stuff and stuff

Today we got our individual placements, mine is at the alternative septic test center. What this means is that I am going to be playing with poo for 10 months. I had known this on an unofficial basis, but today I received official notice... so as of next week, work officially starts. From then on my week will run a little something like this. . . mondays and fridays = group projects, tuesdays and wednesdays = alternative septic, and thursdays is COD day. COD day is meant for community outreach and development and has a clever little name eh?

As of today I like to joke a little bit about my IP, but i'm also actually really excited about it. I'll be helping to test promising new pollution reducing technologies. And that is pretty important here on the cape considering 95% of the population uses septic systems. These systems are currently unleashing gobs of nitrogen and it's just no good. Eutrophication like woah!

OK so for my one avid reader out there whose name rhymes with gidget i'm going to try to post a little more, my guarantee will be at least thrice a week, you must hold me to that.

This week our training switched gears a bit and has been focusing on the disaster response aspect of the program. Yesterday we had some training with the cape cod stranding network and learned all about seal dolphin and whale saving protocol. Am I dreaming? Cuz i'm pretty sure I am.
Then today we got a little red cross intro.

I am inspired.

i might be immune to poison ivy

So the past two days we have been doing some land management projects.. ie attacking invasive species suck as bittersweet, honeysuckle and the stubborn and painful green briar. These baddies are taking over, they're everywhere on the cape and they just don't belong here, they are choking out almost everything. In order to unleash our fury we have learned to use some pretty sweet tools like the polaski (sp?) and loppers (large clippers?) and some saws (no CHAINsaws yet, but sooooooooooon enough). The polaski is probably my favorite because it's big and bad and you can take out roots and reeeeeeeeeally unleash your fury with it. Thing is though, yesterday was i was unleasing so much fury that i did not notice that there was a stick in front of me and what happened was it went up my nose ... u can imagine that feeling.

retreat pics

fire
laura me and jess relaxing on the beach
sweet moonshine
sunrise at coast guard beach

the roomies laura liz and becca

shane (boss man), kat, jess and erin

eric and jess and the chex mix at the bonfire
me, jess and some wellfleeters dana and meredith

wetlands

the good lifey

I know, if i'm gonna get a blog I should blog. I figure now is a good time since I can't move after eating buffalo wings and spaghetti O's (possibly the most ridiculous/disgusting combination everrrr).

So since I got here I have been trying to adjust to the new situation, the new "job", the new people, the new everything...
And surprisingly everything is going well. Last week we went on a retreat to Eastham and stayed at Coast Guard Beach for a while. It was really beautiful... we got to explore the area a bunch and do a lot of getting to know you activities. My favorite part was learning about ticks, rabies and mosquito bourne illnesses.

The weekend was also lovely, the Bourne house entertained the Wellfleet house with our sweet new karaoke machine/skills and since we can't drink at the house, we went to the pond. Oh man life is good.

This week we started actual training and did our first service project with the Mashpee Shellfish Department. IT was soooooooooooooo fun. We got to wear waders and go in the river, rake up some oyster bags, rip em open and seed em elsewhere. I have been thinking i may want to go into fisheries science in the future ....
Today we learned more about Cape ecology and caught some creatures in the salt marsh

And to conclude, life is good.

Happy Labor Day

It's been almost a week since I started this Americorps Cape Cod business. I live in the Bourne house which is in the village of Pocasset. There's also a house in Wellfleet about an hour away. There are 13 people in the house, tomorrow there will be 14. I live in a quad, goodtimes.

Today was really fun, we had the day off but we woke up and had a house cleaning then we all headed to Provincetown. We visited the Sand Dunes which were beautiful. We hiked from the highway to the beach where we stayed a while. Then we went into the downtown area to some shops and what not.

Mostly everyone is just trying to get to know one another, there's a lot of movie watching, card playing, we went out with the other house the other night, some of us went swimming at the beach when it was definitely not sunny or warm, we all went to the library and got library cards...

So yea things are good, I can't wait to actually start doing things. This week we have a retreat for a couple days and then we have training til the end of september.

And veering off track a bit, I can't believe the croc hunter died. We weren't exactly close, but i'm kinda disturbed by this.

I don't really know how to blog yet... what writing style I should try for, so bear/bare? with me for a while until i get really good at this and you will look forward to reading about my life... hah jk but yea ..