating and enlightening..as well as depressing. The general theme is: the big fat politicians of the good ol' US of A tricked almost the entire rest of the world (focusing, of course, on the 3rd world countries) to do our bidding under the guise of "progression and development" and we get all the riches, the power, the natural resources. Journalism is great, it's getting me thinking about all the nitty gritty of the legal aspects, ethics and how journalism is developing in these craaazy times! Finally, Swimming. It rocks. I really enjoy it and it's good to give my crackling knees a break. I officially can swim 3/4ths of a mile with hardly any breaks to catch my breath! I feel good about that :)

Oh, so here's something really fun and interesting I've been doing this week. I found an article through my hubpages site about how Al Gore messed up and said something about global warming that the opponents found to be untrue, so of course they are taking that to the bank and saying that global warming isn't real, it's all a joke. Well the frustrating thing was that the author and all of the people who commented on his article were all opposing global warming based on unjust things: not just what Gore said (who, last time I checked, wasn't a scientist) but also how the warmest January in record is reported in the same paper that displays articles screaming about another snowstorm slamming the eastern US...this is a perfect example of confusing climate data with weather reports. The author points to a couple that committed suicide and blamed it on global warming and he blames it on the government putting fear in our hearts...well, I read through his article and all of the comments made by people putting him up on a pedestal with his good information and points, and I felt crazy frustrated. I had to write a comment. A comment-turned essay. I will subject you to that now, mwahaha...

stacebird 3 days ago You are all doing exactly what RTalloni said that we Believers in Climate Change are doing, swallowing the news that leans toward your 'preferred' reality "hook, line and sinker".Also, where Petra mentions how "experts can't predict accurately tomorrow's weather, but they speculate about 40-50-60 years from now"..well there is a different between global temperature *trends* tracked (over long periods of time) to build a more reliable data base for comparison and means for prediction while the daily differences in the weather are so short term that there is, as of yet, no way to be completely sure from one day to another. Climate and weather are very different things.And, the government isn't the one responsible for creating that "climate of fear" she speaks of, in fact they are only just recently (finally!) accepting the fact of climate change. Rather, the government has been very busy funding certain agencies and paying underpaid scientists the big bucks to deliver (manipulate?) the data that your side of the fence is so desperate to cling on to.With global warming, the key is to not focus on what the media is spouting. No matter which way it may be skewed, what is being said it is not necessarily all truth. Both sides (mine and yours) have made some pretty misleading allegations. What is problematic is that the media is causing us to focus on the more recent changes in weather from year to year, much too short term. And I've often heard people (some from this very comment section included!) claiming that a huge snow discounts or record hot days in February supports this idea of climate change.Instead of obsessing over the month to month or year to year changes in the weather, what everyone needs to focus on is the fact that we are pouring carbon dioxide into our atmosphere at a rates that far surpass anything that has ever been seen. This is the reason we are certain that global warming is real, CO2 directly increases atmospheric temperatures. CO2 is what is going to get us in trouble and we're increasing its load in the atmosphere daily at disgusting rates.The idea of climate change is something the world has endured and survived for its entire existence. The clincher is that we are changing the climate at a rate that is 100,000 times faster than past fluctuations have ever done. So now how are we, much less the natural environment that relies on evolving over thousands and thousands of generations, expected to keep up?I appreciate the opportunity to comment, particularly to be the first commenter on the opposite side of a very one-sided discussion. Please visit my hubpage as I intend to address this issue for the wider public in the near future.

So there you go...it's a little bit harsh at points, perhaps, but I was just really fired up. He wrote me back a doosie which I just finished the reply for tonight (yea, 2 pages long in Word). I'm going to wait to see where that one takes us in this debate, but I'll give you guys a more in-depth view once I let it brew for awhile and maybe produce some really interesting outcomes. It's all in good fun, he seems glad of the fact that I am joining in on the discussion, so, I'm gonna keep it up til I feel like I've well represented my view!

So there you go!

So here's what I've been up to lately..my main objective, of course, is to write as much as possible but also get my name out there and get people reading my writing. I've been scouring the internet and have found two good sites where I've been able to contribute articles. The sites are completely made up of articles written by citizen journalists so I feel like I'm in league with everyone else. You can write about any topic you want and so I've had a good opportunity to just kind of play around. Here are the two stories I wrote on my hubpages site:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Stop-Dont-Follow-That-Recipe

http://hubpages.com/hub/proudintrovert

I was super excited to discover that other "hubbers" had commented on my writing not even an hour after I'd posted! It seems like this will be a great site to get to know freelance writers (some of the people who contribute are really quite accomplished!) and find out how they make their living solely on writing. Already I've had a couple offer some really great advice, not to mention the value of reading some of their articles on becoming a writer.

I also joined Suite101 which is similar but not as user friendly or aesthetically pleasing as HubPages. I did publish a story there too, though.

http://www.suite101.com/content/learn-spanish-and-get-a-taste-of-nicaraguan-living-a346986

It's been fun just typing away, and checking out some really great resources as I go. In fact, I've been totally obsessing over it all, writing til 4:30 in the morning, spending hours and hours in starbucks on my computer, reading writer's digest on my free time between classes. Yea, I'm excited!

Now it's a matter of getting traffic to my stories, get people reading them, the more that read them, the higher the "score" or ranking so that your article has more chance of being seen if someone searches one of your keywords. For now, I'll keep everyone up to date via my own connections and see where this goes.

On another note, remember how bad the stinkbugs were last summer? I have one that has made my room his winter getaway. I don't have any idea what he must be eating, but he's been living here for months! The funny thing is, I think he's in love with me..no matter where he is in my room, he always is slowly making his way toward me, be he on the ceiling, in the closet, on my lampshade. He slowly walks toward me and I'm sitting there writing or reading in my bed when suddenly I feel him crawl onto my shoulder or he comes striding over the top of my knee. Right now he is crawling up the side of my computer screen...I seriously flicked him away three times in a row until finally I gave in. Well now he's off on some other adventure. I should probably go too. Until next time!

Hullo again. Okay so I haven't been as great at keeping up with this blog like I wanted to but I blame it on the fact that my classes really started kicking into gear, workwise, after posting the first one of this "series".

BUT I haven't not been writing. I'm actually pretty pleased because one of my classes is Intro to Journalism. My teacher advised anyone who wanted to be a journalist to start getting things published, ASAP, because that is what truly will make you look good to future employers: a portfolio. So, I joined the college newspaper...officially! I filled out the online application, sent it in, was "accepted" and attended my first official newspaper staff meeting, a-hohoho! Well, ignore that last little bit of bragging in the form of stupid obnoxious laughter because here's what my application looked like in the "prior experience" section..

1. High school newspaper-NONE

2. High school yearbook-NONE

3. High school news Website-NONE

4. High school broadcasting-NONE

5. College newspaper-Yours! Last month you published my review of a little park where you can walk around the pretty lake and see nature!! (..is there pity in your eyes?)

6. College yearbook-NONE

7. College news Website-NONE

8. College broadcasting-NONE

...they must've been pretty desperate...

Well, nonetheless, I'm on the paper! What's more, I get to use my own idea for my next article! I'm going to write about my travels to the spanish school in a small town in Nicaragua where I got a lesson in history that painted my entire view of that community. I was really taken aback by what I learned about this strong, beautiful, dedicated group of people. What did I learn? Well you're going to just have to wait til it's published!

So I'm starting to think that my adult life (assuming I ever become an adult..) as a writer (assuming I ever become a writer...) will consist of many hours in front of the computer (obviously), resulting in a frightening sight. See, when I look at a computer screen for more than an hour or so, my eyes become a disturbing shade of red. These shots of blood running across the whites of my eyes are there, not just for a couple hours but rather for a good 12 HOURS. I guess I just don't blink when I'm staring at the screen. So picture me in the future, working away in my dark, damp cave with eyes gleaming of blood. You might offer eye drops if you're brave enough to come close, or suggest a good night's rest, but these do nothing to combat the intrusion of bulging, bursting veins. Well, another reason to embrace my introvertedness!

So this is the jump off point of my writing career. A career that is in the vague and distant future at the moment. Nonetheless, everything I've read about becoming a writer screams "practice constantly!", "write something every day!". Basically, hock one onto your computer screen and hope it's legible. So that's what I'm doing now, winding up for the pitch...

Here is what I like to draw in when I think of that vague and distant future: I'm a freelance writer, I've published enough "quality" work that I can work remotely and contribute to a variety of interesting (to me) magazines, websites, magazine-websites...yes. So there I am, tapping away for a period of time each day while occasionally stopping to look out my huge window at a beautiful, mountainous view, framed by trees that make up the forest in which my rustic little home is nestled..

Now, how hard does it really have to be so hard to reach that point? I want to revel in the introverted character that is me and live a lifestyle appropriate to it. I still plan to be within biking distance to various indulgences-some sort of local cafe with an abundance of rich desserts and good coffee, a natural food store, a gym (to follow the desserts with). I just don't want to always have to be somewhere, to have a dress code, to compete to be the best..whatever.

In this vision of my future that I'm making here, I don't plan on spending money on anything that is unnecessary (except for the indulgences..). I am not a materialistic person by any means-a year after buying my first car, and brand new at that, I gave it to my brother. My lifestyle should be fairly simple, not too expensive. But does that mean I'd be able to support it, with the wages of a freelance writer?

Well for now, I'm pointing myself toward graduate school. I have it in my mind that if I'm able to say "I have a graduate degree in Journalism" that it will mean the powers that be (or, that is, the editors..) will desire whatever it is that I have to contribute and will pay me with gusto. That's how it works, right?

In the journalism books and online articles I've been pouring over lately, I've gotten the inkling that freelance writing is kind of the starting point for those who are building up their portfolio so that they can become editors. I don't want to claw my way up that high. I'm content to stay around the bottom, if I can. Not that freelancing is really the bottom, but rather, if one wants to make a stable income, they need to either become best pals with some great magazines to have a guaranteed in as a contributing writer or they integrate some other income sources into their career, like (gag) teaching or consulting.

I think there is hope, though! See, I'm writing, this is me right now working to better my future, each word.... ..every...single......l..e..t..t..e..r.....I'm practicing!! So you practice too, if you're on this track as well and together we will make ourselves better and better, one day after another.

Hello again my dear reader buds! Sorry for the long absence, it's been a bumpy but overall great road! I have been feeling sad for leaving this blog dormant but I will tell you why I did it.

I was not particularly comfortable seeing the posts I'd filled it with on my Peace Corps adventures in Guatemala. This is due to the fact that I ended my time in Peace Corps after about four and a half months down there.

I don't for a second regret the experiences I was so fortunate to be a part of. I also don't regret leaving.

After three months of cultural, language, and job training, I was placed in the site where I was to spend the next two years. Nothing about the amount of time I'd be away from states or the fact that I had to live a lifestyle very different from that in the US had anything to do with my leaving. I relished the opportunity to live abroad, take bucket baths, kill a chicken for dinner, and sleep with all manner of insect and who knows what else crawling around my room. In these aspects, I make the perfect candidate to gleefully lead the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer. What I hadn't anticipated was that which went on inside my head. Feelings of inadequacy, not smart enough, strong enough, outgoing enough, innovative enough, just plain old not good enough. These are feelings that I've battled for many years now. Feelings that bring me down to depths that I can't see a way out of.

Depression is a well known disease in my family. Many of us have been and are struggling with it. No matter where I go, I can't seem to escape it. I couldn't escape it, not even in another country. So there I sat, disbelief filling my entire being as I hung up the phone after having talked to the Peace Corps nurse about how horrible I was feeling. Such an awful, familiar feeling.

From there I left my site to take the long bus ride to Antigua where I met with the therapist at the Peace Corps office. After telling her about the past and current me, together we decided that going back to the states was the best option. There I would have easy access to all that I would need to help get me out of that hole.

So suddenly Guatemala faded off behind me and I'd returned to the states.

Connecting the dots between that point and this one now, I would say that there was a good deal of therapy involved, in both person and pill form. I've been living with my parents (ahh, just another fun and humiliating thing to share with all the world, all you readers!) and have been auditing classes as my local community college. Between classes and unemployed loser-dom, I've managed to make a few side excursions. North Carolina, New York, Nicaragua, Florida..you get one guess on which was my favorite!

So life is plugging along and now I'm taking a new route. Zig-zagging through life is nothing new, but it is certainly something I have really enjoyed. And continue to. Not knowing where I'll be a year from now..hell, six months from now!

Um, the dots are getting closer, right? Well I'm in classes until May and by the end of March I hope to know which (if any) grad school wants to take me as an aspiring writer/journalist. So there, dots connected. Now I just have to fatten up the line between them in posts to come...

Thanks for listening..er, reading.

surviving about five weeks at my permanent site, where I was to spend the next two years, I'd realized that a combination of untreated depression and very strong desire to escape back into the introverted lifestyle that I so prefer made for a not very chipper and ready-to-roll Peace Corps Volunteer.

Muchos estudiantes les gustan los viajes del campo como una día libre de escuela. Los viajes son algo differente en que pueden escapar los escritorios y vean algo diferente. Sin embargo, estos "vacaciones" son relacionado a sus estudios y ofrecen una opurtunidad para ver algo real, en lugar de una foto en sus libros. De hecho, los viajes del campo resultan en una experiencia mas llena de aprendizaje y producen estudiantes mas lista para la vida actual.

A la ventaja de los estudiantes, los viajes del campo les llegan a lugares relacionado a las temas en sus estudios universidades. Un ejemplo es visitar una parque nacional con una clase de biología para ver los bosques y los relaciones entre la vida silvestre y los plantas y arboles. Para ver en realidad los cosas de que hablaron en clase, pueden entender mejor con estos ejemplos actuales y recordar mejor con sus memorias.

Otros ventajas incluyen oportunidades que los estudiantes nunca han tenido. Muchas jovenes de la ciudades nunca han visto los bosques alredador sus hogares. Es una probabilidad que el viaje a qualquier lugar es el primero vez por muchos de los estudiantes. Estos oportunidades dan una vista mas grande por los estudiantes de la vida que van a entrar.

