We finally won a game. And boy were we stoked!
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
A Good Final University Year
Lara Lea and I at the Cabin Farewell Party
Lunch Club's final lunch :(
My Glorious Housemates and I in Redwood 5
The final Gals Night at TBA with our favorite owner Luis and worker Alex (sadly he has moved)
If one refers back to the blog about the first time I graduated, one can gather that I was not very happy. It had been a pseudo crappy year, especially the first semester (And yet I do feel as though that year was important. One learns a lot in rough times. Plus, I'm making too sweeping of a statement by saying it was bad. There were 2 or 3 really bad things hanging over me, but there also were a lot of good friends, experiences, and interesting classes).
Well, I had to return this school year to do prerequisites for physical therapy and had a pretty awesome experience. I made some great friends, had fantastic roommates, and voyaged on some fun adventures. Although I felt like I was older than everyone at the school (which I mostly was) and I didn't really enjoy taking the science and math classes I was required to take, I felt like it was sort of a redo of all the negative things that transpired in 2005.
The Intensive
There is a little thing that I think every teacher tries to impart to his or her students before they get into the real world: self-discipline. Hopefully they did a good job for me, because during the next month I'm going to have to work my little fingers to the bone to try to finish a mound of homework. Barnes and Noble, the library--I leave Central America and the western United States in favor of you. You shall be my new home.
Anyways...I've returned home from Atlanta and North Carolina. I had a lovely time bonding with all of my fellow Outdoor Education students and the teachers. The first week we spent in Atlanta at a camp of a hundred-plus acres of land right within the urban sprawl of the city (who would have ever known?). During that time it was lecture after lecture after lecture starting from about eight in the morning until nine-thirty at night. We had various professors who came in from different parts of the South to impart their knowledge. One of my favorites was Petey who transformed our group into the fabulous singing sensation called "Mama Bass and the Mudsliders." We sang in pond animal costumes about things like watershed. I had a sequined orange dress with fins and an orange and white hood that had my face coming out a fish's mouth.
Another notable professor would repeatedly ask us, "Are you with me?" after every sentence. I wonder if he still wonders about that. We're still with ya, man!
Sometimes our marathon of lectures would be broken up by outings. We went, for example, to the Atlanta Zoo. Besides looking at the exhibits, we visited the zoo kitchen. Did you know that they feed primates things like Cliff Bars? Well, primates are amazing climbers!
After finishing a week in Atlanta, we went to North Carolina to help create a mobile outdoor education school for some of our good friends that lead an adventure based camp. The friends came to my first intensive and canoed with us in the Boundary Waters this past fall, so we've bonded with them and were excited to help them out.
Before we became ensconced in our work, we had part of the weekend off, so Monty came up to visit from Chattanooga. Carol, he, and I went hiking up to Looking Glass. It is a beautiful piece of granite that some of my friends have rock-climbed (someday I hope to join in their ranks). Then the three of us explored Asheville. We ate at a Thai restaurant and then wandered the streets. I went to high school near Asheville, so perusing it again brought back all sorts of memories of cruising Patton Avenue, the Mellow Mushroom, watching movies and eating pizza at the Asheville Brewery and Company, window shopping in the little hippie stores, looking at the art smattered everywhere, and sneaking off campus to Beanstreets for coffee on group dates, with friends, or with my boyfriend at the time. The latter place was especially dear to me, so I had Monty and Carol hunt with me to find it again. After searching in vain, I finally asked a fella on the street who told me that it had shut down. Wow, I was pretty bummed. The guy told me he had also gone to high school nearby and had loved the place as well. We wallowed in our sadness and nostalgia together.
Similarly, Monty and I discovered that a tea house in which we had spent hours reading and listening to live poetry after taking a rock-climbing anchors class last year had also shut down. The experience reminded me how transient places are and how important it is to remember (hence, one of the reasons I write so much). I love to travel, but it's the experiences with people that I have in various places that I treasure.
