Holiday Season

Well, the holiday season is almost over and 2009 will be here before we know it. This last month has been quite busy with the normal service projects but also with lots of other holiday related service projects. Both my IPs are going well. The Ways to Water project is really keeping me busy. I am busy from the time I arrive to when I leave. I gave a presentation to the Conservation Committee at the end of November and was approved to make improvements to a water way that I had put in a lot of time on. So, that was cool. Some of the work to the area has been completed already and the rest will be done in Spring (planting). The area will look very nice when it is done. I will be sure to include before and after pictures when the project is completed.

My other IP is also going well. We continue to work on water testing and my optical brightener project. This past month we successfully placed 8 collectors in the water and retrieved 6. Lost two or just couldn't remember where they were. LOL But not bad. The collectors that I designed worked great and for the most part did what they were suppose to do. This was really our first run (we had done a mini trial run earlier in November), so we learned a lot and I will be making some small improvements on the collectors. I have also started to design a poster based on keeping our waters clean and how to reduce your water usage. It is fun.

Everyone is the house is doing well. We all were very excited for Christmas break in order to go home and see family and friends. We will be getting a new member sometime in the beginning of January. So, I'll keep you posted on where she is from and when she will be arriving.

The last month has brought a lot of holiday fun. We did a children's Christmas party at Children's Cove (A great organization that works with children who have been sexual abused). I also helped with two fundraisers. One involved wrapping gifts and the other one was selling Christmas tree. Our house had a Christmas party which involved a white elephant swap. We made a ton of food and had a good time. I went to Nantucket with a couple people from my house (Maria and Ashleigh). We took the ferry over then spent the day strolling along the cute little streets of Nantucket which were all decorated for the holidays. We had a snow day after we got 8 to 10 inches of snow in one night. We spent that day doing major house cleaning and maintenance. We did, however, take some time to enjoy the snow with a walk with the woods.

Me, Ashleigh, and Maria on the ferry to Nantucket

Santa coming to Nantucket in style

Christen and Davis fighting over a gift during the White Elephant Swap

Four Ponds after the snowstorm

Jenny, Maria, Ashleigh, Jaclyn, and Megan at Four Ponds

I am now back in New York. I had a good Christmas at my parents' and enjoyed seeing everyone including my hyper little nephews. Currently, I am in Rochester visiting friends. Hope everyone had a great holiday. Happy New Years!!!

The boys opening gifts

End of November Already!!

Wow, I can't believe it is the end of November and I have been living in Cape Cod for three months. Sometimes it seems like I have only been here for a few weeks and sometimes it feel like much longer. I was home at my parents for the Thanksgiving break. I car pooled with four other people. Yep, there was five of us and all our stuff in my little Jeep. Just trying to do our part to save the planet. LOL More like trying to save money. My next break is December 24th until January 3rd. So, please let me know if you have any time that we could get together. I would love to see people when I come home. I have not done any new activities over the last couple weeks. We constructed a trail in the woods, did another WET Fest, trimmed back some overgrowth around a cranberry blog, and did some invasive species removal. I currently have my own room. My roommate decided that the program was not for her and that she needed to explore other options and left the program. She was a great roommate and we got along well. We may be getting a new member after the holiday break but not sure yet. I hope that we will get along also and it will work out as well as it did with my last roomie. I hope that I will be see some of you over the Christmas break. Leave me a comment and let me know how life is going with you.

The Yurt we camped in.

Bundled up - Maria, Ashleigh, and Me

Water Quality Testing - It's clean. Placing an Opitcal Brightener Collector - Let's see if my design works.

AmeriCorps Making a Difference

Well, lots of exciting things have been happening in Bourne. Our last two service projects have been really cool. We worked at a tree farm and were able to plant some trees. A lot of the time, I feel like we are killing a lot of plant life but not putting much back. Which I do understand has to be done in order for newer plant life to grow in, but it was nice to actually physically add back some life to the planet. The other project that we did that was cool was building and installing benches for a park. We were able to go through the whole process. We built the benches from plans, dug holes to place them in, and cemented the benches to the ground. It was hard work, but a lot of fun. This past Saturday, I worked at a Drop and Swapping Recycle Event. People would drop off stuff they did not want any more to the Recycling Center and then 'shop' for new stuff. It was very interesting to see what people dropped off and even more interesting to see what people wanted to take home. "One person's junk, really is another's treasure." People dropped off toys, clothes, household stuff, Christmas stuff, dishes, everything you can think of.

The beginning of the bench



Next step in bench building

Drilling in screws, almost done


Megan and I sitting on the bench we made


The bench installed in the ground
My IPs continue to go well. The Ways to Water projects is really moving forward quickly. I feel like I have so much stuff to do and not enough time to complete it all. Within the last week, I have taken on two big projects which I am excited to be able to work on. Both involve cleaning up public access points to ponds. For the one project, I will be helping to landscape the area near a boat landing. I am learning how to draw landscape plans, determine costs, and find the correct people to do the actual work. The ultimate goal for the other project is to increase the accessibility to a pond located near a high school and seniors' center. I have to talked to people to see what their visions are for the pond, do a conditions assessment, determine what can actually be done, put together a packet for the Conservation Committee asking permission to do work (Whenever you want to do work within 100 feet of water, Cape Cod requires that you get permission), do a presentation in front of the committee, and than once I have permission make arrangements for the work to get done. It is going to be a huge learning process, but I am looking forward to it.