Muchas veces, las lecturas en las clases causan los alumnos perdir interés, no importa la tema. Si la misma tema es estudiado por un viaje del campo, es probable que los estudiantes van a tener mas interes y, tal ves, encontrar mucho fascinación en esta tema. Si los estudiantes vean los arboles que están muriendo por la pollución y insectos exóticos en vida actual, tal vez, van a recordar esta viaje cuando estan en carreras en que tienen abilidades influyentes para afectar legislación. ¿Quien sabe?

Sin embargo, los viajes del campo tienen muchos aspectos beneficiales para mejorar la experiencia universidad. Esto es algo que cada universidad debe tener en cada facultad. La futura depende en los jovenes y cada experiencia va a anadir a su vista de la vida. Es importante que las maestros tomar la oportunidad para dar una vista mas llena para la futura de todos.

The creak of the porch swing caused the girl to look up from where she sat in the adjacent field. She'd been picking soybeans for the afternoon after showing up at the front step of that porch earlier that morning. The woman who'd answered had dust in her hair and sadness in her eyes. Lana was just glad she didn't ask any questions. The woman retreated back into the depths of the house after agreeing to pay the girl in meals for some work. She didn't need the help, the field was obviously left abandoned, but Lana didn't feel the need to ask questions either. The peeling white paint of the swing fluttered to the ground as the wind gently rocked it. The familiar creaking of the old chain brought the woman to the window and Lana saw her peer down toward the porch from above. The woman brushed at her cheek and turned back to face the cluttered room, filled with wooden toys and half filled boxes, all covered in a film of dust.

The soybeans were cooked with dinner that evening and girl and woman sat at the large table in silence. The girl slowly ate, her only belongings in a small bag on the floor beside her chair. It was quiet in the house and the girl stole glances at the shadows which were all that were left of a happier, bustling life. The woman appeared to live alone, although there was evidence otherwise. A large canvas jacket still hung from the hook by the back screen door and she noticed picture of a man at work out in the cow pasture down the east slope from the house. He sat on a tractor and held a young boy in his lap who's head barely showed above the wheel. The story told itself most devastatingly so, through the pain in the gray eyes of the woman left behind.

When the woman got up from the table, Lana thought about the pain she'd felt in her life and felt quietly connected to this woman with the dust still in her hair and a defeated gaze. Setting a full glass of milk next to Lana's plate, the woman's foot grazed the bag on the floor, tipping it. On to the linoleum rolled a faded wooden red truck that matched the set in the room upstairs, now packed away in cardboard. The woman sucked in her breath and held it, aghast at what she saw.

"That's my son's. What are you doing with his toy in your belongings?" her voice was cold.

The girl sat frozen, cringing, "No I wasn't going to take it, ma'am. Please. I found it out in the field."

The woman looked like she could hit Lana. The girl didn't know how to explain. She'd wanted to keep it. She had been fighting with herself all afternoon about what she was going to do with the faded thing that had caused her heart to stop when she saw it.

"I'm sorry, I only wanted to hold it for awhile."

"What did you think you were going to do with it!? It's mine, it obviously belongs in this house, it belongs..in my arms..he belongs in my arms" her voice cracked and she simply fell apart, staggering back to her side of the table and slumping into her seat, tears falling.

Lana picked up the truck, staring at it before tearing her eyes away to look at the woman with the grey eyes.

"My father built one for my brother," she whispered, "It just looked so much like this one, laying there in the dirt. I knew that you needed it because it was his, but I almost was able to believe that it belonged to another young boy and that I'd be able to once again hold him in my arms."

Later, after the sun had fallen below the green hills, Lana came out of the guest room for a glass of water. She heard the creaking again and followed the sound out onto the porch. The fading light only just illuminated the woman where she sat. She held a large cardboard box in her lap, it's flaps open revealing trucks and cars and carved wooden animals. Her grey eyes met Lana's.

"You can keep it"

THE END

This was just a little exercise, I found a site that helped you create a setting for a creative writing piece. You choose numbers and each number gives you one of the options for a.Character, b.Setting, c.Time, d.Challenge/Situation. So with my random choice of four numbers I came out with:

character: homeless child

setting: porch of an old farmhouse

time: after a fight

challenge: someone accused another of something wrong

I used a bit of artistic license, because I didn't follow exactly my topics but they at least got me rolling on an idea and I had a good time with it! Hope you enjoyed it.

Her pace quickened as she moved down the grassy slope. Three ducks flew low over the water, their wings beat fast to hold their weighty bodies aloft. Her eyes flicked, taking in the scene with only a quick glance. She went back to watching her feet as they padded down the hill, toward the water. Who was she to think that she could keep up with this world? The fast pace of it all, the bustle of the busy sidewalks swarming with people dressed in crisp suits and hair all done up. Is this life? To make money and wear it around town and out to clubs? How could you spend days, weeks, months, without touching your soles to earth? How can people live like that? For her, peace was in the woods when she wandered alone. Where do you find peace in a city that buzzes night and day? She approached the lapping shallows and dropped her clothes where the grass ended. Sliding into the water, she escaped the world, escaped norms and expectations. She welcomed the release and closed her eyes, sinking. A kingfisher rattled a long cry, dropping off his branch to fly across the wide river.

This morning I was getting ready to drive myself to my dentist appointment when I started sensing that old familiar feeling bubbling up in my brain!

I was looking in the mirror when I started to noticed the sparkly scribbles obscuring part of my peripheral vision. This folks, is my classic warning to get ready for some nasueating, skull-boring pain starting out piercing and ending blinding! I've had enough migraines in the past to yield full recognition and immediate action with now only a defeated sigh or a muttered explicative. The first time it happened, however, warranted a trip to the emergency room back when I was in middle school. My mom thought it was a stroke when her daughter started slurring her words and couldn't coherently read the newspaper comics out loud. Today though I calmly rifled through through the clutter of my room seeking out the migraine pill stash that I prayed hadn't been a figment of my imagination. I found them and popped two amphetamine-jacked green and white gel tabs and amused myself for a moment as I tried to catch my eye up with the spot of shimmering nothing-ness that jumped around my field of view, always just out of reach. The pain hadn't hit yet but my digestive tract was beginning to regret my morning yogurt and granola. I calculated the amount of time I had until I needed to drive my mom's stick shift to my appointment and decided that the blindness should be ending within the next twenty minutes and the onslaught of pain should be dampered, though slightly, enough to allow me to drive with my faculties more or less functioning. I made it without a hitch but was soon cursing myself as I laid in the dentist chair listening to, for a good ten minutes of blinding migraine agony, what a bad decision it is to not following a regular flossing regime. Lady, I could not giving a damn about what I might be allowing to proliferate in the dark crevices between my teeth and the shame of it all, now either hit me over the head unconscious with that blaring light you have penetrating my brain and igniting the depths of this excruciating pain rising up within me or bring on the laughing gas, stat.

If I follow my mind's path, it will take me into oblivion. I'm following it now because I can't sleep. Writing shall be my outlet. When you're walking through the forest, passing birch trees with their smooth trunks marred by engraved initials encircled by hearts, what can you do but wonder? When you lay down to sleep and can't stop the endless whir of thoughts passing across your consciousness, what can you do but get up, run downstairs, grab your computer, grab some pretzels and start loudly crunching while tapping away? I can already feel my eyes drying out, the dull ache through my temples from staring at the screen. Where will writing get me? Who knows but I really just spent the past half hour trying to draw a beech tree trunk. I didn't even get to the graffiti yet and I'm already disgusted with it. Okay, well another hour and a half later and I sorta got what I was going for. So here it is...

I think I'll be able to sleep now...

2.5.10

So I had my first day of teaching English! It was quite an experience..my primero vez teaching in a classroom and I was lucky to have a partner in crime. Cristobal de Carolina de Nor arrived on Monday, a volunteer from the States who heard about Loma Linda and came to lend a hand for a week. And just in time! My first class was with a room FULL of ninos, probably about 40 kids between the ages 4-8 and I had them for two hours of “How-are-you?” “I-am-good” “Good-morning” “Welcome” again and again and again. Just a handful of sentences repeated and repeated, taking turns between me and them or one side of the class to another, pointing at each other on the “YOU” and at themselves for the “I”. Two hours of this. Two hours. If I didn’t have Chris there to help keep everybody in line (he took the title of Crowd Control), I think I might have just run screaming for the hills. Aside from the fact that their yelling in unison sometimes melded together into “How are GOOD!” and “I am YOU!”, I know they left having learned at least something because the next day I had many “Buenas dias, Stacey!”s. So what did we learned? Two hours is way too long for a room full 45 very small children and the differences between the ages is vast enough that a lot of the youngsters got lost in the bustle. Our solution: Break the class up into two one-hour classes, the younger youngsters first and the olders second. When we finished, we both completely collapsed. Pascual and Rosa were there too and now and then Pascual lent a hand in wrangling back their attention as well. Never would I have been able to do that alone..maybe in the future but not the first time having ever done something like this every before in my life! Whew! I was kind of nervous for the afternoon class with the adults and older students but man, those two hours went so smooth and it was a fantastic group! Several members of ASODILL, Pascual and two of his daughters, a handful of teachers and a good group of teenagers who already had a good base knowledge. We spent some time on greetings and, while it felt patronizing to have them repeat and repeat and repeat,but they were wonderful and we joked and laughed and it was so laid back and we aNUNciated (wowweeerrrr) and I made all kinds of silly faces in the process repeating the sounds of the letters..R and T being some of the more difficult for them..and I found I really used my whole body in the process, to emphasize with hands waving and bouncing my knees on each syllable. It was great! We did the whole alphabet together, one letter at a time and it really was fun! I’d say the letter and they’d repeat it back, we’d do that 4 or five times and for the harder letters I walked to each desk and had every student repeat it back to me. I have no idea where all the energy came from because I did NOT sleep the night before (anxious girl not able to turn her brain off, nervous for her first day of being a teacher..) but man, I felt exuberant at the end of it, absolutely ecstatic! And I pretty much did it all by myself! I really felt proud of myself as we walked back up the street under a light drizzle and we just had to stop and gaze at the mountains, draped in clouds. It was a perfect vista to end a grand adventure of a day. Oh, I almost forgot! Rosa made us a celebratory “congrats on your first day of teaching” banana bread cake for dessert and yes, it was heaven on earth.

Sunday: Today I took Cristobal up to the wall waterfall and it has really amped up since last week with all the rain we’ve had! The walk to it is so lush and gorgeous, Chris is as in love with this place as I am and as all the other volunteers are who have had the luck of finding this beautiful haven tucked away up in the mountains. Sundays are my days off and oh what a day! Fruit filled: papaya for breakfast, bought some mangos to die for from the tienda up the street that we snacked on at the waterfall, that afternoon were each gifted a bolsa-full of bananas that afternoon courtesy of Conrado. I went for my first jog (Oh, so long awaited. I love my exercise and have so far not been brave enough to set out, as jogging isn’t a common thing, but as I’m getting to know the community, I figure they already think I’m strange enough so so what if this ups the anty?). I trekked up the steep hill and was managed to keep a steady pace despite the rough incline. I got up to the cancha de futbol (soccer field) and made 10 turns around the field to the giggles and banter of some local teenage boys goofing off around the far goal. As I finished up, some girls were arriving to play futbol and I asked if I could join. They were really nice and a couple were my English class students who chose me to play on their team (aw!) though I told them they actually really didn’t want me on their team. But I held my own, my offense is a disaster (I have no idea how to dribble) but I run fast and am aggressive enough that I was able to snag the ball a couple of times on defense and I even made a goal! Sure, I also fell flat on my side and got a punt right between the eyes (third golpe in four months on these glasses and they’re still in one piece!) but it was a blast! I skipped down the trail in wonderful spirits and joined Chris who was sitting on the steps of the deck of the albergue (volunteer hotel). We talked for about five minutes before a group of little boys came up and we kidded around with them a bit (they’re rascals, totally whisper and giggle and when you ask their name they’ll say some word or another, trying to keep a straight face and you know they’re trying to get you to say something you might rather not if you even knew what it meant!). A teenage girl walked up to us with two bags full of something and said her uncle Conrado sent her to deliver us bananas(!!!). This was a dream come true and so well timed as just that morning we were discussing our desire for bananas. Pascual had tons about a month ago but we finally finished them and his next harvest hasn’t ripened yet. We were beside ourselves and trying to express our gratitude when she added further to this to ask if we wanted to come up to the house to try “morados”, or purple bananas. So we went up to the house and found Conrado (on of my favorite ASODILL members, he’s younger and just the most smiling, genuine, thoughtful, intelligent guy that it’s just an absolute pleasure to be friends with, I’m being gushy but he’s just so freaking nice!). He introduced us around his house and we sat and talked with his abuelos for awhile and then he offered to take us to meet the rest of his family who all live in a line of houses up on the ridge. They were all great and we sat and talked with everyone, one house after another, explaining why we were here and raving about Loma Linda and its inhabitants. This was great for me, to get meeting more of the community and they were all so genuinely thankful for our presence, for our desire to be there to help. Each house welcomed us in and we talked the afternoon away, overlooking the beautiful vista, drinking café con leche and getting to know better this beautiful community. What could be better?

