Wondering what I'm up to these days? Here hopefully you can get an idea of the things I'm doing in and out of school. Please leave me comments--I love to hear from you!
Howdy! It's been a while. This semester has been overwhelming, but it's almost over. I've had a good time--enjoying time spent with friends, family, and boyfriend. Now, I'm procrastinating for finals, anticipating my freedom in T- 5 days!
Stitch, our new kitty. She's my roommate Leslie's. She's adjusted to living in our apartment quite well, especially cohabiting with a dog! In fact, just this afternoon, she walked over to our dog Marco's water dish right before he was going to drink, and Marco just waited patiently for her to drink her fill. Hehe :)
Envision a pack of researchers, donned in sunglasses and t-shirts, trudge out to a sand volleyball court in a park behind their office building. In a lively game of volleyball, they endeavor to prove that although they sit in front of a computer or lab desk all day, they still hold their own in athletics.
Well, maybe we don't quite prove our athletic prowess, but we do make a show.
Tuesday afternoons are one of the most fun times when I'm at home for the summer. And although I am probably the worst player out there, what I lack in skill, I make up for with sound effects, as I screech and "wooop!" across the volleyball court.
I am getting better, though, maybe due to increased coordination from the bit of frisbee I played last year at school (thanks Leslie!). By 2012, I'm sure I'll be ready for my world debut.
Howdy! I'm back home in Florida. Mom, Dad, Tom, and I once again populate the same house. Thomas and I just keep coming back! (I think Mom and Dad secretly like it.) I've been doing some kayaking, beach-going, and volleyball-playing.
I'm going to church with Mom and Dad, and going to a bible study. Haha, I just found out that the person who wrote the curriculum also wrote Blue Like Jazz, a book I've been suggested many times. Maybe I should really read it this time. :)
Another fun activity this summer: a garden! I planted cherry tomatoes, yard long beans (yes! they're supposed to be really long!), and two different types of sunflowers: a dwarf variety that grows to 20 inches tall, and a normal variety that grows to up to 12 feet tall! Amazing.
Not only did I learn a ton about myself, God, and farming at ECHO, but I also learned a few new dishes. One of which is pumpkin cake! I made some a couple weeks ago for my suite, after two of them had foregone sweets/bread for various religious holidays. Here are the first three pieces. Yep. That's right.
It looks like we have an apartment! While it's not made of candy, the soon-to-be-vacated apartment of a friend of mine looks like a great place for us to spend the next two years at Wash U. Woohoo! In addition, my future roommate Gretchen is bringing a dog from home, so we'll have a furry companion. I've never lived with a dog before--this should be fun.
I'm happy to be moving off campus. Our apartment is closer to the engineering school than my current housing, and now I will be free to buy my own food and cook for myself, instead of paying an arm and a leg for campus food (which, I admit, is rather tasty).
Besides the apartment excitement, the Haiti Project is progressing. Yesterday, I saw our brand new, larger scale burn chimneys (they're 18" in diameter, and 2' tall). We still have to put the finishing touches on them before we can use them next week.
On Friday we're building two briquette presses to compress the char into briquettes. Both presses compress briquettes inside of a 3" PVC pipe. The first uses a simple lever arm and the second uses a hydraulic bottle jack to compress the briquettes.
At the rate we're going, we'll have some trial runs for the large-scale peanut shell charcoal operations by the time we all leave for the summer. This makes me very, very happy.
Well, folks, I had a great time during spring break bumming around home. It was good to see old friends and soak up some Florida sun. I brought a friend of mine, Nori, to visit. We used to play the same 2-D spaceship game around seven years ago, and we've been friends ever since. Anywho, it was fun to show him around my hometown, although I was thoroughly shamed by my lack of knowledge of the space program. I now know about 20x more than I used to in that area thanks to a tour of Kennedy Space center and Nori's fascination with space.
We also visited ECHO, saw some of the farm, saw some briquette presses and solar dryers, and poked around in ECHO's library. I got the titles of some cool books on solar drying (how ironic!) that look like they'll be useful in our peanut drying efforts.
But sadly, I am now back in school, working diligently on homework (with a bit of socializing and EWB stuff thrown in for good measure, of course).