Hmm, what else has been going on. I am learning to crochet and teaching the seniors who live next door to us to use computers. I am currently sharing my car with another girl in the house because her car is in the shop. Can be tricky at times, but we both work right near each other so it has been pretty easy to share. Well, I am going to head to bed. I'll try to be better about writing. Sorry I don't have pictures of me at the tree farm or at my IPs, I lost them some how trying to put them onto a CD. :(

Voting Day

So, did you vote today? I hope so. I sent in my absentee ballot about a week along. Things have been going well here. Not much has changed with my IPs (individual placements), I am doing the same stuff as I was before. Group projects continue to provide me with a ton of new experiences and skills. It is never dull around here. I have developed skills in pruning apple trees, river and swamp restoration, and lots of patience. This past Monday I felt very much like a five year old. I played in the mud, climbed a tree, and jumped in a pile of leaves. I have a very tough life, don't I?? LOL But seriously, I did work really hard on Monday. I helped save a swamp from being taking over by wild grape vines. We had to stand in the swamp and pull off vines from buttonbush trees. It was very difficult to move because it was so muddy. So we had to form a line and pass the vines out. I fell down once. It was very gross. But I had on my waders, so the only thing that got wet and muddy were my hands. Recently, I also worked in a river building bends to increase the length of the river so more organisms can live there. In order to do this we had to move 3 tons of rocks. My arms were a little tried at the end of the day. I am having a hard time writing this because I am too focused on watching the votes come in. So, instead of writing I'll just give you a few pictures to check out. Pictures are so much better anyhow.

1) Climbing an apple tree

2) What the swamp looked like after we finished clearing it. Before you could not even see the trees.

3) Passing vines in the swamp.
4) Moving rocks. They were a little heavy.

Lots of new experiemces

I have had a ton of new experiences in the last ten days since the last time I wrote. We are being keep very, very busy still. The last two weeks I have been working about 60 hours per week. My placement at the Coastal Health department is going great. Last week, I had to invent the actually optical brightener collectors. There is no real money to buy fancy stuff, so I had to get creative. This coming week we are going to place the four different collectors in the water and see which one works the best. My Ways to Water project is coming along. I have finally finished putting all the collected information about the pathways onto a spread sheet and went to visit a couple of the pathways to gather some more information. It was nice to take a break from computer work, but some of the pathways were very difficult to find. One time I was driving, following the directions, and the road simply ended. There was nothing but a wall of trees and bushes. So, needless to say, I never found that pathway. LOL

The 4 different collectors I invented. Like how resourceful
I was!

Group projects are my favorite because we get to do different things every week. This past Monday we worked with a group of ninth graders to clean up a beach. We also taught them mini lessons on sand dunes, marine mammals, water population related to the ocean, community service, and how the coast is an fragile environment. It was very, very windy and cold that day. I had to wear about 4 layers of clothes (the newspaper said the winds were 35 mph). Another group project we did recently was WET FEST. I believe I have talked about this before. Wet Fest is a water education program that we put on for schools. This time we went into Harwich elementary school and educated fourth graders on many different water concepts. I was in charge of teaching the booth about the three phrases of matter and doing a quiz broad with the kids. It was fun and did make me miss teaching.

Teaching at Wet Fest

This past weekend I volunteered to help build a playground for the children of Truro. Apparently, this town was the only town on the Cape that did not have a playground. The playground is going to be beautiful when it is completely done. I only help out one day, so I was not able see the finish project. I helped with painting and building a wooden fence around the playground.

Putting up the wooden fence

Painting

I also volunteered to help a scientist collect data on the types and number of fish that are in a certain area in Wellfleet. I can't remember the name of the beach that we were at. I learned how to set a net, pull it in, measure fish, and learned a lot about the different types of fish that live along the shore line. The day started off cool, but warmed up and turn out to be a great day. It was a lot of fun.

Pulling in the fishing net
Measuring American sand eels



Setting the net out

A big stripped bass we caught in the net

Gross: American sand eels

I know you want some drama from the house. But people are still getting along fairly well. People seem to be getting on other peoples' nerves a little bit more and some people are just disappearing from time to time because they need alone time. Dishes have been an issue this last week. People forget to do them. Annoying. But we just ask everyone whose dishes are in the sink and figured out who didn't do them. Then we harass them for a couple hours. ;) One of the girls' mom sent everyone in the house Halloween goodie bags. Thanks Mrs. Walls!! Every Wednesday, we have a house dinner and meeting. Each week two different people make the dinner. This past Wednesday, it was my turn to make house dinner. Christin and I made stir fry. Ok, I think that is everything for now. I am going to put some pictures up on here and head to bed. Good night everyone. Oh, I also helped out at a Cranberry Festival and got to see a wet harvest of cranberries.