3.5.10

Whew! So I’m halfway through my first day teaching Environmental Education. I did two one-hour long classes this morning with segundo y tercero basico (between 5 and 7 years-ish) and I literally winged it since I didn’t really have any good lesson plans to work off of and since it is the first day I really just wanted to get an idea of what the kids already know. Well, I first went into describing what the terms nature and environment meant and then I described the difference between domestic and wild animals. I had them give me examples of each and tell me what kinds of animals they’ve seen out in the hills surrounding community. They were all very gung ho to pipe up whatever animal came to mind and I felt secure knowing I once again had my crowd control Cristobal there for back-up but, luckily, since it was an actual school day the level of chaos was minimal in comparison to the weekend English lesson. So anyways, I had imagined that this discussion/lesson plan I’d created was going to take a lot longer than it actually did (in contrast with the English classes where you can repeat the same thing back and forth for what seems like ever!) so I suddenly found I had to improvise on what to finish out the second half of the class with. I decided to dive into the food web. This was fun because I had them call out ideas and I’d draw the different groups up on the board, which they got a kick out of: first with plants/fruit/flowers/trees/leaves; then various critters that feed on the flora; followed by birds and mammals that eat the insects and critters; and finally the carnivores that eat the birds and smaller animals…and then I turned it into a web, pointing out that birds and mammals also eat the fruits and plants, etc. and then I asked them if they could think of one animal that is found in just about all corners of the world and that feeds upon all of the various groups in the web..a kind of animal that live in cities, wears clothes…a few more hints and then there was a lightbulb-Humans! So I drew us in and had arrows going to all the appropriate spots, always asking the kids if they remembered what the arrows between the groups symbolized. The kids really got into it and I felt like I left them with a better idea of how we are all connected and that all parts of nature depend on each other..if you cut down all the forests you cut out a part of the web and those that depend on the lost part will die and this is why we have to share the environment, we can’t just use it all up ourselves and why it is important to set aside protected areas for wildlife to live. The second class went even better than the first and I finished my second hour with great feelings of success all around! It was fun, I actually might even kind of sort of like this new “profession” I’ve stumbled into. It also gives me a whole new respect for the actual professionals who do this every day, all day. Kudos, kudos, kudos. Two hours in a row is just about all I think I can handle, thank you very very much! Luckily I have from 10am til 4pm to recoup before I have to step into the secondary school and teach a class of thirteen/fourteen year olds. I’m quite a bit more nervous since this is getting into more of a difficult age where you can’t charm them with cute drawings on the board. We’ll just have to see how it goes, stay tuned!

It wasn’t so bad! In fact, it was really pretty great. I went more in depth on the theme of medio ambiente and all that it consists of-both living and non-living elements. The kids were taking notes and some of them were really on the ball, answering my questions and really thinking about the answers. I decided to keep the drawings and the kids really enjoyed them, it was a hit! I felt a lot more comfortable, on par with the age group (between 13 and 16) and they were totally patient and helpful with my Spanish although I actually felt pretty fluid throughout the entire class and to have the teacher to pitch in with some key words (“red trofico”-trophic web, or food web). Oh and to top it off, despite the teacher, I ran totally solo! Chris decided he didn’t really need to be there since even with the a.m. classes he didn’t really have to help much at all and, though I so appreciated his help, I felt great that I could walk in there and run a truly one-girl-show! I had a lot more notes prepared to make sure that I had enough to keep rolling along through the whole hour and it ended up I had more than enough and suddenly the hour was over and I still had more to say! Nonetheless, I was able to cut it short with style and the round of applause brought it to a close. Walking up the street with the onset of a cloud shrouded evening among a crowd of kids in their crisp uniforms and bantering back and forth phrases in English, I was happy to have made it through the day having completed another experience along this winding road that has so many surprises around every bend.

27.4.10

So I have reached my Happy One Month Anniversary of Peace Corps Volunteerdom! The saying is that the days go by slow and the weeks fly, and I have to say, I am totally de acuerdo. Sometimes I’m thinking, how in the heck is it still buenas dias and not buenas tardes?! And next thing I know, another week has flown by. Well, since I last wrote, I managed to survive a lovely case of Giardia..couldn’t go the hour on the camioneta into town to get my medicine. I suffered an additional day’s (suffering) wait after a failed attempt to get one of the ayudantes (the wingman that helps the bus drivers) to pick up my meds from the farmacia (I didn’t give him enough money, it was more expensive than we’d thought). Finally we sent Claudio, my counterpart to get it and it was worth paying extra to support his lost day of work because I felt like crapola and was ready to be better. So that over with, I am not into my first week of scheduled work..and it’s keeping me busy indeed. Unfortunately, there are always deviations to the best laid plan…Mondays are suppose to be my aviturismo days where I’ll take the guides out, one or a few at a time, and we go birdwatching! Basically I’ll teaching them to spot and identify birds, learn the names in English and how to find them in the bird books, etc. So anyways, this Monday, I’d intended to start by taking out Pascual but instead I learned that there was a package arrived for me and I had to go to El Palmar to pick it up. Can’t say I was too disappointed though, knowing I had goodies waiting for me, sent by a certain loving maternal relation. So early that morning I hopped onto the camioneta and rode the hour down to Cuatro Caminos where I switched buses to bring me to the entrance to El Palmar (some 25min) where I hailed a microbus to bring me 10min into the small town. I get off at the post office and find that I have to wait an hour because it was way too early for it to even think of being open and I hadn’t even considered the possibility til I walked up to the dark building. So I sat and read in the park (Mansfield Park, this being the book I was reading, not the park I was sitting in…Jane Austen) til 8:30 and still the place showed no signs of life. I asked some ladies sitting in the park and they told me it wouldn’t be opened til 9am. Sigh. So I walked around town and found a tienda where I bought some cookies and placticar-ed (chatted) with the man behind the counter, Gregorio, who told me about his time living in the states before he got deported. He showed me some really cute white kittens for sale in a wooden crate. I went back to see if the PO was open and still no. The women told me it’d be better if I just went to Dona Mirian’s house, the postmaster. So following their directions, I found myself back at the store and got additional directions from Gregorio and found I’d gone too far when I asked some other ladies, one of which was so kind as to walk me to the street I’d missed. I knocked on the door and her husband answered and informed me Mirian goes into Xela every Monday. But I was in luck because for some reason my package was there in the house! He knew who I was and what I was there for pretty much right off the bat. I wondered why my package was there instead of the post office..I felt better thinking special extra secure treatment for the blundering gringa. Without asking questions, I signed a form, showed my Peace Corps ID and got my chocolate.

Today, Tuesday is scheduled to be my day in the escuela teaching Environmental Education to the students. I’ll teach in the mornings in the Escuela Primario and in the afternoons to students in Secondario. Each week I’ll teach different grades for a cycle that repeats every three weeks. I’m in charge of the content of the course and I’ll adjust the complexity of each week’s theme to cater accordingly to the different age levels. This is kind of a big deal for me..I’m actually pretty nervous. I’m a nature girl, at home in the woods..my work has all been with birds, quietly studying them out in whatever wonderfully remote field location I’ve shipped myself off to. I’ve never been a teacher! So today I went to work out the details with the teachers and I walk into the schoolyard and suddenly I’ve got thirty little bitties surrounding me yelling out their names and asking if I remembered them and asking how to say things in English. I was charmed by the bitties, they are darn cute and I think I can have some good fun teaching them about nature. Nonetheless, I’m still anxious! How to begin (where do you begin?? There is so much information!), how to keep their attention, how to deal with the difficult students, how to decide how in-depth to go, how to get the message across..?!? Not to mention it’s all in Spanish. This is not my first language, people. But this is Peace Corps. You get thrown into something and you do all you can to keep afloat. I love nature. I love birds and I want to share my passion and create awareness, open minds to our surroundings and how we affect them, share how we should treat this mother earth of ours in order to ensure a better future. It’s all just a matter of how eloquently I can get all this across, all with a fair share (this I’m sure) of stumbling along the way.

Cool things-Saw a hummingbird attach himself to a rock wall to bathe in a gentle section of one of our beautiful waterfalls. And common bush tanagers hopping around in some viny growth that clung to the same wall and I watched as they shook and squirmed under the water drops that rained down on them in a natural shower. We had a visit at the house from a Morelet´s Tree Frog that hopped into the pila on a dark, thunderstormy night.

Sorry for the lack of photography. I will make up for it soon!

Week of Sunday 5th of April:

Life has been busy here in my mountain ridge-top community. I’ve gotten to work with Eduardo in the lombricompost operation where I played with worms for half a day. Red coquettes, they’re called and we shoveled the fruit pulp (the discarded skins of the coffee beans from this year’s harvest) to the pileras (big troughs) to mix with the worms, presenting them their feast. After a week, you stir; this is making sure the upper layer is incorporated down below so the worms get at every bit of the fruit waste in order to convert it to pure fertilizer, abono. The worms like to stay below where it is moist and comfy, so this ensures all of the waste gets processed. They eat the pulp and poop out rich, homogenized abono..pure dirt full of nutrients that we then bagged in costales (large nylon bags) that are then sold for 25 or 30 quetzales to the community. The coffee production cooperative is divided into the families that decided to go conventional and those that decided to produce purely organic coffee, using chemicals in neither their fertilizer nor their forms of pest control. The fertilizer they buy is what we are producing here with our worms and their pest control are bottles with one side cut out and, inside, hangs a smaller bottle of aguardiente (alcohol) with a strong sweet smell. The big bottle was painted red and that, along with the sweet odor, attracts the brocas, the coffee pests. They fly into the bottle and when they are inside, looking for the source of the smell, they fall to the bottom where lies a bit of water with soap that they then drown in. Pretty nifty device, and I’m told it traps countless brocas, which burrow into the coffee berries and feast on the granitas, or coffee beans.

Been having various meetings and lots of talk with Rosa, Pascual and the rest of the gang on ideas for what I will be doing to keep busy for the next two years. So far we are boiling up some ideas including that one day a week I’ll go out with a different tour guide and we’ll go birding for the day. The guides, Claudio, Keller, Eduardo, are in the very beginning stages of being capable of hosting bird tours. They know only a handful of the species found here and know them only by their local names. The problem is that all they have are 2 pair of practically useless secondhand binoculars and not a bird guide(or any nature guides, for that matter) to speak of (yes this would be me unabashedly hinting: donations are much appreciated! Or if anyone has any connections or suggestions to a means of obtaining this much-needed equipment..). For now though, my job is to teach them how to find and identify species and how to go about conducting a successful bird tour. Another of my duties will be to work with my counterpart Claudio on constructing interperative materials for the trails, signs that identify the trails and give interesting and useful information as well as informative pamphlets , what species visitors should encounter on their hike. I’m going to be working very in-depth on finding and obtaining grants with Pascual, to which one day each week will be dedicated. We don’t have the best access to internet at the moment, despite the newly raised internet “cafe”..the reception here on our ridge is quite lacking. Sin embargo, we (being the association) are working on installing a different device that has proven to work and we are hoping to be affordable. Vamos a ver. Another duty of mine will be..English classes! Pascual has the idea of me teaching 0-7yr olds (hopefully more on the 7yr side than the 0yr side..!) since that’s when the brain is most accommodating in learning a language, once you reach 7 years, the brain is full, as declared Pascual, after proclaiming himself a psychologist. I am de acuerdo that teaching youngsters yields better result but I think we can be more flexible on the range. So far that’s what we have for filling my weeks, I think another day will be dedicated to working with the tour guide group on projects they’ve devised but that will depend on what time they have since every day working for ASODILL is a day lost of working their parcels which they depend on for income. This is why we are working so hard at this, though, to provide this community with another source of income.

In other news, we’ve had another visitor: Luisa from Canada. She is a slightly older woman full of energy and love for this community. She originally met Pascual and Rosa through her work with EntreMundos, the NGO that promotes community development and human rights. After she left that organization, she lived here for 3 months and contributed a great deal of time and effort in obtaining money through grant applications. They were successful and much of that money went toward building the albergue (4 room hotel with a kitchen up by the church) where visiting volunteers stay. She came back and spent a week with us and we spent several nights going over the funds we still have and how they should be delegated. Additionally, we spent a day hiking up to the community reserve, a 35 hectare parcel of land owned by the community that is solely left for nature. The land is restricted for cultivation and we were interested in visiting it to get an idea of the terrain and see how it differs from the rest of the land which is all plantation. It was about a 3-4hr hike (turned 5hrs for our interest in the birds and plants along the way) to “la cruz” which marks the community limit. Well, I have to say, I was disappointed! As soon as we crossed into the boundry of the reserve, we discovered the entire understory to be packed with some wildly invasive species of bamboo. This was so disheartening because I had imagined primary growth forest and instead was wrestling my way through this monoculture landscape that was only peppered with a handful of larger trees. Now, we didn’t get around to view the entire 35 hectares so I can’t say it all was this way but I had to explain to Rosa and Pascual that night how this was not a natural landscape and that it would be necessary and difficult to remove. I don’t know what species of bamboo this is but I am sure it is an exotic species, not natural to Guatemala. The degree to which it was taking over the understory leaves no room for the native species to grow and create a diverse and natural habitat with a wide variety of sources of food for the birds and animals of the area. I told Rosa that I’d like to go back and explore more. I discussed the possibility of going up and spending a night there so I could explore early the next morning and get an idea of the surrounding birdlife (we arrived too late in the day so it was very quiet). This would also be my change to get an idea of the extent of growth of the bamboo. Oh but I was sad! This is the plot of land they are so proud to be protecting and they are initiating efforts in which to governmentally declare it a Protected Area and they had no idea of the predicament it is in! To their credit, it is a long way away and therefore rarely visited. I am now curious to identify the species of bamboo and get an idea of what kind of situation we are faced with. There are possibilities of using the bamboo, as we already have been offered by FUNDAP, a Guatemalan agency that supports small community in ecotourism development, classes in construction with bamboo. Well we have our ravenously renewable resource right there up on the mountain!

Other fun things I’ve done include an evening hike with Claudio and Luis to a nearby waterfall. This was my first visit to this particular falls and wow, what a treasure! It is basically a large wall of chipped, dark rock and while the falls at the moment are greatly reduced, a month from now that will all change with the beginning of the rainy season. We watched emerald toucanets and chased some frogs. Claudio caught one and I got some pictures. We were trying to find out what was about as Luisa has a great interest in amphibian life. The volcano, while out of site, was sending up cloud castles that were lovely in the evening light.

Another day I worked with Claudio behind the albergue digging out the mud that had compacted up against the back wall after the heavy rains. We dug a trench to direct the water away so as to keep the hotel safe and the kitchen from being inundated (again!). Three hours of lifting a heavy pickaxe to break up the encrusted dirt and I was spent! Had to drag myself home.

Spent an afternoon in a meeting with members of ASODILL to construct an ecotourism diagnostic which evaluates the “what we have and what we lack” in the program. I went through the form provided to me by Peace Corps and the group helped me fill in the blanks. It was a fun and interesting activity and I feel like I’m getting more comfortable with the members as I interact with them.

