During the past two weeks we have had a variety of service projects and training days, my favorite being the ones where we were outside and got dirty. We cut down invasive species at a public park area, learned more about/helped with shellfish propagation, and learned how to use a chainsaw. I'm not going to lie, chainsaws are pretty intimidating to me, and I'm not a huge fan. But it's definitely good to know how to use one safely. One of my favorite service projects was doing fuel reduction at a forested area in Brewster. The Cape is extremely prone when it comes to wildfires, so a lot is being done to make sure that if a wild fire did break out, it wouldn't spread quickly. To clarify, in this case the term "fuel" refers to brush and other undergrowth in the forest that can easily catch fire and cause a fire to spread. Our work involved using a chainsaw to cut down dead trees, using a brush cutter to mow the undergrowth, and disposing of everything in a wood chipper. Even though it was hard manual labor I really enjoyed the day and felt pretty tough. :) Also, at the end of the week we helped to organize a beach clean up event called CoastSweep. We got about 16 volunteers of all ages and had fun cleaning up marine debris for a few hours. It was our first opportunity to work with community volunteers and I'm now pretty excited for future events.
An interesting training day was with the Marine Mammal Stranding Program which is part of IFAW (The International Fund for Animal Welfare). Sadly there are a high number of marine mammal (e.g. seal, dolphin) strandings on the Cape because of the hook shape of the Cape. It seems that some animals get turned around when they swim into Cape Cod Bay, and they find themselves unable to get out. The town of Wellfleet (where I live) is particularly prone to animal strandings because of its hook shape within the arm of the Cape. While that training was interesting, I have to say that my favorite training of the month was definitely the puppet show training. Yep, you heard that correctly--puppets!! AmeriCorps Cape Cod has a whole fancy puppet show that they have created over the years that they put on for elementary school kids in the community. The storyline is about littering at the beach and stepping on beach grass. It was pretty much a dream come true for me to be a puppeteer and I can't wait to perform it for kids! Another fun kid-related training was for WET Fest, which is an educational festival for elementary age kids about water. We split up into groups and learned how to teach different fun activities about the wonders of water, where our water comes from on the cape (aquifers), how to conserve water, etc. The day after the training we had our first WET Fest with 4th graders at a public school in Falmouth. It was a little crazy but definitely fun.
After all our training was done we had a small swearing-in ceremony where we all took the AmeriCorps pledge and were able to meet our service partners for our individual placements. My Individual placement (or IP) will be with the town of Chatham Department of Health & Environment. I will be working 2 days a week with the recycling program and also with the conservation department. I start this thursday! I'll have more info soon about my various projects. It was my first choice so I'm very excited! Chatham is about 40 minutes away so that will be a bit of a hassle but I'll have some good quality time to listen to music. :)
One of the exciting events of the past few weeks was making homemade clam chowder with local clams we got for free from one of our service partners. Most of my housemates helped to create the chowder and it was actually pretty good. While eating I chomped down on the occasional particle of sand but it just made the experience more genuine. Ha ha. Another fun shellfish-related event was Scallopfest, a festival over in Bourne, about an hour away. A bunch of us singed up to volunteer and my oh-so-fun job for the evening was to scoop coleslaw onto a plate. Luckily I was able to enjoy a free deep-fried scallop dinner at the end, and enjoy dancing to a local funk/reggae band.
Fall is in the air at the Wellfleet house, and there are plans to carve pumpkins and make lots of yummy pumpkin treats. We found some Halloween decorations stashed in a cupboard and proceeded to dec the house with orange and black streamers, ghost pictures, and other creepy items. It's pretty darn festive if I do say so myself. Speaking of spooky things, there have been some ghostly encounters the past week or so in our house. It is pretty well-known that the Wellfleet (or Le Hac) house is haunted, and one of the members last year who is living here again swears that last year she saw a woman in a white veil wandering around the hallways. Other people have heard strange voices at 3am, footsteps on the roof, and one guy even thought he felt someone playing with his hair when he was going to sleep. Creeeepppyyy. There was also an attempt to speak with the spirit(s) with a Oujia board, although it was suddenly interrupted when a few sneaky housemates pulled a prank and scared the Oujia-ers half to death. It has certainly been an eventful start to the month.
As a side note, it has been interesting to see what kind of talents/hobbies people have here, like two of my housemates who play banjo and harmonica and frequently jam in the house. It's enjoyable! Well, I think I've covered most of the exciting events of the past few weeks. Time for bed!
Margaret with a chainsaw!? Did you check to make sure the symptoms are ready?
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of jealous of Scallopfest.