Cranberry harvest

Harvesting cranberries

Creepy house

Indivual Placements

So, I have been very busy and have not had a chance to write. I started my individual placements (IPs) last week. It is tough getting use to job where I work from 8:30 to 4:30 everyday and have to drive 40 minutes to get there. So really, my work day starts at 7:45 and I don't get home until 5:15, 5:30. A long day, when you are use to days that start at 7:20 and end at 4:00. My IPs are both in Hyannis. I have two different placements. My first placements is with Barnstable Growth Management Development. In this placement, I am working on a Ways to Water project. I am trying to find different trails that are owned by the town and lead to water (i.e. ocean, bay, lake, or pond). Once I have identified ways to water that I believe are owned by the town, I verified that the town actually does own them. Then I do condition assessments on the pathways. The pathways are then prioritize based on safety needs and conditions. Eventually, I will then organized community service events to repair the pathways. It is a huge project. Currently, I spend 100% of my day on the computer: researching files, looking for deeds, updating files and spread sheets, and updating the Ways to Water map. Not my favorite thing to do, but important work.
My second placement, which is only on Wednesdays is with Barnstable Coastal Health Department. I love this placement. I am outside about 90% of the time. I am helping locate sources of water pollution and educating people on how to reduce water pollution. I am going to help make brochures to use to educate the public. Another project I am in change of is the Optical Brightener Project. Basically, this is a cheap way to test water for human pollution. You put cotton pads in the water for a week and then check to see if optical brighteners are presented. Optical brighteners are found in laundry detergent. It is an easy, simple way to pinpoint human pollutions. I have to help design the whole project. Today I was out on the water all morning locating places to place the collectors.
Overall life is going alright. I am busy and continue to miss home. But things are okay. Everyone in the house, amazing, are still getting along. Here are some pictures from the last couple weeks.

1) Measuring oysters to determine the legal length - 3 inches. If they were legal, we pulled them out of the cages. The oysters that are legal will be placed in public oysters beds for people to fish out.



2) All the oyster cages. You can see them because the tide is low. When the tide comes in all the cages are completely covered.

3) Measuring oysters.

4) Opening an oyster to eat. Fresh out of the ocean.

5) Tiger show at the Renaissance Festival.

6) We had our picture take with the king. LOL

7) A day at the office. :)

Working Hard

Well, we are finally done with our training. After five weeks of training, I am ready to get to work. This past Friday, we did our first volunteer service project. This means that we worked with volunteers from the community on a project within the community. We worked with students from an alternative high school to clear areas on a community farm. My group cleared plants from around an electric fence. Apparently, the plants keep making the fence short out. The group worked really hard and we cleared a big area in a short amount of time (two hours). On Saturday, I went to an Environmental Educator Conference in Boston. It was put on by the University of Massachusetts. The conference took place on a small island in Boston Harbor - Thompson Island. We took a boat tour of the harbor before landing on Thompson Island for the conference. The conference was good and I learned a lot. Saturday night, I went square dancing with some of my housemates. I did not know what I was doing half the time, but I had a decent time anyhow. Today I had my first real group service group. We went into a forest and helped build firewalls. These are not really walls, simply areas in the forest that the underbrush is mowed back, 50% of the brush is removed, and all the dead material is cleared. Supposedly, if a forest fire happens these areas are used for firefighters to stand in and fight the fire because the fire can not burn as easily here. It was a lot of hard work, but very rewarding. Here are a bunch of pictures from the last few days.

1) Amanda practicing for WET Fest, which is an educational fair that teaches children about different water concepts.

2) Before clearing plants from the fence.
3) After clearing plants from the fence.

4) Sunset on the beach.

5) Lighthouse in Boston Harbor.

6) I am a top secret CIA agent (carrying water quality kits).

7) These islands were made from dirt from the 'Big Dig'.

8) Me putting a big log into the wood chipper.


9) Carrying wood out of the forest.

9) Boston Skyline

Shellfish Harvesting

This week we learned how to harvest shellfish. We learned how to help shellfish grow, why shellfish are important for the environment, and how to identify the different types of shellfish. Then we went out in the field and helped move oysters from one growth tray to another. First, we had to build the new trays for the oysters to live on. Then we took bags of oysters that were about five months old and broke them up. The oysters are grown in bags at first so predators do not eat them. Since they are so close together inside the bag, the oyster grow one on top of another and form a big clamp of oysters. So, we have to break them apart and spread them out on big trays. They can go on the trays because they are bigger and not as many predators will eat them. It was fun but tough work. It is hard not to break some of the oysters and kill them. When you dump out the bags of oysters you also dump out all these tiny creatures that have hidden in among the oysters. I dumped out one bag and out came a baby American eel. Here are some pictures of me working. I know, I have a very tough job: riding boats, hanging out in the water, and eating lunch on a dock. :)

1) Everyone on the boat with all our gear.

2) Building the new home for the oysters.

3) Placing the tray in the water.

4) Fishing out a bag of oysters.

5) Breaking up the oysters. We had to wear gloves because they were very sharp.

6) Jacs dumping the separated oysters into their new home.

7) Eating lunch on the dock.