Week of 11th of April

This week will be forever known as “the constantly sitting in a microbus, never to escape as we travel on every last windy bumpy road of Guatemala to destinations unknown” week. Despite my aching back, it was a very interesting and fun experience and I learned a little more each day about Guatemalans themselves. So here’s how it all began. ASODILL, which is the Asociacion for Sustainable Development here in our little community. Rosa is the president, Pascual the coordinator and the idea is to provide the community with other means of income and employment since the coffee production they rely so heavily on isn’t sufficient nor sustainable. By starting an ecotourism program, they hope to better the economy here in an environmentally friendly way. So here comes FUNDAP, a Guatemalan-run foundation for the development of socio-economic programs, they have a branch that specifically assists communities that want to start ecotourism programs and FUNDAP has been assisting this aldea for the past two years. Their main assistance is to provide trainings and workshops, almost always paid-for. This is fantastic and they’ve already had capacitaciones for the tour guides, as well as provided opportunities for members of ASODILL to go to other communities to learn about lombricompost and organic gardening. They’ve also provided ASODILL with a lawyer at a reduced cost to help them become a legally recognized NGO. Pretty amazing, huh? So here comes little Sally Peace Corps thinking she’s gonna save the world and she finds out it’s already being done! Well, I can’t say I’m disappointed because my job certainly doesn’t suddenly become meaningless. There is still much to be done, much that I can help with with a focus more on the personal things, like what I listed before as my duties: bird guide training, helping with interpretive trail development, English classes..and besides, little Sally can’t save the world all by her lonesome, right? Ademas, I also realized this week that my being here already has helped direct some thoughts in a more reasonable direction, not because I’m Miss. Know-All, but solely because I have a background in biology and just as Rosa always tells me, she doesn’t know anything in this area. But more on that later.

So back to the story of my week: FUNDAP offered an opportunity for Rosa and 2 other members of ASODILL to attend a trip to several ecotourism sites in Alta Vera Paz this past week and I managed to squirm my way into the deal! Some of the other communities that were to attend backed out and so there was space for an extra little gringa! So on Tuesday we hopped onto a camioneta to Xela and FUNDAP headquarters, 3-4hrs away, and spent the night in a hotel to leave at 4:30am the following morning in a FUNDAP microbus with 17 others like us, eager to see a different land and learn some more about ecotourism. Only thing we didn’t know was that the trip was going to take 17 hours! We did stop for meals (which the organization graciously covered for me) but man it was a long, long day. We were on our way to Laguna Lachua (look it up!) and turned out the time it took to get there was much longer than anyone imagined. But let me say, the group in that bus, despite how tired, despite how every time we asked someone on the road how much longer and they said mediahora and it turned into 3, they continued to remain in high spirits, rowdy and laughing, turning a frustrating situation into jokes and good humor. It was pretty darn great. Haha, best part was, we get there at 9:00 in the night and the wildly cheerful tour guide gaily informs us that we have an hour hike in to where the sleeping cabins are! And I was once again heartened to watch this awesome group of folk grab their things and get walking. The guide said the women should have brought boots when she saw them all wearing fancy sandals (which is all I’ve seen any of the women in my community don). What made me doubly heartened and pleased and proud was that when she told the group that the women could stay behind and enjoy a comfortable night here and not wear themselves with the hike, the 5 ladies took to the trail and, in all honesty, with their fancy sandals, ran the men into the ground! Rock on. The hike was great, I was in between people with flashlights and happy to be moving and not sitting (17hrs on my butt in one day is more than sufficient, thanks). Too bad it wasn’t light to enjoy the bosque silvestre but I was able to enjoy the sound of the insects and the feel of the rain on my skin. The lodge was impressive-2 floors, comfortable beds, a dining salon. Despite how tired we were, after downing some ready-made tamales we followed the guide down the trail that opened to a boardwalk that went out onto the edge of the laguna. The night rang with the sound of frog chirrups. We shined our flashlights into the clear waters and saw fish and a teeny tiny crocodile! I didn’t look at the clock as I crawled into my mosquito net-adorned bed.

Next morning I rose with the sun and walked about to take in the birdlife. I was surrounded by my North American family: wood thrushes, catbirds, Baltimore oriole, magnolia warbler, american redstart, spotted sandpipers..they’ll all be gone in a month. I’ll be sending my love with them so when you see one of these buggers come May, listen carefully! We breakfasted on tamales and I almost resisted the temptation to join the ladies for a dip in the laguna after the men had had their loud fun and calander pictures in their bathing suits, posing on the rocks. They all left and we stripped down and hopped in to the warm, clear waters (from what I could understand from the guide, there’s no worry of crocodiles in the daytime, don’t ask me why). It was deeeelightful! We paddled around, climbed onto the rocks and dove in, took pictures, felt clean again after the sweaty day before packed in a microbus. We packed up afterwards and took to a trail that looped back to the visitors center. On our way I wasn’t able to birdwatch since we were behind schedule but we did stop under a tree with two howler monkeys which peered down upon us as we peered up. Big momma and a lil’ baby. Ain’t no monkeys where I live. Sigh. But we have quetzals! Which you need to be up in the mountains for, so ha. We drove around some more to 2 different farms, one that has it’s own lagoons on the property which we hiked to. This area has petroleum underground and luckily this community has their natural areas protected so they don’t drill here as they do in some of the surrounding territories. This farm, Finca Salinas, is where Chad works, my old buddy from San Antonio who is one lucky bugger for getting this as his sight! Unfortunately we didn’t get to reunite since he was otherwise occupied that day but I got to tell him on the phone of my envy! It was interesting, the guides showed us the second lagoon which was, and I cross my heart, pepto bismol pink. And the guides told us that the color changes, one will be pink and then go greenish or normal and another will turn. Chad told me that’s one of the things he wants to figure out right away. Right? We figured it was for the petroleum underground, maybe some kind of chemical effect, but man! Didn’t see any wildlife in the pink one but the other had turtles and waterbirds. Weird, weird, weird. Chad has his own blog, btw, I think you can find it on Peace Corps Journals. And anyone who wants to report back on if this is found in other locales, feel free to comment here because I’ll probably forget when I go into town and get on the net. We also visited a finca where they were in the beekeeping business. This is something that would be cool to start here, something I want to look in to because Rosa is gung ho. We have bees. We have flowers. Honey tastes good. The day was warm and, unfortunately we had to book, once again. Back into the microbus for a 5hr ride back to Coban. It was a shame that we spent more time in the bus than learning and exploring but it was definitely a great time had at the laguna. We reached the city around 9pm after winding curving bumping swerving up and down the dirt roads that seem to go on forever through the hilly country. Rosa and I were suffering, our backs and necks and tailbones not too happy with the condition of the road, not to mention the microbus was a low rider and therefore had it’s share of suffering as well. We slept in Coban and woke up early the next morning to hit the road again (not again!) for the 8hr (I think..maybe 9?) trip (these all seem quite long but it helps that I’m not mentioning that part of the time is spent eating and on pee breaks..) to Xela. We then walked across the city, the ASODILL crew to where we were to meet the son of a neighbor or Rosa’s who drives his microbus to visit his family every Friday at 6pm. So back into another (not so crowded!! though shock absorbers were not included in the construction of this clunker..) microbus. So! 2 ½ hrs later we were Hooooome!! Whuddaweek. One to remember.

Over and out.

PS. Yes, this is turning into my journal. My apologies to those who were bored and if you totally just skimmed the whole thing I sure don’t blame ya.

So our last week back in the comfort of familiarity was short and packed. Monday we didn’t get to the headquarters because of a bus strike happening in Guate, the city. This was great for us, San Antonio and Santa Caterina hung out for the day: we played bananagrams at Leo’s house, hit the internet café and hung in our central park, reading and catching up on journal entries. Tuesday was a bunch of wrap up in the office, last words, tips, safety advice, rules. I bought “Que Rico” which is the Peace Corps Guatemala Volunteer cook book. I can’t wait til I have my own kitchen and can cook all ‘dem recipes for myself. Wednesday we jumped around to our various towns to get a last look at everyone’s project. We had a nice little temblador, bitty-earthquake, in the middle of the day that Fife’s family had been predicting for several days and he’d been warning us all morning there was an earthquake going to happen today and whaddyaknow, they were right! We were all mightily impressed. Thursday, though, was the icing on the cake: Swearing In! Fourty-four Peace Corps Trainees camioneta-ed, tuk-tuked, microbused and drove with our familes to Hotel Antigua where we all sat on a gorgeous day, dressed up to the nines and were officially inducted into the glorious world of Peace Corps Volunteerdom! And we have diplomas to show for it! Mama Tina came with me and her daughter-in-law Elsa to see my graduation. Afterwards we took our families out for lunch at a pizza joint, Jordan, Chad, Kate and I and our family members. For the afternoon, we took last pictures around the fountain, all the women in their beautiful huipiles, and parted ways..Peace Corps volunteers, finally on our very own! From here on out we are no longer going to be babied, to have every hour of our day scheduled out for us, no more private PC microbuses ferrying us around, nope. We aren’t trainees anymore, they’ve open their cupped hands and are letting us jump off into oblivion, hoping they’ve taught us enough that these wings will carry us aloft, on to our new lives.

31.3.10

OMG. So I got here on the last bus of the day (round 2pm after many more hours on the squished camionetas) and right off the bat I jumped into the life of my lovely aldea which right now is in Semana Santa, full swing. I didn’t even get my bags unpacked before the loudspeaker call down at the school drew nearly the entire community to join in the procession. I walked with Rosa and three of her daughters and her nephew in one of the two lines of folk slowly making their way up the cobblestone calle towards the church at the top of the hill. The afternoon was lovely, clouds sat over the lush mountains on either side of us and I felt otherworldly. Well I am otherworldly I guess, being the only one with pelo rubio y piel blanco among a sea of beautiful chestnut-skinned, dark haired gente. I was passed a handful of thick grasses and followed suit when I saw the others bending them over into loops and tying them into upsidown teardrops. A group of young men at the head of the line played guitars and women walked behind them singing . We walked slow and stopped intermittently and the encargados would rush to plug the microphone into the nearest house and speak words about God and living peaceful lives with good intentions. We walked up the steps of the church and passed inside. We found our seats and for two hours listened to words from the preacher, stories read from scripture, music and song…I was exhausted but content. This was my new community and I’m here to stay.

Monday: I went with Eduardo down the mountain to the river, running clear and gorgeous on this lovely morning. We met up with Pascual, Claudio and Luis and set to work making a trail that followed (and sometimes crossed) the river. I moved monte (weeds/brush) while Pascual cut his way through the jungle-y mix. We made our way to the first waterfall and there we opened up the pool beneath it, moving tons of big rocks to create a larger area for people to ploop around in. We covered the pathway in black sand from the river and poma, white lava stone that floats on the river surface and collects among the rocks. We worked til about 1:30 and had a snack on the riverbank (bananas, pan and tortillas with something yummy in between). After lunch Pascual and I got to work on our mueble, a shelving unit made from wood boards. Professional carpenters that we were, it took a lot of trial and error. A lot! We worked for 3 hours and I collapsed into bed around 7:30pm

Tuesday: I had a lazy morning of catching up on reading and my journal and looking through some of the mountains of electronic information that Peace Corps gives us (on everything from building trails, to developing NGOs, to how to build a bottle school and more). Afterwards, around 10pm I headed over to Eduardo’s house to watch the process of making pan (bread). As part of the Semana Santa tradition, the community shares in the making of loads and loads of sweet bread. Those who can afford to buy all the ingredients and spend several days making all manner of shapes, sizes, designs and flavors of pan and those who couldn’t afford to make the bread make dolls out of trash. The dolls symbolize Judas which they parade around from house to house with rackety noisemakers, whistles and masks carrying Judas on their shoulders and demanding pan in a loud chaos filled group at your door. But back to the pan. I met Fernando, Eduardo’s brother who told me all about the oven and how it’s made of clay and bricks and lime and it’s HUGE! A big igloo-like thing that almost filled the whole room, set on a brick base. He was the man in charge of the fire and the gaggle of women to either side were working furiously, rolling out bolas of egg-yellow maza, or dough, and rolling, cutting and twisting them into different designs, sometimes adding a more sugary design on top. As soon as I offered to join in, I was donning an apron and wetting my hands with grease and clumsily rolling out bolas and mimicking the designs that the ladies and girls showed me. After we filled three long shelves full of bread ready to bake, Fernando started pushing them into the oven as Margarita or Juaquina brought over the pans laden with pan. He used a long stick with a hook on the end, pushing and placing strategically so that he could retrieve those fully baked while still having room for the unbaked. Next I found myself joining Dona Emelia, an old woman who just about put me to shame with her endurance in mixing the maza. Bent over a wooden trough full of flour, oil, butter, egg, vanilla we hand mixed for what seemed like ever, my back ached and I was just about dripping sweat into the dough. Margarita tied back my hair for me and the heat of the oven and the work was extreme. But every time I looked over at Emelia, I knew that I wasn’t about to stop! I lasted two batches and felt pretty darn good, it was such a fun time! Laughing over how obvious it was which breads were mine and feeling such kindness from the women as they presented me a plate full of the breads we’d made together. It was a lovely time, a wonderful experience. That afternoon I shared my bread with my family and Pascual and I got back to work on our mueble. It’s getting there, little by little, the mistakes aren’t too devastating and we get a good laugh out of calling ourselves expertos y profesionales. When he said we were the grandest carpenters, he got a huge kick out of me adding “in this room”. That evening we got a visitor! Neil, an English man who is touring Central America and had already passed through town several months ago for a handful of days and now is back and hoping to stay a bit longer. He, Pascual, Rosa and I had dinner and talked way past my bedtime (9:30!) and had all kinds of interesting conversation about the community and other things.

