MLK day and my birthday!

Monday was my birthday, and it was a pretty good day. We went to Portsmouth, NH (on the coast) to participate in a day of service. At breakfast, Bre gave me a card that she had made for me for my birthday, it was really cool, and she was the first person to say happy birthday to me. The morning we spent listening to speeches and then going on a march through the town of Portsmouth. It was pretty fun. In the afternoon, we went out to the seacoast and did a beach cleanup of a 1/3 of a mile stretch of the beach. We didn't find very much, but we did have a very interesting activity that happened later. Four of the guys I live with decided that they were going to get into the water. So, they stripped down to their boxers and ran into the water, then ran right back out. It was pretty hillarious. Especially since we had some other volunteers with us who didn't know that this was going to happen. Everybody tried to get me to go in too, but I didn't particularly want to have to ride back with wet underwear for the hour and a half drive back to Bear Brook. Some of the girls are talking about taking a trip back there this coming weekend and doing it. But being more prepared than the guys were. I might go with them if they do. After we got back from Portsmouth, we had spaghetti for dinner, and the dirt cake for dessert. Everybody loved the dirt cake. It was awesome! Then, I got a present from the majority of the group, which was a hemp necklace with a purple shell on it that they had found on the beach that day. It's really pretty. I'm also getting a neckie at some point from Phil, but production of those has slown down (neckies are balaklavas, or something like that).

Tuesday, I drove in the snow for the first time ever. We had to move cars so that the spots could be plowed since it snowed this weekend. And Robin was helping Sue in the kitchen making bread and dinner and whatnot, so she gave me her keys and asked me to move her car for her. I did it, and only got stuck in the snow once, but Bear pushed me out of the snow. It was pretty cool. I also fixed a tear in my pants yesterday by sewing up the hole using fireline, and then putting an iron-on patch on the back, using my woodstove as the "iron". Although, I have now managed to tear those pants again, and will be patching them again tonight.

I have now found out my teaching team and what grade I'm going to be teaching. I'm really excited, because I'm going to be teaching 8th grade with two really awesome guys. We're the only 8th grade teaching team, so it's going to be harder for us, but we're all really excited. Now we're just trying to come up with a service-learning project to do with the students. But first, we have to know our curriculum, which we're going to finding out tonight, since we're going over it with Marlee.

Everything is going really great up here! Lots of snow, and lots of playing in the snow. I particularly enjoyed playing line-tag on the lake today. That was lots of fun. Pictures are going to slow going up because of the way our internet works here, but I'm going to do my best since I have lots of cool pictures.