On Sunday Monty left and everyone in my intensive returned to get back to work. Our group built materials for and tried group initiatives. We also thought up and put together curriculum for the initiatives as well as for environmental education classes. On Wednesday night, we went to a church youth group and had kids try out a lot of the games and initiatives. Then on Thursday, we took the initiatives and environmental education to a school to do programs for three fourth grade classes. All the students and teachers seemed had a lot of fun and expressed desires for us to come back. I was just happy that our friends have a good start for beginning their program.
I acquired a new friend in North Carolina. She's black, furry, and currently has no name. She's in my garage right now harassing Ursa to no end. I should go see how she's doing. Have a happy week!
By the way, I highly recommend the book I'm currently reading.
Anyways...I've returned home from Atlanta and North Carolina. I had a lovely time bonding with all of my fellow Outdoor Education students and the teachers. The first week we spent in Atlanta at a camp of a hundred-plus acres of land right within the urban sprawl of the city (who would have ever known?). During that time it was lecture after lecture after lecture starting from about eight in the morning until nine-thirty at night. We had various professors who came in from different parts of the South to impart their knowledge. One of my favorites was Petey who transformed our group into the fabulous singing sensation called "Mama Bass and the Mudsliders." We sang in pond animal costumes about things like watershed. I had a sequined orange dress with fins and an orange and white hood that had my face coming out a fish's mouth.
Another notable professor would repeatedly ask us, "Are you with me?" after every sentence. I wonder if he still wonders about that. We're still with ya, man!
Sometimes our marathon of lectures would be broken up by outings. We went, for example, to the Atlanta Zoo. Besides looking at the exhibits, we visited the zoo kitchen. Did you know that they feed primates things like Cliff Bars? Well, primates are amazing climbers!
After finishing a week in Atlanta, we went to North Carolina to help create a mobile outdoor education school for some of our good friends that lead an adventure based camp. The friends came to my first intensive and canoed with us in the Boundary Waters this past fall, so we've bonded with them and were excited to help them out.
Before we became ensconced in our work, we had part of the weekend off, so Monty came up to visit from Chattanooga. Carol, he, and I went hiking up to Looking Glass. It is a beautiful piece of granite that some of my friends have rock-climbed (someday I hope to join in their ranks). Then the three of us explored Asheville. We ate at a Thai restaurant and then wandered the streets. I went to high school near Asheville, so perusing it again brought back all sorts of memories of cruising Patton Avenue, the Mellow Mushroom, watching movies and eating pizza at the Asheville Brewery and Company, window shopping in the little hippie stores, looking at the art smattered everywhere, and sneaking off campus to Beanstreets for coffee on group dates, with friends, or with my boyfriend at the time. The latter place was especially dear to me, so I had Monty and Carol hunt with me to find it again. After searching in vain, I finally asked a fella on the street who told me that it had shut down. Wow, I was pretty bummed. The guy told me he had also gone to high school nearby and had loved the place as well. We wallowed in our sadness and nostalgia together.
Similarly, Monty and I discovered that a tea house in which we had spent hours reading and listening to live poetry after taking a rock-climbing anchors class last year had also shut down. The experience reminded me how transient places are and how important it is to remember (hence, one of the reasons I write so much). I love to travel, but it's the experiences with people that I have in various places that I treasure.
On Sunday Monty left and everyone in my intensive returned to get back to work. Our group built materials for and tried group initiatives. We also thought up and put together curriculum for the initiatives as well as for environmental education classes. On Wednesday night, we went to a church youth group and had kids try out a lot of the games and initiatives. Then on Thursday, we took the initiatives and environmental education to a school to do programs for three fourth grade classes. All the students and teachers seemed had a lot of fun and expressed desires for us to come back. I was just happy that our friends have a good start for beginning their program.
I acquired a new friend in North Carolina. She's black, furry, and currently has no name. She's in my garage right now harassing Ursa to no end. I should go see how she's doing. Have a happy week!
By the way, I highly recommend the book I'm currently reading.
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