a week in review

Alright, I might have finally made a short post. This last weekend we didn’t do anything extravagant per-se.
It all started last Thursday. Earlier in last week, one of the people on my program, Dan, suggested we have a party where we dress like other people in the group. After drawing names out of a hat at our weekly Wednesday night dinner, we exchanged clothes Thursday. The catch was that all the girls drew guy’s names and the pair had to switch clothes. My partner was Bitsy, the smallest girl in the group. She dresses and acts like a hippy so I had a pretty fun night. I wore one of Jess’s skirts around my chest to look like one of those moo moo type dresses. Then I wore a head band and that was it! It was funny standing next to Bitsy in my Fighting Quaker’s T-Shirt and baggy shorts. She looked like a mouse in my clothes.
The whole night we just danced and pretended to be the other person. Meg and Jay even came up as surprise guests! It was hilarious!
Originally this weekend, Jess and I were going to go to Tobacco Cay for Valentines Day, but we had a meeting with our service learning class group in the town we will be working at: Arizona. That was also great. Saturday morning we left the bus station at 12:30 and got to Arizona around 1:30. The bus was packed, but I stayed cool with some shaved ice (kinda like a snow cone). My group is made up of 9 people: Emily Falta, Jess H, Jess C, Logan, Shaun, Devon, Jenn, Margret, and I. When we got to the stop, we rode in the back of Andrea’s truck to make it down the dirt road. Andrea is the director of an organization called STAND and is trying to organize the creation of a community orchard in the town of Arizona. So there we all were, 9 of us, 2 of Andrea’s babies and 3 residents of Arizona, crammed in the truck! Luckily it was only a half mile drive; otherwise someone would have fallen out!
There we met a woman named Ruby. Then we got showed around the town. It was quite small and had pretty much only one road. The people lived close together and had no electricity or running water. The one place that did was the local store. The people of the town worked in fields and orchards a couple miles down the road. The orchard we proposed would have avocados and fruit beneficial to the health of the people and be easily accessible. The job will entail cutting down an area of forest by their soccer field and then planting. Also we will teach the people about Terra Pretta, a type of soil that is very fertile, made from char.
After our tour of the town, we went out to the STAND center witch was maybe 5 miles down the bumpy road. On the way we saw beautiful fields and groves of trees. When we got there, we were shown around a retreat that housed a bunch of hippies. Andrea lived there with her husband and occasionally young folks would come down and work and live on their land. They were all very environmental and have a model for the orchard we are to build. We got to have a tour of their lands and got a refresher on what type of plant life lives in the rainforest. It was beautiful land and a beautiful home. We even got to play with some cute fuzzy creatures that Andrea had adopted.
We spent the afternoon there and then took the bus back. The next day, Sunday, I made breakfast with Dan and Logan and just hung around all day. That night Bitsy’s parents took us out to dinner at Firenza’s, a pizza/Italian place. It was wonderful. After that, since they treated us, I treated Bitsy and Jess to 2 rides at the community fair! It was a good relaxing time. Bitsy nearly fell out of one though, but we are all still alive.
Tuesday night, I played basketball with one of my friends from Galen, Cody. I met up with him at a court very close by with Dan. I had played Dan back at school and knew he was good. When we got there, Cody had already been playing for a while, but we got in and played 3 straight games. It was very rewarding to get back out on the court. I hope to do it every other night from now on!
Last night was the Lunar Eclipse. The moon rose huge out of the east and around 8:30 it started to turn black. The whole process was very cool. It also prompted me to play with my camera a bit. I took some pictures of my roommate Pete’s camcorder screen. As the moon rose, I took pictures of the lights of the city. Then the Suns game was on and, as you all should know, Shaq is now on the Suns. This was his first game out and I practiced taking pictures of the TV as well.

This coming weekend Jess and I will be going to Tobacco Cay. I can’t wait to get things going!