Wednesday: Went out with Pascual to his terreno, the plot of land he owns and grows coffee, fruits and harvests his firewood from. We spent all morning there, collecting and planting seeds, harvesting fruits and greens, viewing his wide range of cultivars: plantain, banana, macadamias, limes, guisquil, mangoes (no, not ripe at the moment unfortunately). It was, aside from getting eaten alive by bugs, a grand time. I heard a black throated green warbler singing, doesn’t the little bugger know it’s not spring yet? Not to mention has a long way to travel back up to the states before he should be thinking about finding himself a sweetheart! Back home we lunched on guisquil and greens we’d harvested (and, of course, pan now that there’s a neverending supply). Afterwards Pascual put more time in on our mueble which is now practically complete: two long top shelves (which we’re going to put a division in, as support), a line of cubby holes down one side and a bar on the other for hanging my clothes. It’s fantastic! Now I gotta put some shalack on it (varnish, I dunno, something to make it look pretty and keep the termites from eating it..they’ve already discovered it since the desk in my room is infested..I just killed one in my bed right now…don’t worry we’re moving the desk tomorrow..). After we finished there, Pascual had to help Rosa prepare 10 chickens for tomorrow, i.e. kill ‘em dead. Being a good Peace Corps Volunteer, I asked if I could try. Well, I’ll just say, the killing was the easy part. Messy yes, but once that was over with I had to pluck her clean (after submerging it in boiling water), even her head, then I gave the whole body a good scrub with soap. Next I cut off the head and legs at the “knees” and cut into the upper chest to pull out the swallowing tube (bear with me) and then into the abdomen to extract all the innards. Next I cut off the beak and got the rest of the swallowing tube and the tongue and put the legs in boiling water for a few moments and was able to strip off the scaley yellow skin. I cut off the toenails and added the legs to the “for keeps” pile with the head and body. I found my way through the innards and cut the gizzard apart from the strong muscle that surrounds it and scrubbed the muscle clean and added that to the pile as well as the heart and liver. There you go! Tomorrow I’m gonna eat it and, with all this written down, I’ll know how to do it again in the future. Hopefully I’ll have a few more practice runs, though, before I try it myself. Throughout the afternoon and evening Judas dolls came knocking at our door followed by hoards of masked children working homemade noisemakers, blowing whistles and yelling. Melbet and Josaphina, the two youngest sisters ran with me to the door, shoving a small round loaf of bread into my hands to drop into the bag held open by the smallest of each group. It was really a lot like Halloween but much more exciting. There was always a moment of shock when they saw a gringo come to the door, making it all the more fun. Now, with a tummy full of pan, it’s time for bed. ‘Cept I’m not tired. They make the weakest coffee known to man here and adults and children alike drink it every hour of the day and night and if I have it after 5pm, my bedtime is shot. I’ll just have to lay in the dark and scratch my bug bites for an hour or so.

Thursday: Woke up to the sound of the announcer who blares over the loudspeaker from the iglesia every morning around 6am if not earlier. I came out of my room to a flurry of activity around the house, Rosa, Pascual and the kids all hard at work: more chickens. So at 6:30 in the morning I was up to my elbows in feathers as I desplumar-ed (aka defeathered) one chicken after another. After breakfast, Neil and I headed up to the vegetable garden and spent the morning weeding. I enjoyed talking (yes, in English) with my new friend. He has a good bit of experience and insight into the town, having been here before, that he was really quite helpful as I brainstormed possibilities and approaches to project ideas for the next two years. It was a gorgeous day (oh aren’t they all..) we had flocks of parrots zipping across above us, chattering for all the world to hear. Bright green gems, they were. I heard a kiskadee and a Willow Flycatcher (always fun to recognize songs I haven’t heard in a long time) amongst the din of birds I’ve yet to learn and identify. We worked for three hours and the bugs weren’t bad at all and I’m convincing myself I’m getting use to them, whether I am or not..but over the past two nights I haven’t woken up once for scratching! My walk back to the house after we finished was through crowds of masked jóvenes dressed in red symbolizing religious figures. They danced on the basketball cancha surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, another Semana Santa tradition. A masked figure came up to me and began talking in broken English, asking how I liked the town and the festivities. Back at the house we ate, and I must say the chicken was quite good for all the work put into it (and I helped!). Later in the afternoon, we sat around after lunch talking with Rosa and Neil about the coffee production in the town (I learned that all along I’ve been drinking organic coffee straight from beautiful hills that surround us here in my new home!). For the afternoon Neil and I did a bit of exploring around the edges of town that I’d had yet to see. On my way to the albergue where he’s been staying, I was stopped by a lovely old woman who clasped my arm in greeting and asked if I’d eaten. Oh yes, lots of food. And pan? Yes, so much pan during this week of Semana Santa! Did I want some more? Wait here, let me get you some pan! She ran off into her house and was back moments later with three loaflets of pan. I told her about how I’d be here for two years and already was so enchanted by her lovely town. She was so wonderfully sweet, Matilda was her name. I gave Neil a loaf and we went walking. We went down to the river below the cancha and stopped to watch birds for a bit when a young man named Vitrilino came by and, seeing that we were enjoying nature, invited us up to a little overlook for what ended up being a gorgeous view of the thicket. We talked with him for a while and then continued on our way. I shared my binoculars with Neil for him to look at a beautiful glasswinged butterfly but he was so taken with the strength of my binox that he was blown away just looking at leaves! We walked on and found our way up to the cancha de futbol and while talking about our desire to play a boy came out of the woods kicking a soccer ball and, before we knew it, we found ourselves in a match, one goalie, one offense and one defense with Dani as the sun went down behind a shroud of pink clouds. Terrific.

Friday: Woke up today and saw the looong alfombra, the sawdust carpet that the children in the secondary school spent all night creating. They drew out designs and words, flowers and crosses with different colors of dyed asserin. It was quite impressive, all the work they put into it, and the thing covered the entire length of the calle. For the morning they had a religious procession where white robed youths led the community from the church to the school and back, stopping at various points to speak. A group carried a religious shrine adorned in flowers. Later I joined Pascual who led a group of muchachos on a recorrido, or tour, down to the river where we’d improved the trail and build up the pool below the waterfall. The group was in high spirits and down at the water they jumped right in and laughed under the beating cascade. I sat with Conrado, one of the members of the asociación and we talked about all kinds of things. He was bien paciente with my Spanish and we talked for almost an hour while the others played. They shared their gaseosas (sodas) with us and Pascual used his machete to cut up a melon he’d brought. It was beautiful out and the clouds made their way in for a matte afternoon. We climbed back up the tall ridge, serpentining higher and higher til we reached the road leading back to town. The men were really pleased with the tour and already were talking about coming back with friends. This is great because these are our “customers”, they loved our trail and had no objection to paying 15Q each for the experience. Yes, bring your friends, tell others, come back again!

6.4.10

The weekend went well, Saturday a good deal of the community went down to the river for an afternoon of fun. Rosa, Pascual, Josaline, Melbet, Wendy and I hiked down and straight off Wendy and I sloshed into the poza (pool) below the waterfall and stuck our heads under letting loose a few gurgling shrieks as the force of the water as well as the frigidness. I made some attempts at teaching her to swim but mostly she held herself up in the shallows and kicked, not wanting to submerge. My first failure as a Peace Corps volunteer and certainly not the last...but I won’t stop trying! We lunched on guisquil from Pascual’s terreno and what appeared as big juicy mushrooms but rather turned out to be chicken gizzards and the first bite tasted like the death I smelled the day of the killings and the second bite only vaguely hinted at the flavor you and I recognize and love. I decided that was enough. Luckily Melbet lives for any and all manner of carne so I passed it off to her.

Sunday I had the day to myself and did a bit of hiking down the beautiful ridge toward one of Pascual’s parcelas. The view is gorgeous to either side, lush mountain slopes with the volcanoes in the distance. Santiaguito, the active little loaf below the more dominating Santa Maria rumbled throughout the entire day. I saw all kinds of birds including a red-legged honeycreeper, black and white warbler, olive sided flycatcher, warbling vireo, boat billed flycatcher, summer tanager, rose breasted grosbeak, many black throated green warblers (singing still!), common tody flycatcher, black and white warbler, white winged tanager, slate throated redstart…a great morning to drink it all in at my own leisurely pace.

Monday, Neil and I went down and joined Pascual and his son Jonathan down on one of the parcels and we got busy chopping firewood with machetes. The blister popped and yes it still smarts but oh the satisfaction of hacking away with a machete…That afternoon we had the most lovely experience. Neil and I were looking to find Rosalia who was his host “mother” when he last visited. We didn’t find her but ended up chatting awhile with her neighbor Ruth. I love explaining to people that I’m going to be around for the next two years, yep, two whole years! Nope, I’m not leaving in between, two whole years. On our way down the dirt road, we stopped and got to talking with two cute lil’ ones sitting on the stoop of their house, Edmond and Jessica. Well, Rosalia appeared on the road and those two had a little reunion and she told us to come on over to Ismael’s house, next door. We walked in and the whole family was sitting about in the dirt yard and we sat down with Ismael and got to talking. Well I’m totally enamored with this guy, he knows a fantastic deal about the birdlife around the aldea and from his yard he was pointing out everything that flew by and teaching us the names in Spanish. He works for the Asociacion but has been kind of fading out of it due to his other work commitments. He works for Manos Campesinos which is an organic coffee supplier for which he has to travel to Escuintla (2hrs away?) fairly often. Additionally he cuts hair, there at his house (as he points to the ground to what’s left of the last client). So he’s not able to make all the ASODILL meetings and commitments and isn’t always available when they need a tour guide at the last minute. Well I’m hoping that our shared interest (we ended up talking for more than an hour on all things nature, then bleeding into Guatemalan politics..he’s fascinating and has a great deal of knowledge and is very in tuned with the need for nature conservation and awareness) perhaps I can re-initiate his interest and commitment. Before we left, he, Neil took out his camera wanting some goodbye pictures and we took all manner of pictures with different combinations of us and the family (I busted out my camera too). They were lovely people, showering us with pan dulce y café while we chatted. Ismael told me to drop in anytime I want. Oh this is totally what I daydreamed about, connecting with the community, having it become family. His wrinkled mother told me we all were going to cry when I leave, two years from now, and I already knew this to be true.

So our last week back in the comfort of familiarity was short and packed. Monday we didn’t get to the headquarters because of a bus strike happening in Guate, the city. This was great for us, San Antonio and Santa Caterina hung out for the day: we played bananagrams at Leo’s house, hit the internet café and hung in our central park, reading and catching up on journal entries. Tuesday was a bunch of wrap up in the office, last words, tips, safety advice, rules. I bought “Que Rico” which is the Peace Corps Guatemala Volunteer cook book. I can’t wait til I have my own kitchen and can cook all ‘dem recipes for myself. Wednesday we jumped around to our various towns to get a last look at everyone’s project. We had a nice little temblador, a bitty-earthquake, in the middle of the day that Fife’s family had been predicting for several days and he’d been warning us all morning there was an earthquake going to happen today and whaddyaknow, they were right! We were all mightily impressed. Then we move on to Thursday, which was the icing on the cake: Swearing In! Fourty-four Peace Corps Trainees camioneta-ed, tuk-tuked, microbused and drove with our familes to Hotel Antigua where we all sat on a gorgeous day, dressed up to the nines and were officially inducted into the glorious world of Peace Corps Volunteerdom! And we have diplomas to show for it! Mama Tina came with me and her daughter-in-law Elsa to see my graduation. Afterwards we took our families out for lunch at a pizza joint, Jordan, Chad, Kate and I and our family members. For the afternoon, we took last pictures around the fountain, all the women in their beautiful huipiles, and parted ways..Peace Corps volunteers, finally on our very own! From here on out we are no longer going to be babied, to have every hour of our day scheduled out for us, no more private P.C. microbuses ferrying us around, nope. We aren’t trainees anymore, they’ve open their cupped hands and are letting us jump off into oblivion, hoping they’ve taught us enough that these stubby lil' wings of ours will carry us aloft, on to our new lives.

