Monday, January 12, 2009

Facebook Pictures

Here's a link to my facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2228922&l=658bb&id=12702255

I'll post the links to the albums as I make more.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Pictures

Here are some select pictures that I've taken over the last week. There are more pictures posted on facebook, or will be soon. I have a really slow internet connection here.

This is the cabin that I live in.
















This is the entire group of people that I'm living with

This is a group of us at the bonfire from last night. The girl standing on the log (next to me) is Christina, and Hannah is standing next to me.


That's all the pictures that I'm going to post right now, but definitely check out facebook for more pictures.

Harald, bonfire, stuff

A lot has been going on up here in New Hampshire.

I've been working on a wood stove to replace the one that doesn't work so well in my cabin at the moment. The stove that's currently in my cabin is too small to be able to fill with enough wood to last the night and to heat our largeish cabin. Someone always has to get up multiple times during the night to refill it just for us to have hot coals in the morning. The stove that we're working on is named Harald, because that's what it says on the front of the stove. I've worked on sanding it down, fastening the top down, and sawing metal pieces to put in the bottom so that we have an area under the fire to feed the entire fire with oxygen. It's been lots of fun.

Last night we had a bonfire beside the frozen lake, and it was awesome! A lot of the people here play instruments, so we had music going almost the entire time. In fact, we have lots of music going the majority of our free time. It's really awesome! Last night was so much fun. It was fairly cold out, and by fairly cold, I mean it was really cold, but we were dancing around and had a big fire going, so everything was really nice.

Everybody here is really nice. I really like Bre, we kinda started bonding on the bus ride back from airport, and now we live in the same cabin so we hang out alot. In fact, a group of girls are going shopping in Concord today to get some necessities. Thank you Nanny and Owen for the Dr. Bonner's soap, it's amazing! I was my long underwear in the shower with me whenever I shower (which is something like every 2-4 days). Since I have 2 pairs of long underwear, I wash one pair in the shower with, let it dry, and wear the other pair until I shower again. It's a really good system, and allows me to go longer without having to do laundry. I'm thinking of starting to do that with my socks too soon. My outer clothing gets a little dirty, but not really smelly, so I don't feel like I need to wash it as often as the clothing that's against my skin. Everybody here has basically decided that all of us smell, and we all wear the same clothing over and over again until it's really nasty, so it doesn't matter to us anymore.

I've gotten an invite to go on a weekend trip to Maine one weekend to visit some of Bre's friends and to just get to see Maine. I want to go to Vermont and visit the family that's living there, but I don't remember their names or have any of their contact info. It would be lovely if somebody, like my dad, would provide me with this information.

Not a whole lot else is going on, just the normal with orientation and winterizing people's homes yesterday. I promise I'll post pictures soon. Possibly tonight since I need to charge my camera.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Went on a three hour hike through the snow and woods today. Am completely exhausted and my pants are completely soaked. Waiters would be a wonderful thing right now.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

First Days

I am now in Allenstown, NH. I flew in on Sunday afternoon, with both of my planes being delayed so that I had no layover whatsoever in ATL and I had to run to catch my second flight. But, I did meet Stephanie in the ATL airport before my flight. That was really nice, because then we met up once we landed and got our luggage together and were completely lost together. It was really nice.

I'm living in a cabin with 7 other girls, and it has electricity. Which basically means that we get lamps in our cabin, but still have to keep up with a woodstove. Unfortunately, the woodstove that we currently have in our cabin is really small, so we can't load it with enough wood to keep our cabin hot all night. But that means, that I have gotten to work on repairing another woodstove that's a lot bigger. We basically finished the woodstove tonight, but we still need to find some more metal pieces to put along the bottom as a type of grate thing so that we can provide air to the fire in a better way, as well as protecting to bottom of the stove from warping anymore that it currently has.

I really like everyone so far and I can pretty much remember everyone's names. There are 14 girls and 12 guys living here right along with 2 male and 2 female staff members.

This week is just orientation week, so we've been learning about how everything in camp works and what we're going to be doing. Today I learned assisted with removing the debris from a tree that fell on our field during the ice storm. And then I collected all of the small pieces of wood that were chopped from this tree and wheeled them up to my cabin so that my cabin can stay warm until we get the bigger woodstove. It's about a 5ish minute walk to the main cabin from my cabin, which isn't too bad. But it's mainly uphill. And learned today that it is really hard to wheel a wheelbarrow full of wood uphill. Especially when you don't have gloves on. At one point, I just abandoned the wheelbarrow in the middle of the road and walked to my cabin to get some gloves.

I'm going to take pictures this weekend of where I'm living, and I'll try to post them as soon as I can. It's like living in a winter wonderland here. Everything is covered in snow, there are no lights really, so you can look up and see the stars, when you can find an opening between all the trees that are around us. It's really pretty. I do get cell phone reception up here, and try to turn my phone on at night, although sometimes I forget. The one thing that I really want up here though, is one of those hats with the ear flaps or a hat that I can tie onto my head so that it doesn't fall off during the night like my current one is. Other than that, everything is going really well here. And it's getting close to my bed time (which is like 9 since I get up at 6:40 everymorning) so I'm going to go to bed. I'll try to post again soon.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Address

Here's my mailing address for while I'm in New Hampshire:
Stephanie Darden
SCA NHCC-Americorps
159A Deerfield Rd.
Allenstown, NH 03275

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Reading List

So they finally created a google group for all of us to get to know each other before we come to NH. Within this group, they posted a reading list for people who want to read more about what they're going to be doing in NH and the history of the conservation movement and the SCA. I'm actually kinda excited about this, because I've been looking for books to read to kinda get me ready for NH, but I didn't really know where to start. In case anybody else is interested in what they recommended for us to read, I'm posting the list here too.

Classics of the Environmental Movement

▪ On Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson
▪ Walden, Henry David Thoreau
▪ Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
▪ A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
▪ The Wilderness Adventure Series, John Muir

Environmental Education and Interpretation

▪ Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv
▪ Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, David Sobel
▪ Interpreting our Heritage, Freeman Tilden

Trail Work

▪ Lightly on the Land: The SCA Trail-Building and Maintenance Manual
(Everything you could ever want to know about trail work – much more interesting than the title suggests.)

New England Natural History

▪ Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History, Tom Wessels

Other Titles on Conservation, Sustainability and Environmental Ethics

▪ Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, Brower and Leon
▪ Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
(Rethinking the way we convey messages about the environment: why do we have trouble convincing others about the importance of conservation?)
▪ The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry
(Discussion on our estrangement from the land as a result of the growth of agribusiness and the decline of small, family owned farms)
▪ The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollen
▪ Crimes Against Nature, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
▪ Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken
▪ A Contract With the Earth, Newt Gingrich
▪ Our Common Future, UN report on Sustainable Development a.k.a. The Bruntland Report, 1987, 1992.