Saturday, May 21, 2016

Team Pink/ Team Go Camp Again

I am back from Spring Hitch, and will post a couple of photos. Our group thought that it would be super funny to pretend that we had a really terrible time on hitch and come back to Bear Brook really happy to be back but act like we were miserable for the past ten days. This failed the moment we got back, because when people ask you how it went and you actually had a really good time, it's hard to lie. We also wanted to show our picture slideshow of only pictures of us looking sad, but we just gave up on that too. The end result in our epic plan of Operation Pretend We Were Miserable is that I have a lot of pictures of our group looking upset on playsets. See here:


























We also just look like a weird band.

























Everything is terrible, obviously.
 And we had a trailer, which was a huuuge bummer. Especially sitting inside of it was sad.


























And just for fun, here is a list of things we wanted to google while out on hitch. Despite having full service, we still wrote things down to pretend that we were in the woods without internet access. I guess we liked to pretend a lot in our group...
Here it is:
Who is cilley? Largest leaf pile ever made? What percentage of the mosquito diet is human blood? -how many calories do they get from human blood vs animal Sugar vs cigarettes How many times does a mosquito feed in its lifetime?

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Spring Hitch

Greetings from the frigid McDonald's outside of Laconia, NH! We are lurking here getting internet on our day off, so I am attempting to blog post from my phone. We are currently on Spring Hitch-- 10 days camping and working in various state parks to help the park campgrounds and day use sites get open for the summer. Mostly we have been raking a LOT of leaves. My leaf raking abilities have improved dramatically, lemme tell ya. And I have yet to get blisters, which is a miracle. Tomorrow we start raking again, but this time on the windy shores of Lake Winnipesaukee (biggest lake in the state)! We have a prime beachfront campsite and we went swimming yesterday. It was chilly but hey, we are stinky and we'll get in any body of water.
It's currently raining sideways so we are probably going to continue to lurk and avoid our cold campsite. Last week we were camping in this gorgeous private campsite in Patuckaway State Park. It was sunny and rocky and buggy. The crazy part was that we could set up our kitchen in a large pavilion with LIGHTs and OUTLETs! Fancy camping, we didn't even have to set up a kitchen tarp! In other news, I've been setting some daily goals for myself. We work a 7-4 schedule so we have a lot of time in the evenings to play bananagrams and hang out. I've been trying to do a headstand, jog or journal (very different I know), sew a patch onto my pack, and write a couple of postcards every evening. Goals for next hitch: floss every night! Step by step...

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Community Meeting

We are in the middle of transition time, full of trainings and less full of children. Education season ended three weeks ago, and we had our very last Community Meeting. Here is a list of things we discussed at community meetings throughout the winter, because when you write it all out it’s quite hilarious. This may not make any sense to you, dear reader, but I hope you at least appreciate the wide variety of topics.

Here we go:
Should we buy a drum set?
If we buy a drum set, who will chip in to pay for it?
Ok we are buying a drum set.
Can we order the drum set to our P.O. box?
When are we allowed to use the drum set?
Let’s do secret Valentines!
How?
Ok first let’s vote on if we should do secret valentines.
Ok that passed, now let’s vote on if you have to tell the person you had them.
Should we have a reveal party?
But what if we don’t want to reveal ourselves?
Should we do it on Valentines Day or the week after?
It will be cheaper after Valentines Day.
Whoever has Rachel don’t give her Snickers.
Ok let’s revisit this because we still have a whole month until Valentine’s Day.
We have a drum set!
Can Hilary hear the drums from her cabin?
Let’s get Bryan to play to drum set right now.
Which words aren’t allowed to be used in our community?
Let’s kill the porcupines and eat them!
We need a rice cooker. No one knows how to cook rice.
Where are things in the tool cache?
We need to be more professional—find a better place to hang our laundry.
Who wants to go to Montreal?
Y’all need to pay up for Montreal.
Should we do Secret Easter Bunny? Egg hunt?
How?
We could make a map and label each section and then you can only look in your section.
We could label eggs with numbers and you only find your number and that way we don’t lose any eggs.
We could combine both ideas.
How?
Seriously, pay up for Montreal.
Let’s talk about food waste. We are a Conservation Corps.
Well, we do have to throw things out sometimes. It’s Ok. (Throw that shit out it’s moldy ain’t no one gonna eat it-Annie)
Where should we put half-used vegetables?
Who wants to learn how to make some whistles?
People need to be better at committing to things they say they are going to do.
We are doing Secret Aprils Fools. Put your name in the hat.
We have a rice cooker!
Y’all want to work on a farm? And get paid in cheese?
We reorganized the Tupperware. Keep it that way.
What songs are inappropriate to listen to in this community?
Clean your shit up before ream.
Should we have dinner at 6:30?
How is the 6:30 dinner time change going?
Let’s make a Bucket List of things for our time here. In a bucket.
All in favor of the bucket give a thumbs up.
We are going to build a greenhouse! Everyone needs to help!
Are y’all still excited about the greenhouse?
Clean your shit up off the porch.
We drink too much coffee.
Should we get worse coffee or should you drink less coffee?
Let’s get worse coffee.
Maybe the coffee will taste better if we get rid of the Bunn and use an electric percolator.
Maybe we should clean the percolators.
Like seriously, clean the percolators when you finish the pot.
Maybe we’ll add that to ream.
We reorganized the Tupperware again. It’s really organized this time.
Should we invite the City Years over?
Who wants to drive across the country with Darren?
The ticks are coming. Take every precaution.
Stop giving advice about ticks because the tick guy is coming in a couple of weeks.
Does anyone want to order some boots? No? K.
Where are we now allowed to drink alcohol now that it is nicer out?
Wait, you can’t have a fire at Spruce Pond.
We need a crew to take care of the fire ring dispersal at Spruce Pond.
Ok just remember no drinking in the cabins, it’s a safe space.
I finished reading The Martian.
Let’s be aware of… just everything. And be mindful. As long as you’re aware and mindful everything should be good.

Future predicted meeting topics:
Nobody plays the drum set…
We reorganized the Tupperware again.
Who wants to go to Mexico?
Just a quick reminder to stay positive.