Longest. Entry. Ever.

Wow, longest absence ever. There was a lot going on, and the internet kept going out. I hope you're nice and settled in, because the longest absence ever leads to the longest blog post ever.

Thursday, Dec. 3: In the morning, it was still too cold to work outside. Calwood has a bunch of fishing poles that had been donated, but they were all tangled up, and some of them didn’t work. We had to untangle them and try casting them, and if they didn’t work, try to fix them. So…I cast my first fishing line! It wasn’t quite as exciting as I thought it would be. It was a pretty easy morning.

That only took until about 10:30. Angie and Rick didn’t have anything for us to do, but we still had to fill our day somehow to get our hours. We decided to do some service learning (which counts as hours) by going to museums. Since the road was still pretty icy, we could only take the cargo truck down the mountain because the van couldn’t handle it. The truck only holds six people, so Christina made two trips to bring us all down. I was in the second group so I could have time to pack for Chicago. We went to some kind of atmospheric research center. It would have been pretty interesting, but we were all too tired to really pay that much attention.

After the atmospheric place, Christina took me to the bus station so I could get to the airport. I flew to Chicago that night to get to K-Spang’s memorial service on Friday afternoon. It was really nice, and I am so glad I got to go. It was really helpful for me to be able to see other people who cared about her.

Random story: We had to wear our uniforms to the atmospheric place because we were getting hours for it. I went straight to the airport from there, and I didn’t think it was worth it to change at the airport, so I flew in my uniform. This created the biggest airport security ordeal I have ever experienced. I took off my shoes, put my purse on the conveyor belt, took my laptop out of my backpack, and went through the metal detector. Since I never wear belts ever, I forgot that I was wearing one with my uniform. Obviously, I beeped in the metal detector. I remembered the belt and took it off, but the guard had to pat me down because I had beeped. Remember the thousand pockets in the uniform pants? Pat pat pat – “Maam, do you have something in that pocket?” “Yes.” “Can you pull it out please?” Oh look, random papers. Pat pat pat – “Do you have something in that pocket?” Oh, cash and my ID. Pat pat pat – oh, my boarding pass. Pat pat pat – chap stick. It was ridiculous.

I flew back to Denver on Sunday. In the morning before I left, Christina called me and said that there was already a lot of snow on the mountain, and they were under a winter storm advisory, so I wouldn’t be able to get back up to Calwood that day. Nichole, one of the office people on campus, would pick me up from the airport and take me to campus. I would work and eat with a team from the Earth Unit, who is currently living on campus, until the roads were clear enough for me to get back to Calwood. I checked the weather when I got to Denver, and it was supposed to be snowing until Wednesday. I mentally prepared myself to stay with the Earth team for a few days. It was pretty creepy staying in the dorm when it was so empty. There was no one on my floor. I did not enjoy that part.

On Monday, my temporary team had to leave at 7:15am. That’s usually when I wake up at Calwood. Their project is called Learning Landscapes. When the weather was nicer, they were going around to schools and building playgrounds. Or something. But since it had been snowing for the past couple weeks, they’ve been doing inside work. They go around to schools, usually inner city elementary schools, with blank banners and paint. They go into art classes and help the kids design a banner with whatever theme the school had decided on, and they help the kids paint them. They are usually hung up on poles outside the school. The Earth team already had 14 people, so I took up the last seat in the 15-passenger van. We went to the warehouse where we were supposed to pick up the banners, but they sent us to another place. We went there, and they sent us somewhere else. The third place sent us back to the first place. We got the banners and went to the school. Susan, the person in charge of their project, told us we would be splitting up. Half the group stayed there, and the rest of us went with Susan to another school. When we got there, we found out that the school hadn’t decided what they wanted on the banners yet, so there was nothing for us to do. So we went back to the other school. We helped with a first grade class and a fourth grade class. It was really pretty fun. The kids were adorable and the people on that Earth team were awesome. I felt awkward with them at first, but they totally made me feel welcome.

At lunch time after those two classes, Christina suddenly walked in the door. I was completely surprised. She said there was a lull in the snow, so she came down to pick me up so we could be back before it started snowing again. She said Nichole had tried to call me, but my phone was on silent. (I was at work, after all.) Christina took me back to campus so I could get my stuff, then we went back up the mountain. I was back! Yay! I had fun on their project, but I had missed my mountain.

Tuesday: The temperature was in the single digits, so too cold to work outside. Again. NCCC requires everyone to turn in a resume at the end of this round, so we worked on those in the morning. In the afternoon, there was actually a school group coming to Calwood. I don’t know how a bus made it up the hill. Calwood staff said a few of us could shadow the class to get a better idea of what they do. Tomm, TK, Marquis, and I volunteered. The kids that were coming were from an 11th grade special needs class, and Calwood was going to teach them some sheltering skills, among other things. They were going outside. I wore long johns, uniform pants, and snow pants on the bottom, and two long sleeved shirts, a hoodie, and my AmeriParka on top. And a hat. And some gloves and amazingly warm boots that I borrowed from Calwood. It was extremely cold that day.