22.3.10

Met my counterpart! Actually, I had two guests on counterpart day, not just Claudio but Rosa as well, the president of the sustainable development association that I will be working with. We had a day and a half of getting to know each other at the training center and on Tuesday the 16th we each headed off to our own future sites to spend a week introducing ourselves and getting to know our new community. It was a jam packed week, and then some. Rosa is my new host mother and I immediately grew to like her..she’s very friendly and has a fantastic sense of humor, is easy to talk to and helpful with my Spanish, not to mention wonderfully welcoming. Getting to know her and all her great qualities put me at ease, knowing I’ll be living with her for the first three months (Peace Corps requires we spend this introductory time with a family for safety and to better integrate into the community). We rode with Tara, another volunteer, whose counterpart had his own wheels and offered us a ride (score!). Tara will be living about an hour away from me which is fantastic, we can go to the market together and be a support system or even getaway for those times of need! Our travels took us south of the volcano range and westward. The landscape got more tropical and we stopped for mangoes and coconuts (had a truly juicy mango experience, fyi). We parted ways about an hour outside of our aldea where Rosa, Claudio and I hopped on to a camioneta for the last, breathtakingly beautiful stretch. The bus labored up the bouncy dirt roads, winding up and up through the lush foothills of the mountain range. Soon the edge of the road dropped off into oblivion and the facing ridges were covered in thick green vegetation. Flashes of color darted everywhere and I wanted to hang out the window with binox and bird book in hand but I think that might be seen as a little culturally unacceptable. We rounded a bend and, across a span of nothingness, another ridge drew sharply skyward and Rosa pointed out where I would be living for the next two years. It was dreamlike. I think my eyes must have been large as those mangos and I couldn’t wipe the inadvertent grin off my face. Gringas! Weird creatures, those. It was late afternoon and the bus crawled up the last bend onto the cobblestone stretch of my new home, the school on the low end and the church up at the top with houses lining either side. I got out and Pascual, smiling eyed and with a warm friendly grin, introduced himself as the husband of Rosa. They showed me my room, large and spacey with a window to outside (yaay!) and a huge comfy bed. Pascual and Rosa have three kids still in the house; the oldest is their only boy, Jonathan who is 15, Josaline is 11, and Marbet is 6. They have two girls in their 20s who live and go to school in Xela (the city of Quetzaltenango). The kids are shy and very polite and the parents are outgoing, love to talk, are very curious and thoughtful and intelligent, we immediately got on. Pascual is the director of the secondary school (Instituto Secondario) but also invests a lot of time and energy in the Asociation (looking for funding and training workshop opportunities, for example) and Rosa also runs a good sized store out of her home. They are very busy people, but so energetic and I feel lucky to be settling in with them. For the week, I was able to introduce myself to droves of people, starting with every grade in the primary school (what a way to begin!), and I met the main members of the Association. I also met with the representatives from every organization within the community (head of schools, members of the association, head of the coffee industry, organic and inorganic, the COCODE (basically a group of town representatives that are organized and able to petition to the government), and the auxiliary (church related). We talked about town priorities and needs. I got to sit in on a workshop led by an NGO community development group that has assisted the community greatly in their efforts to start up an ecotourism sector. This is a great organization that has done a great deal but that runs off of very little money and has lots of other towns they’re assisting so they were glad to see that I was coming in and I was glad to learn that I’d have their contact and support. I got to know the town, saw the coffee factory (harvest just ended for the year), their lombricompost (worm compost) production, weeded in the beginnings of a trial community vegetable garden (completely organic!), and saw the new guest quarters-a small 3 room lodge for visiting tourists that volunteer for the association, helping in the coffee, garden, or trails. This lodge is brand new and still needs a bit of work, along with the volunteer and ecotourism program in general. These people are so passionate, though, ready to make it really roll. They’re so excited to have me here to help in their mission and they are all just so friendly and welcoming. I got a huge tour of some of their trails with their 3 tour guides, Eduardo, Claudio and Keller. We birded for a whole half day (starting at 5am) and saw all KINDS of birds(!!!) They have great potential in the aviturismo department, but the guides have a lot to learn yet. They do know a lot of the common birds, even by ear, but many of their names are local names, and in Spanish. A serious birder coming here would be disappointed if they expected to know every last little bird they saw. I’m definitely excited to work on improving our bird tour option, any excuse to get back into those woods and learn the birds with a bunch of gung-ho Guatemaltecos! We saw some cool birds, too..squirrel cuckoo (I was psyched, I love these long tailed characters), several kinds of strikingly colored jays, tanagers, emerald toucanet (!),a hook billed kite, lots of migrant warblers still here before they head back north in the spring, and we heard quetzals!! This is fantastic, Resplendent Quetzals are very true to their name, absolutely magnificent birds and a huge attraction for birders..so basically gold to us. What we need to do is find out how we can guarantee a sighting, find the specific trees they feed upon and determine their daily and seasonal habits. Gold. This is what we need, to get tourists in to the town, bringing in money because there is NOT much work for citizens of this community and they really have to struggle to make ends meet. The land they produce off of is pretty measly, very steep and not easy to work and, as the town grows, there is less available to support all of the people. But they have a rich bounty which is the hugely diverse forest beyond the coffee; they own 35 hectares of natural bosques further up the mountain. The community is slowly coming to understand that that is their goldmine. They don’t have to use up their resources; they can share them with the public! We just need to tell the world, get them to come, have them fall in love, tell others, come back, and bring friends! So here we are now. This, ladies and gentlemen, is where my true journey and challenge begins.

Here is my new host family, and yes, they are as sweet as they look.

This will be my new home, where I will be settling in to a brand new life, a whole new adventure. All I really know about it, though, is the name! It’s a pretty name though, right? Rolls off the tongue. We went to the Peace Corps office in Santa Lucia on Site Assignment Day, March 12th 2010. David, our program technical trainer drove excruciatingly slowly along the curvy highway, and we yelled at him in excited frustration to hurry the heck up! This was our lives and we were about to find out where they were going to lead! They blindfolded us and we stood in front of a map of Guatemala, outlined in the grass with sticks, leaves and twigs. In the grass were masking tape X’s Flavio, the man who made the decisions, led us each to one of the points and we stood, blind, listening to the rustling of whoever was close by. We were handed a folder and knew that on the front of it was written the name of the town that right that moment was eagerly awaiting their perky new volunteer. I clutched mine like my life depended on it. We reached out and could feel other hands feeling around and were told to take off our blindfolds. Looking down at the folder, I saw “Stacey Hollis, Aldea Loma Linda, El Palmar Quetzaltenango” on the map I was the person standing furthest to the west and nearby I saw Tara and Amber. We all laughed and ripped into our information packets, flurrying through the overload of information, deciphering the Spanish into some idea of what we were about to dive in to. So here it is. This is an Aldea, which I loved the sound of..it means a small community, 1,200 habitantes strong. Next I saw the climate: “calido lluvioso” rainy, con temperaturas entre 23-26 degrees Celcius”.. umm had to look that one up (73-78 in Fahrenheit). Okay, warmer and rainy is actually good, that means tropical..well when I read on and saw it mentioning “abundante vegetacion tropical” I felt a rush of excitement!! The altitude was 1250m which translates to about 4000ft, and I’m basically on the slope that leads off the volcano chain toward the Pacific Ocean. My town is small, “hay 5 tiendas pequenas, un hospedaje o albergue (small lodge), y la iglesia catolica”. So there’s not much to it! Definitely a soccer field and basketball court, though. This will be a good icebreaker, and “sin duda”, is recommended as a great way to introduce yourself into the community..hop on in to those pickup games!

So now the nitty gritty good stuff: When Flavio set me on my spot on the map, he said, “you are the first volunteer to be sent here”, my mind raced and I grinned and squirmed under my blindfold..I felt proud that they believed in me to kick start a whole new place, all on my own. They decided that little Stacey Hollis would be the first to place the mark of Peace Corps on this little aldea in the southwestern foothills of Guatemala. What I leave will be a manifestation of my own ambition, my own initiative. I will come in and be the first Gringa to spend two years lending my hands to that which the community desires and I won’t have a volunteer to give me their take on the town, no structure to follow, no (darn!) house to inherit. I am thrilled!

Next: The town has a reserve comunitaria de bosque nuboso…yipppeeee!! I got me a cloud forest!! And oh man, I was jumping when I read on “35 hectares (86 acres), senderismo y el aviturismo (!!!) con la presencia de mas de 180 especies de aves” including a strong presence of “el ave nacional, El Quetzal”!!! Flavio got me a bird site! Woohoo!! It said “existen abundantes quetzals (which totally means good quality healthy forest to support this bird that relies on mature aguatillo trees), aves, mamiferos silvestres como pizotes, andasolos, micoleon, tigrillos (little lions and tigers?!)”. And furthermore, “cercano a la comunidad puede apreciarse el Volcan Santiaguito (activo) y el Volcan Santa Maria..I got volcanoes! That really did make me happy because I get a lot of pleasure out of looking at my three volcanoes here in San Antonio and the occasional rumble and blast of silt and ash is exciting. Steph, one of the masters students who is here to study volcanology totally told me she knew where I was going and that supposedly there’s some big valley that’ll protect me if it ever does give a really good blow. Hey, sounds good to me.

So my town already has a Sustainable Development Association that they started in 2008 and they have been working on the development of interpretive trails in the Reserva Forestal Comunitaria and “ruta a Catarata El Chilamate” (a waterfall trail!). They have been actively inviting in international volunteers to live with host families and work on local coffee and flower farms as well as to help with the trail work. So it sounds like there is something established, but it’s new and they want training for the hosts families and guides. Also there’s talk about training teachers in environmental education and involving the school kids in environmental projects in the reserve, oh it all sounds good to me. It’s nice that there is something set up already that I have at least some structure to work off of!

So yea, this girl isdefinitely not complaining! I am ecstatic. Course I have yet to see the place en vida real. But sheesh, it sure sounds good! So now I have the weekend to scour the internet about Lil’ Loma Linda (they actually have a well set-up website aldealomalinda.com) and get ready to meet my counterpart, my partner in crime for the next two years. His name is Claudio and he’s the secretary of the association. We will spend Monday getting to know each other at the training center and then together will travel to Loma Linda on Tuesday where I will spend the next 5 days getting to know my new community. We come back for 3 days of paperwork in Santa Lucia, swearing in (graduation!) is on the 25th and that weekend I will set off, my bags all packed, for a lone ride on the camioneta to my new home. Warp speed, I’m telling you.

My pictures include a group shot of the women artesans that my group worked with, here they're holding their diplomas that we awarded them for successfully attending our charlas on hosting tourists in their homes. The kittyshot is Pancho "Panchito" Lopez, sitting next to the wood stove. This is why his lil' whiskers are singed.

4.3.10

Our 11 weeks of training that, eight weeks ago seemed to be a lifetime, are now entering warp speed. It is unbelievable how fast the Peace Corps experience seems to be whizzing by and it scares me that I'll blink my eyes and suddenly it'll be March 2012 and I'll be headed back to the states. When I look back through the pages of my daily journal, even just a few weeks ago seem like ages past. Time is such a malleable, bending, blurry entity. I'm just riding the waves of it, slow and steady and then crashing and spinning. Oh, I love it.

Yesterday we presented our third charla, I worked with Hilary and we presented to the women's artisan group on how to be good hostesses because we're preparing them to give weaving classes to tourists in their homes. It is made to be a pure cultural experience, these women in their beautiful hand-woven ropa tradicional. They'll invite you into their homes where chickens will roam about the cement floors, you'll duck under branches of fruit trees laden with oranges and mandarines, they'll have their weaving looms set out with a rainbow of threads spilling out, you'll smell the rich combination of spices that were bought fresh from the street vendors and mixed with tomatoes and ground chiles to make "pepian", a traditional Mayan dish, they'll guide you in the woven style of making petates with long thick strands of the dried marsh grass, you'll sit and watch a traditional baile, one of the ceremonial dances that celebrated weddings and birthdays. This is what we are aiming for, to teach these women not how to do their job, but how to be prepared for having strangers who don't speak their language, who can't drink their tapwater, who are new to this culture, into their homes. So the charlas went great, we played games and were all laughing and by the end, they were piping up with ideas and answers and were entirely different women from those we met seven weeks ago, quiet and timid. We'd gained their confianza, their confidence, and have grown close. At the end of the session, they were saying how sad they were that we were leaving, urging us to be sure and visit as soon as we could.

Man, it's going to be hard to leave Guatemala when the time does come.

22.2.10

We are just flying through February, aren't we? So this past week my training group and I spent a fun-filled week in “Field Based Training” where we get to get our hands dirty and see some new sights. We started out by visiting a volunteer in Chilasco, a small aldea where they grow lots and lots of broccoli and he's working with the tourism office (more aptly classified as “tourism hut”) to develop the business aspects of their tourism industry. The town butts up to the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve so they have cloud forest hikes and a great waterfall nearby called Salto de Chilasco which we got to hike to. It was gorgeous and the cloud forest was dripping lush.

The majority of the week we spent in Alta Vera Paz in a small aldea called Samac. A volunteer is finishing up his 2 years and so one of us will be replacing him. He's working on developing a cultural tour of some ruins of a German-run coffee farm. The town is Quiche Maya and we really got to know much of the community as we did a lot of activities with both the men and the women. The entire aldea is quite small and so we were the main attraction all week. When we moved into their newly constructed cabins complete with bunkbeds, composting toilets and computers, there was a crowd of men, women and children huddled at the entrance of both cabins watching our every move. They were very proud for this was the first time they ever had accommodated so many visitors, so it was a big deal indeed. The townspeople were all incredibly welcoming and kind and their community already thinks the world of Peace Corps and our Associated P.C. Director Flavio who accompanied us for a few days. He's the one who visits the sites and determines what sites need volunteers and which volunteer should be placed there. Basically all of Guatemala think him a god of sorts, or so we've noticed, since he doles out free help (us). He's got our lives in the palm of his hand so to us, so we're definitely de acuerdo with the Guatemalans. He's way pilas (a go-getter, achiever).

So some of the stuff we did throughout the week included hearing lots of charlas on things like environmental interpretation, how important it is to work with other town and form tourism alliances rather than compete, we did a day of trailwork/maintenance taught by two current volunteers, had a session on making signs using routers, made some action plans addressing various issues around the community that we split up and investigated (my “team” and I made an action plan on how the toilets need seats and instructions on how to use the composters)...all of these things we did with the community so I had lots of chances to really get to talking with them. After every interaction, I'd walk off grinning like a fool..these people are so pure and just living their lives. The town is small, doesn't have much money, there's only a tiny little store, they grow coffee and sugar cane, have probably 10 tourists pass through a year, it's clean though, and they all speak Quiche as their first language, they love their current volunteer and are so looking forward to their next one (I was constantly responding to their queries of how much I liked it here and if I'd want to stay), the women make their unique white cotton weaving called Pik'bil and they are coming up with new ways to contribute to the family income, through making jewelry with seeds and growing rabbits for food. The men aren't afraid to tell us how proud they are that their women are strong and independent. Yes, I was completely charmed by this place, these people. How could you not be when you walk by a dusty yard and six children come running out yelling “Estacey!”.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on our way to the cloud forest.

I'm sitting in my room listening to the rain pattering away at the zinc roofing above my head and hearing my host mom's words in my mind: February, the craziest month of them all. You never know what you'll get, freezing cold, boiling hot, rain..each day is a surprise. The rain is actually very unusual for this time of year, as we are just entering into the warm, dry months of summer. What's to blame is climate change, por supuesto. Nonetheless, I had a very pleasant walk in the chipi chipi (steady sprinkles that are famous throughout the rainy season. Today it was really a drizzle but chipi chipi is more than amusing enough to bend the rules a bit.) with my good friend and groupmate Hilary. We strolled around the aldea of San Andres, which is a tiny sub-pueblo off from San Antonio. The clouds hanging low and the hazy silouettes of the trees along the ridges above us made for a very tropical late afternoon.