Next week is spring break! Woohoo! I'm going home to Florida. A highlight will be that a friend of mine, Nori, is coming to visit then. In addition, my brother will be home from school, a cousin is visiting, and...well...I will be in Florida. Bring on the sun and the vitamin D! I was fond of Florida when I left, and that fondness continues even when I'm gone (especially in the winter months...hmm...)
It's been a long week. Last night I was elected vice president of EWB for next year. I'm excited, because I like our president a lot, and I really enjoy being a part of EWB. At the same time, I'm nervous because I spend so much time leading the Haiti Project already.
And to think--this time one year ago, I was leaving for Haiti.
Jamie's having a bit of a hard semester. We found out early Feb that EWB-USA isn't approving any travel to Haiti. We decided that they were being reasonable, and since Meds and Food for Kids is swamped right now, we postponed the trip until the summer. We'll be nailing down the dates within the month.
We continued to process the paperwork to travel. However, when we talked to our project manager last Thursday, he asked us how we felt our project fits into the structure of EWB-USA. In EWB's model you find a specific community that wants help, travel to the community, and work with the community to implement projects that address their greatest needs. We are working with an NGO that helps a specific demographic across most of Haiti. In short, EWB works with a specific community; we do not.
Today we were notified that our EWB program in Haiti has been cancelled--you will no longer find our name on their website. This does not mean, however, our project is dying. We just won't be working with EWB anymore.
Anywho, it's a technicality that should have been identified earlier. I attribute it to lack of manning in the national organization, and that EWB national has been and still is inundated with requests for new projects and paperwork for existing projects.
Trying to help is hard. I empathize with EWB national. But I'm disappointed that all the time spent filling out paperwork and stressing about reconciling our "rogue" un-EWB trip last spring with EWB national. I'm annoyed about all the work we'll have to do to make this thing work outside of EWB, since we're a branch of our student EWB chapter.
Still, I'm optimistic. We've got some great people working on our project, MFK is a great organization, and there's a lot of potential for us to help. Maybe we will be able to get more done now that we're no longer under EWB-USA's care.
Wow. Have things happened since I last talked with you. Everyone knows about the earthquake in Haiti (the factory we work with is far away from the earthquake and received no structural damage), of course. That has both tripped up and invigorated Wash U EWB's work in Haiti. Beyond that, I took exams for last semester, spent a week at Urbana, spent a week in San Diego, and started a crazy busy semester, planning for summer, planning a trip to Haiti, and doing some homework from time to time as well. (Okay! Just kidding! I'm doing my homework I promise.) I imagine the most interesting thing in my life at the moment is the Haiti Project. I'm leading 3-4 students with the help of a professor and two professional engineers to help a factory in Haiti run by Meds and Food for Kids. They address the needs of Haiti in a holistic way: curing children of malnutrition with a special peanut butter, employing ~30 Haitians to make the peanut butter, buying as many peanuts as possible from local farmers, and working with peanut farmers to increase crop yields and reduce mold. We were in Haiti when this video was being made. I confess, it made me cry:
The factory was unhurt, however civil unrest threatens the security of Cap Haitien. Refugees are flooding the area, and MFK is now living in temporary housing under the protection of the UN. We decided, due to increased security risk, the near impossibility of being approved for travel by EWB-USA, and the burden we pose to MFK and Haiti's infrastructure, that it is best to wait to travel to Haiti until the summer. We will continue our projects here in the States and will have even better stuff to bring them then.
Our design efforts continue. Among several other things we're doing, we're working with some students from St. Louis University to make a larger (2' high by 18" dia) chimney to carbonize peanut shells for charcoal. The design-prototype-test process is a lot of fun: it's really neat to see the ideas you've cooked up in your brain and on paper actually turn into a real object that works.
Because there is so much going on with this project, I've been forced to delegate. I had no idea when I bugged my mom about delegating tasks to people for Girl Scout Camporee, how terribly hard it is to delegate. It has been a new experience to ask people to help you on something and count on them to come through. The people working on the Haiti Project are awesome, though, and we've accomplished and learned a lot.
I have read too many blogs that apologize over and over for not posting enough and have resolved myself not to emulate. The truth is that at sometimes I am very busy, and at other times very lazy. But, I suspect, if you called me and asked me to post more, I would do it--even if not, we'd still get to chat for a while. :)