We didn’t go far from the lodge to do the activity they had planned. Mari and John, the Calwood teachers for the day, said the four of us could do the activity also. We were all supposed to build a shelter that would hold in as much heat as possible for a “creature” that would only be a couple inches tall. The guys and I built a pretty good shelter. A layer of sticks on the ground, then a layer of pine needles, then sticks to make walls, then cover everything in pine needles, then cover it all with snow for insulation. The way Mari and John had planned to test the shelters was really clever. They had film canisters with water and Jell-o mix inside. If our “Jell-o baby” stayed liquid, then our shelter was warm enough and our baby survived. If it solidified and turned to Jell-o, the shelter let in too much cold, and the baby died. Mari and John didn’t allow quite enough waiting time to let anyone’s baby completely turn to Jell-o because it was SO COLD, but ours was definitely still all liquid. Some people’s had gotten a little thicker already. We kept our Jell-o baby alive!

Later in the afternoon, I was downstairs in the lodge with a few other people, and Christina burst in all excited and said that the lake was frozen enough to play broom ball (hockey, but with no skates, brooms instead of sticks, and a soccer ball instead of a puck). Angie had showed a few people how to test the ice thickness, and it was thick enough to be safe. So we all bundled up again and went back outside. There was about a foot of snow on the frozen lake, which took about an hour with all of us working to shovel it off, then we played. Several of the Calwood staff came out to play with us. Most of you probably know that I am really not a sports person, but it was really fun. I stayed on defense the whole time and actually did pretty well, blocking a lot of people. And managed not to fall on the ice a single time. We played for probably a little over an hour, then we all got too cold. (My team won with a score of 2-1!)

Wednesday: Again, too cold to work outside, but there wasn’t anything for us to do inside. We drove to Denver to do some ISP hours at Share America. You may remember that I’ve done ISP there before, where I bagged onions for a few hours. This time, it was potatoes. Put three pounds of potatoes in bag a bag, tally the bag, then put it in a giant box. We ended up with four people on each side of the table bagging, TK and myself tallying our respective sides, and one person putting the bags in the box. It turned into a competition between the two sides. Really it was just TK and I insulting the other person and their team, but it was fun and made the time go faster. His team unfortunately won by about 50 bags, but at one point we were down by like 85. At the end of the day, we had done 1,710 bags, which is 5,130 pounds of potatoes.

Thursday, Dec. 10: Yet again, too cold to work outside. At the end of each project, every team has to turn in a portfolio of the project. We worked on our Calwood portfolio all morning. In the afternoon, some people went to build more of those bird boxes we cleaned, and others of us went to build new doors for the barn. The barn doors get pretty messed up with the strong winds and needed to be replaced. Rick gave us the measurements, lumber, and tools, and away we went. He told us to only build the frame of the doors, and we’ll add the plywood later. It was cool. I haven’t used a miter saw in a while, so that was nice.

Christina had recently gone over our budget, and discovered that we are WAY under our food budget. Basically, our food situation is awesome. We always have a ton of food and we have really good cooks on our team, yet we are still way under budget. We’ve talked to a few other teams about food, and most seem to be unhappy with it. Other teams run out of food a lot or have way too much spaghetti or something. None of us know how we’re doing so much better with food, but no one’s complaining. Anyway, since we have so much extra food money, we decided to go down to Jamestown to the Merck for dinner. On Thursdays, they only have one thing for dinner, and also live music. We’ve been down there for the music on Thursdays before, but never had any food. Dinner that night was lasagna, either a vegetarian option or meat option. I got the meatless one, which was butternut squash and walnut. Oh my goodness, it was amazing. It was a pretty fun night, with a fantastic dinner and live music.

Friday: Friday was a day off for us, because the team had to work last Saturday (I was in Chicago, but it was Calwood’s annual Christmas Tree Fundraiser. They raised $7,000!). Some people wanted to look at the university in Boulder, and others just wanted to walk around the university area (“The Hill”) because we had heard there were a lot of cool places there. We found a sandwich place that some of the Calwood interns had told us about called Half Fast Subs. They have a HUGE selection of sandwiches, and really cheap drink specials. We split into a few different groups, but my group found that place and had lunch there. It was really good food and had a fun vibe.

After we hung out in Boulder for a while, we drove to our Denver campus to spend the night. We had an ISP planned at another of those H1N1 vaccine clinics in Denver, and we had to be there at 8am Saturday morning. If we had gone from Calwood, we would have had to leave at like 6am to get there in time. Obviously, we would all rather be closer so we wouldn’t have to get up so early. Where was this clinic, you ask? It was at Columbine High School. Yes, THAT Columbine High School. It looked like a pretty nice school. I don’t know if they’ve done a lot of renovating or something, but it all looked really new inside. The work was really boring. There were WAY too many volunteers there so there wasn’t much for anyone to do. I spent a little time with one of those counter things counting how many people came in, but most of the day was spent wandering trying to find something to do. Oh well. I still got ISP hours for it. I think as of now, I have 40 of the required 80 hours.

Which brings us to today (finally). I have done absolutely nothing today except watch a lot of Arrested Development with Jess and write this insanely long blog update, and its been fabulous. Everyone but Jess and Rob went down to Boulder today, so it is nice and quiet. The temperature is supposed to be just above freezing (warm!) for the rest of the week, so hopefully we’ll be able to work outside for our last few days. Wednesday is our last day of work, and we leave Thursday. I’m really excited to go home and see family soon, but it’s weird to think about leaving Calwood. It seems like we’ll come back after Christmas break, but we’ll go to New Orleans instead. (By the way, we found out we’ll be living in a 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house in the upper 9th ward there. So no walking around alone will be allowed. We’re definitely getting spoiled with this project.) I’ll try to be better about updating this thing, for you as well as for myself. I think I’m really going to like having a record of everything we’re doing.