Last week was packed full with work as my group and I prepared our charlas, a formal class or presentation that is basically the bread and butter of Peace Corps. Simple, straight to the point presentations that we will be doing many of in the next two years. We presented to several councelors from the municipalities of San Antonio and our neighboring pueblo, Santa Caterina. Also attending were a handful of women from our group of artisans here in S.A. with whom we are hoping to develop a cultural fair as well as the trainee group from Santa Caterina. Additionally our technical trainer David and our program manager Flavio (who is in charge of what site we'll be placed in based on our experience and our performance..gulp) were there to evaluate us. So you could say I was a bit nervous. Our charlas were, together, how to create and conduct a charla. Charlas on charla-ing. Like, how to assess your audience, the importance of experiential learning, how to break the ice with your students, planning and preparing your charla and, finally, the importance of reviewing and processing what you've taught your students. The last one was mine. I talked loud, got people laughing with my ice breaker (if they answered my questions reviewing the charlas right, they got a prize!) and I really felt I got the message across with repetition, a short rollplay where I did a review with my “students” to be sure they got the message of throwing their trash in the basurero instead of the river or streets (Acto 1: I, as the teacher, forgot to review and they all ran off throwing trash all over the place). My groupmates and I were very pleased at how it seemed our audience really picked up a lot from each charla as they told me what they learned from each one in my review. So, despite my nervousness, I got some good laughs, got the point across, stumbled a few times with my spanish, had my notes to keep me rolling, and managed to come out on the other side not too worse for wear!

In other news, I had the experience of watching a Mayan ceremony as it was conducted for us on Saturday (which is the Mayan new year) by a spiritual guide in Iximche. This was a really beautiful place, up in the rolling hills with towering pines, cypress and oaks. The Kaqchiquel (one of 21 different Mayan tribes in Guatemala) had a town here with temples and ball courts, the remains of which still stand. In 1524, the Spanish conquistadors overtook the town but they didn't remain long for the townspeople, hiding in the hills above, continuously attacked during the nights until finally the Spanish relented and left to find another place to name “capital” of this new land they now called their own. The ceremony was about an hour and a half and our conductor had us toss a handful of different colored candles into a growing fire. He invoked a variety of different gods to protect us and our friends and families, bring good and release us from our sins (bear with me, this was all in spanish/kaqchiquel, so I might be a bit off about some of it) and while speaking, he tossed various things in as well-rosemary, dulces, sugar, aguardiente (liquor) and some little brown lumps. We were made to face in each sacred direction as he prayed in the indigenous language and he had us shut our eyes and flicked aguardiente into our faces. All the while, other people were in front of their own fires and various flower strewn alters lighting candles and a small group of men played the marimba and a cello. I felt very much the tourist but not quite as bad as the ones that just would walk up to the bowed worshipper and snap away with their cameras. Afterwards we ate a meal of comida tipica that was muy rica. It was a beautiful day and I even saw a few birds-stellars jay and an eastern bluebird: one bird you see commonly in the Western United States and the other in the east, but here, the two worlds come together as one, in an entirely different world. And these aren't migrants, either, they're residents living in a habitat befitting their needs. Can't blame them for choosing Guatemala! Ahh and there's still so much yet to be seen and that I have to learn in this gran bellesa pais.

30.1.10

Today we had the pleasure of visiting San Lorenzo El Tejar where a group from the Peace Corps Healthy Schools program is spending their training period. It was our “Community Exchange” where we get to see where another group lives. Their town is vastly different from ours..it’s much smaller (I learned that San Antonio is 10,500 people strong) and it is actually an aldea (which is the next step down in size from pueblo). The girls there showed us around, we saw the church and central square. They don’t have many tiendas (maybe three, while we have dozens) and the community is mostly made up of Ladinos, rather than the indigenous Mayan community that is brightly announced in the colorful clothing worn by the women in our pueblo. Nonetheless, I was smitten with the place, it’s very hilly and the houses are more spread out which leaves room for a plethora of lush green growth. I wanted to stay the afternoon and just plop down somewhere with my binoculars. They took us up to a hill that overlooked the aldea and across to the hillside fincas growing a variety of crops. Their river was a sore spot, though. Before it even came in to view, the smell was highly evident. The whole town uses it as their trash can and there is literally a section where everyone dumps their waste. Mortifying? Absolutely. Their water supply is a spring borne close to the overlook and the whole aldea only has about an hour of water a day with which they fill every vessel they have in addition to their pila basins to last until the next time the water flows (which is never truly guaranteed). The community pila has a constant supply of water from the river, which then is directed right back with all the soil and soap of the daily laundry. It seemed to us that this town seriously needed some environmental education volunteers. We were driven back to San Antonio with the San Lorenzo clan in tow so that we could give them a taste of our pueblo. We brought them first to the mirador at the entrance to the city. This looks out across the basin where our town and that of Santa Caterina lay nestled. It's a rather pretty vista with the volcanoes in the background (but it's been fairly cloudy the past three days so we couldn't give them the truly grand view). We also walked with them through the Mercado de Artesania which was fun because they don't have the traditional clothing draped all across their community the way we do. I presented our basurera, the trash processing plant. We are unique to be one of the few in Guatemala that actively employ the process of Lombricompost..or that of using lombrises, a.k.a. worms, in the composting process. For everyone's information, the worms do not get paid. But hey, it must be a good life, being tossed into a huge pila full of rotting organic waste (for a worm, anyway). All the trash of San Antonio is picked up in trucks that circulate around the city and, for 2Q a bag, they haul it up to the dump. In their homes, the locals are supposedly separating the organic and inorganic waste into different bags, but looking into the pila where they dump the organico, it's pretty evident that not everyone got the notice. Nonetheless, 80% of all the town's trash is organic, the rest is inorganic and separated out into 15% recyclable material (scrap metal, cardboard, plastic, which several companies pay to pick up) and the remaining 5% left is burned. But see, the stuff that's burned is what the environmental councelor Sergio, from the Municipality, wants to find a solution for. Basically the dozens of employees working there every day are breathing in toxic chemicals from the burning waste, not to mention the toll it takes on Mudder Earf. The Lombricompost, which goes through several stages of decomposition over the course of 6-8 months, becomes beautiful rich abono, or fertilizante natural. It is hefted into 100lb bags and sold for 40Q. These bags of organico, rich in all the nutrients that remain steady throughout the process of being picked from a tree, eaten to the quick, thrown out, and trucked up to the basurera, are returned back to the earth to lend a rich hand to the next growth of crops. Sustainability at it's finest...and the world keeps spinning round.

27.1.10

Smiling little Stephanie was laying on her petate, a woven grass mat, as she worked on her homework. The grasses, which are used to make the mats, are themselves known as Petate. They grow tall in the lagoon beyond the far end of the city. The mats are often used to sit upon when the mujeres are weaving their ropa tradicional because the weaving loom is attached at eye level or higher and the mujer sits upon her petate on the ground, holding the base of the loom where she works her magic. But, back to Stephanie with her shining eyes..this is the host sister of Hilary, one of my group members. I stopped by their house before we headed up to the cancha de basketball and was talking to the girl about school and the cartoon character on her notebook while Hilary got ready to go. Well, before I knew it, the little 6 year old was tying a beautiful woven bracelet around my wrist, telling me she wanted me to keep it and nodding with determination when I asked if she was sure. Well sheesh! As we walked along the street, I decided I'd paint her a watercolor in thanks for the sweet gift. “Muchas Gracias Stephanie, para la pulsera tan bonita! Que amable! Tu nueva amiga, Stacey”.

25.1.10

Buenas!

So time is already flying as we newbies, rookies, green little sprouts make our way through the winding training road that prepares us to become legit: true “Peace Corps Volunteers”. In the past week, we've seen so much more of the country that we will be calling home and I can honestly say, this place is worlds away from the one I left twenty days ago. As I was riding the camioneta (bus) back into the valley that is my home for these eleven weeks, grinding shoulder to shoulder with a small woman on my right and my head bouncing against the stomach of the young man standing in the crowded aisle to my right, I peered through the mass of bodies to see out the window where Guatemala was whizzing by, trees with epiphytes, tin-roofed shacks, rotulas (signs) proclaiming their “fe in dios”, women walking with baskets filled with corn atop their heads..Sheesh! A mere twenty days and I'm already enormously attached to this place, these people, this world. But, despite all I've seen, I really don't even know a fraction of it yet. Only this weekend did I get my first taste of a feria, one of the many annual fairs. I think that every day of the year, in one city or another in this great country a fair is happening, I have no doubt. I stood among the crowd and watched the parade of huge decorated floats bearing beautiful winged child-angels, a jesus standing atop a globe (which, if it weren't for the men walking below him, lifting the telephone wires with ultra long sticks, he'd surely have been electrocuted..); children dressed as farmers, huipile-wearing mayan women, businessmen, even a drunk; young people danced in the streets masked as old men and ladies and random cartoon characters, music blasted from a truck out of the huge speakers that produced such a din my pants vibrated, fireworks in constant procession, day and night; men rode atop horses with capes flashing as they galloped up and down the cobblestone streets narrowly avoiding the crowds three persons deep on either side; the dancing lasted late into the night, cartoon characters and, amusingly enough, men unabashedly dressed in wigs and scantily clad women's clothing. Food vendors displayed their fried goods and hunks of hanging, chewed-up looking meat that was sawed off into writhing piles (that we saw still hanging the next day, wrapped in a woven cloth, awaiting a second..third..? night of vending..). Street food is a swear word in the ears of our lovely PC health officers. It was an experience indeed.

In other news, I've been fortunate enough to be in a group of PC trainees that love sports as much as I do. We have a great cancha (field) up the hill that we've played many a basketball game with any of the local kids willing to join us. We played once a game of soccer with some kids half our age and saw just how bad we non-futbol playing gringos really were. I didn't care, I love the running and the challenge of attempting to even get close to tease the ball away from those quick-flying feet that move with deft skill. Perhaps by the end of my time here I'll have learned a thing or two in the world of futbol.

Today we had a tour of Guate (which is how they call Guatemala City) and got to experience calling and taking taxi cabs within the city since PC forbids us to take inter-city buses because basically, as a gringo, you're just begging to be robbed if you do. We saw the American Embassy and the hospital and spent way too much time in the two malls which are about a stone's toss away from each other. That's two malls too many for me. I've been dying to get back into the forest which I got a small taste of, what a week ago? We hiked up into the hills the other weekend with Eduardo (our maestro) and Abner (my co-trainee's host brother)..the forests here aren't quite rainforests and I don't remember the classification (sub-tropical? It's definitely not wet enough here during the dry season to support a true rainforest) but I didn't care..I was finally under some trees again! I had my binox and bird book but didn't get much real birding in since the hike mission was to reach an overlook out across the valley and it was midday when the birds aren't wildly active. I was overjoyed nonetheless with what I did have a chance to drink in, two wintering warblers: a black throated green and wilson's warbler (both of which I saw this past summer on their breeding grounds back up in the states!); also saw a blue-headed vireo and some Guate hummers (“picaflores”)-Rufous and Lucifer. Now if only I could go back up there, it's really not far, and spend a whole morning with book and binox. I need to find a companion! Being small, female and gringa, I'm sticking to not wandering off alone the way I might back in more familiar territory. Plus the dogs up in the higher farmlands are pretty protective in a kind of scary way. My hope, of all hopes is that I'm placed in a sight where I have a forest reserve at my fingertips. They're teasing us with signs in the training center claiming that we could replace end-of-service volunteers that are leaving various national parks that I'm literally drooling over. Patience, girl. Seriously, though, I'm living in the now, sucking it all in, trying to step back at least once every day to appreciate that I'm here right now. Wherever you are, there you are and here I am. I have a post-it note on my desktop that says this “Love where you are. keep your eyes wide and your mind open. you've got everyone rooting for you. Love, you.” Cheesy, I know. But it's sweet to see on the rare day I turn this bugger on to write a thing or two. So yes. My eyes are wide, taking it all in, so thankful that I'm on this adventure, growing every day. My mind is expanding by the hour. This feels right, being here. Yes, yes, still the honeymoon period, still loving every second and having trouble imagining that the statistical highs really are followed by statistical lows. Blogs to come, I know, but for now I'm reveling in it. Better while I can, right? And when those lows come along, I'll have my friends and family rooting for me from afar and I have myself to rely upon. Sink or swim. I'm going to do my best to keep this nose of mine above water.

Hasta luego, mis amigos.

Hola Todos! 20.1.10 Here goes for report numero uno from the belleza paiz de Guatemala! From the very beginning I had the tips of my fingers hanging dead tight..and luckily enough, because no one told how tight I would need to hold on for the ride that would begin the moment I set foot on that plane! It's been a whirlwind and time both flies and sparkles in front of my wide open eyes. There's so much to take in and I'm doing my very best. I can proudly say that so far I have (as is my custom) written down just about every experience that I have undergone since my parents and brother let go from those lingering embraces that now seem a lifetime away. From the window of the plane as we descended toward the land of Guate, I watched the conical tips of a line of volcanos press out of the thick grayness that blanketed the country. We dropped beneath and revealed was a lush landscape dotted with pueblos and cities filling the valleys. Deep scars opened sections of earth in the form of gorges and even along their steep walls houses or shacks rather, held on with nothing other than a prayer. From there the sweeping began. First we were swept to the training center, looking out the windows of the bus we drank sweet frescas and bleary eyes attempted to focus on the scene as it flew past. Guate City is just as you've always heard, the charm of it may or may not be revealed through much time spent searching. Cars and motorcycles and buses zoomed by and every curve was taken with abandon. Shops, people and trash lined the busy streets. We focused in on the Burger King with armed guards in the parkinglots and more Chuckie Cheeses than you care to keep track of. We got out of the city and passed through smaller towns and a valley or two, cooing over the sight of the volcanos. The training center was another world, far removed from the dingy city. We pulled in to a lush, beautifully landscaped eden that looked out toward Volcan de Agua, one of the more breathtaking volcanoes, right out of a child's imagination. A perfect cone. Nevermind the cell phone towers and whatnot on the top, to set eyes upon this landform invokes unabashed amazement and awe. Only minutes later do you look a little westward to the two, Fuego and Atetenango (I may be way off on that name). Fuego is the one you want to definitely take note of..this is the active one, puffing mushrooms of humo when it so chooses..somehow these three always seem to be in view no matter where I've been yet and Fuego has become my friend, endlessly entertaining and a rollercoaster of emotion. You only have to look west to know how Fuego is feeling any time of the day. So our first three days of training were basically an introduction to Peace Corps: welcome, we want you to truly evaluate throughout the next three months whether this is truly how you want to spend the next two years of your life, we're going to give you more vaccinations than you ever though possible and try to scare you about every last living thing that will surely infest you through oral fecal contamination many times over throughout your stay, spanish level assesment, separation into groups of 5 based on your level and whether you're lucky enough to be in Sustainable Community Tourism (the admitted, best by far, program to be in in PC Guate) or Healthy Schools. There seriously were two poster boards, one for each program and Tourism was all “You could be lucky enough to be in THIS park helping a whitewater rafting company or a zip line adventure tourism setup or a forest with the best birdwatching ever...!!” and Escuelas Saludables: “You're gonna be in a classroom teaching kids to wash their hands, not eat dirt, wash their hands, wash their hands, and wash their hands”). After 3 days of that and living with nearby host families in the town of Santa Lucia Milpas Altas (I was placed with my friend Hilary who ended up being in my Training Group as well) we were all shipped off to our various pueblos where we'd be spending the next 11 weeks in training, each in our own host family home. I was placed with Christina Giron in the pueblo of San Antonio, Aguas Callientes. The moment I walked in she welcomed me warmly and I knew right away we'd easily become close friends. She immediately told me that everyone called her Mama Tina and that I should as well. She is a beautiful, round faced, 60 year old abuela with high cheek bones and wavy dark hair. She wears the traditional huipile, a brightly colored, richly designed shirt that was weaved in the traditional way especially unique to San Antonio: “de dos lados” they call it, of both sides. It means that even when you turn it over to the opposide side, you'll find that both carry the intricate designs and there's not a stitch to be seen. It can take months to complete, and that is only if you spend all your days doing nothing other than weaving. So realistically, a single huipile may take up to a year to finish. And my Mama Tina makes all the huipiles and traditional belts and skirts that she wears. They are phenomenal, just breathtaking. There is no question, in looking at one, how much effort is put into such a masterpiece. And the women who weave in San Antonio are also known for dying their own thread, using rich colors that don't fade over the years. I'm sure every town has it's own unique wonders but, well, the bee's knees is what comes to mind. So my home is up a small hill on one of the many winding, enclosed, busy streets of San Antonio. The pueblo is larger than I anticipated as you can see from the mirador when you come to the city entrance at the peak before the valley. There is another city that ours melds into, Santa Catarina, where another tourism group is based and the two fill the valley and seep up into the foothills where a patchwork of various crops reach upward not completely overtaking the forests that cover the ridges that span out, emcompassing both towns in a wide embrace. Ever towards the west are our three faithful senturies, Agua, Fuego and Atetenango. The streets of the pueblo are dirt and cobblestone. Motorcycles, pickup trucks, camionetas (refurbished school buses from the U.S.) and tuktuks (little three-wheeled enclosed taxis) race entirely too quickly up and down the streets that are always alive with townspeople, selling tortillas, hanging out doors and windows, washing laundry at the public pilas, playing futbol, chatting, fixing their homes, pushing carts, leading a horse or a donkey, carrying firewood, walking with huge baskets upon their heads, there's no end to the activity! Every walk down the street as I make my way to clase de espanol is a new sight, a different face, another “buenas dias” with a wide smile. Some of the different things I've come across as I toddle along include a stray colt trotting along the cobblestone, neighing for it's mother; a drunk man out cold, laying on a stoop; a woman that strolls along every morning at 6:30 yelling at the top of her lungs “leche!”, the multitudes of stray dogs who hardly give you a second glance, the many street vendors that manifest out of nowhere at different times of the day selling food that we've been strictly told by our nurses NOT to even think about eating...Now we'll move from the streets back to my home, where I live with Mama Tina. It's not a huge place, two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a small, attached tienda where she sells a handfull of goods (toilet paper, matches, flavored icies, aciete de maiz, random things and people ring a bell at the door there that has bars they pass the goods and quetzales across), all of these lead to a wider open room between it all where there's a wood stove that she uses for cooking (to supplement her own small oven/stove in the kitchen) and the pila. The pila is a cement 3-basin set up where the middle, deepest one, has a tap and we are lucky enough to be in a town where water is available at all hours of the day. A small bowl is left floating in the water basin and you use it to scoop the water to the left basin where there's a drain and you pour the cold water over your hands or splash it on your face or wash the dishes that, dirty, are left in the shallow right basin with the soap and the scrubbie blue plastic tangle. There's also a bathroom with a shower that you reach from this room on the opposite side from my door. There is a light shower curtain for a door that dances in the breeze a toilet that luckily flushes on it's own (without chucking in a gallon of water) and a shower that runs only cold and therefore is my bucket bath haven. Oh and Mama Tina takes such care of me, sure she's paid a hefty stipend, but she seems to take great pleasure out of my 3000 “muchas gracias”es a day for all that she does for me: cooking all my meals, handwashing my clothing, boiling hot water and then adding enough cold so as to not scald myself during my bucket baths, bringing steaming cafe con leche in to my room for me as I get ready for the especially early days of training...and I'm really under the assumption that she likes me! I absolutely adore her, she's just too cute and very light hearted, laughs easily, and listens to me with great interest as I excitedly tell her about my day, babbling along with my mediocre spanish. We do talk for great lengths of time, she's lately really been opening up to me about her family and the amazing, eventful, sometimes tragic, life she has led. We've shared pictures of our families and she always sits with me as I eat, even when she's not (Peace Corps eating schedule and that of the Guatemaltecos are about an hour or more different). She's taught me “a tortear” (how to form tortillas by hand) and helps me with my spanish, speaking slower with me than she does with her family and correcting my grammar or describing words I don't understand. We have a very warm, friendly relationship..there have been times when I've resisted reaching out to hug her but I have a feeling it would be a welcomed gesture. She lives alone but her house opens and connects to a second section with all it's own amenities where her grown daughter Evelia and 15 year old son Hemery live. She also has 2 other sons with families, Walter lives next door with his wife Elsa and 4 children and Alex lives in the next pueblo over with his wife Cheny and 9 year old Steven and 9 month old Moices. Steven is around a lot, the first few days he spent here during his “summer vacation” to see the gringa. He's a little goofball spitfire who likes to tell me every word of every movie he's seen (“y dispues...y dispues..and then..and then..!”). Tina is the only one who really talks with me, I've only had small talk with the rest. They all don't tend to speak slowly and I'm just not at the level to understand when they're speaking so fast and so softly. It's a little bit tough, because I'd like to become closer with them, especially Evelia but they have their lives and aren't responsible for my spanish lessons. I hang with them occasionally and try to keep up and they are nice, just not as welcoming. I'm taking it in stride and am thankful to have the majority of my time around the house alone with Tina. The others are around after dark and I have had more homework than you might want to shake a stick at and so that causes the need to retreat to my lovely cave of a room. Ah my room, I sit here now and hear the dogs barking, the occasional rooster, kids laughing, church music, adults chatting, bombas exploding (Guatemala really translates to We Love Fireworks, all the time, any time, the louder the better). Back to my room: .only one fuzzy plastic window faces out to the pila room but it's very spacy, my bed is quite comfortable (no unidentified lumps), a great big dresser with doors, a mirror and shelves to put my clothes, books, toiletries and such. There's a long table I have my little suitcase on and put my “school work”, there's a tall, wooden, for lack of a better term, “hanging unit” that leans against the corner where I drape my towel, and shower stuff, a dirty laundry bag and drying clothes. All in all it's quite a nice set up and I've got everything organized and so happy. The only time I don't so much like it is when she's making tortillas and the woodstove smoke drifts into my room. One definite difficulty with Guatemala, I've found, is all the thick air you tend to have no choice but to inhale: woodsmoke, car fumes, volcano ash..if you were a smoker, you'd probably kick it in a month. But all in all, I'm quite happy here in the little town of San Antonio. It's a clean town with a pretty central park and is about 45 minutes outside of Antigua which is the touristy hip town that we've been to a handful of times. There you can find lots and lots of gringos, wireless internet (if you're brave enough to tote your laptop on the camionets and through the busy mercados), and coffee that isn't instant (all the good stuff that comes out of Guate tierra is exported, so the locals are left with the fake crap). While the mercado is demasiado interasante with more fruits than you ever thought existed, and all the blazing colors of the woven wonders sold by the Guate mujeres that just about literally blow your mind, and the true coffee that really is to die for, I can't say I'm much of a fan of Antigua. I watched a beautiful, old woman sitting on the sidewalk with her wares for sale set about her knees looking uncomfortably away as a fat man leaned over her holding a big camera, shoving it mercilessly into her face and clicking away, stopping to look at what he'd taken, and clicking some more before completely turning around and walking away. Not a word, not a cent, just some good ol' American ignorance. My blood curdled a bit as I watched her gaze at his receding hind end. But, that's what I'm here for, to turn tourism into something that I feel good about: something that benefits not the richest high-ups on the Guatemalan ladder that is overbearingly bottom-heavy, but rather all those who are putting all their straining efforts just to hang on to that crowded lowest rung. And, while I don't know just how I'm going to do it, the Peace Corps is fully (more than I could ever, ever have imagined) invested in making sure that I am prepared in every way possible and provided all the knowledge, information, resources, training and confidence that I can ingest in these preceding weeks. Like I said, just hanging on for this wild ride, and, to be sure, it already has completely become “The Ride of My Life”. Much love y buenas noches.

The dwindling days have been crawling by, is that possible? A whirlwind is about to begin, I'm about to jump on to a fast-moving train. I'm so glad that these last days have been laden with family and friends, the holidays have made it even more possible to leave for Guatemala with warm, perfect memories. On a S.I.N. (Sisters In Nature) trip, my mother and her two sisters Anne and Dot, my little cousin Chloe and I, drove to the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge. This is where I spent working as a biological technician for the better part of 2008. It was toward the end of that year that I began my application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer. I remember sitting in the refuge office, filling out the applicant questionnaire and wondering if this was really meant to be. Two years of my life handed to the winds. 2009 trodded past as I continued to put my efforts toward the vague, distant idea of becoming a Peace Corps volunteer. They ask for so much and as you continue to provide and wait and wonder and hope, your commitment builds and your determination strengthens. In the end, when you find out where they want to send you, what they want you to do, the feeling is like a burst of light: wild relief, pride, excitement, anticipation..

The countdown to staging begins and it's all you can do to distract yourself to make the time pass more quickly.

Anyways, at the Refuge, we walked all about and the snow geese are here en masse, on their wintering grounds. It was so wonderful to see my boss, the refuge biologist Pam. She wrote one of my recommendation letters toward becoming a PCV, and in addition to being my boss, she is a great friend.

The holidays were family filled, perfect for getting to see everyone in one place before I go. We had a goodbye potluck at Dot's with family and a handful of friends and I was able to spend a great last night with my brother here in the city. I'm going to miss that boy so much.

So now. This is my last full day before I have to meet at the hotel for staging tomorrow. We congregate at 12:30 for a day of orientation. The following morning, Wednesday, January 6th, we take flight, head south for Guatemala and life as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Life is a whirlwind, and my body is completely buzzing, through and through, in complete and utter anticipation of the wild and wonderful chaos beyond.

Merry Christmas!

You know you've got the fever when, Christmas Eve, you've got visions of Peace Corps dancing through your head instead of those rascally sugar plums...

Pretty unbelievable how quickly the time is suddenly passing. It's Christmas day. December, and the year, are nearly over. Our staging date, is poignantly set just as the new year is upon us. How fitting, another page of life is turned as I embark on to my next adventure. Hm, any ideas for resolutions? How about, enjoy being in one place for longer than a field season!! My life is a culmination of bits and pieces- I really have felt never fully in one place, always just settling in right as I find that it's time to leave. Twenty seven months I'll be in Guatemala. Seems like a long time but the more I think about it, it doesn't seem like long at all.

Each year that you add to your existence makes the next one a little shorter, a smaller fraction of the whole amount time you've been a conscious critter (at least this time around) on this earth of ours.

It's scary, if a year flies by this quickly at the age of twenty six, what will it feel like when I'm fifty..sixty? Nonetheless, if I make it for the entire term as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I just want to make sure to take it all in before it all slips through my fingers. Meanwhile I'm taking in my last bits of life here with my family before I go. I'm so use to leaving and I know they'll visit...I have these parents that like to take advantage of the fact that their daughter has found some fantastic parts of the U.S. and beyond to spend time in, one or both have made it to most of my remote wanderings.

So after we unwrapped our presents I ran upstairs and locked myself in my room and a literal tornado hit. Clothes, art supplies, toiletries, electronics, journals, books, 50% off Chacos (yes Peace Corps discount!!), host family gifts, all swirled about until somehow I managed to reign everything into my backpacking pack and my daypack. It weighed out to around 60lbs (their limit is 80lbs)..I still need to get a few things but nothing too massive. Anyways, this was my means to figure if I'm going to be able to carry everything and if I need to rethink what I'm bringing. With ten days left, this is the kind of thing that I get embarassing amounts of enjoyment out of. Not to mention that I am constantly making and revising packing lists in my head and have been for about two months now. It's an issue, I'm dealing with it.

Anyways, the time is creeping closer and I'm ready..so, so ready. The unknown is so enticing! I have ideas, sure, but the possibilities that await are what capture my imagination and fill me with excitement and anticipation. I have an empty journal that's just aching to be filled with all that is to come!

Now that I've made it this far, twenty three years and some odd months to be exact, I have finally been reduced to finally suck it up and get my flippin drivers license. I admit, there was a fair amount of kicking and screaming along the way, but somehow I managed it. Now I can say I am an adequately licensed, driving member of society. Watch the freak out.

And what, you ask, spurred me to accomplish such a feat? Well, it was a bird job. 'Course. I'm headed out west to work with burrowing owls. These are small owls with hilariously long legs. They have these because they hang out in the grassy plains and therefore are able to have a slightly higher vantage point. So this job requires a license. And I will now boast...because I got the job BEFORE ever laying hands on that shiny new license with the Maryland crab emblem!! I could either attest this to the fact that my credentials were undeniably spectacular and she had no other choice but to cut her losses and throw me on board, or to the possibility that the competition was slim to none.

Either way, I got the job and I'm headed in a westerly direction in t-minus 12 days. Lance got the position too, a lucky man, as we was able to evade the added (and I mean ADDED) stress of having to acquire a bloody drivers license. Water under the bridge now, water under the bridge. But let me repeat...watch the freak out.