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Tuesday, 27 October 2009

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    Everything is Illuminated: A Novel
    By Jonathan Safran Foer
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    I was sick all last week so feeling good since Saturday has felt great! I forget when I'm well how wonderful it is to have energy and just not feel uncomfortable all the time. I was so much more grateful this week :)

    In other news I saw my first copperhead last night (there were actually two). One of the guys had a kid point one out in his woods class and came rushing back to the staff house to pick up anybody that had the shift off when he got out of class to run back and take pictures. So I went out with 4 of the guys to look for those copperheads and then spent a while looking at them while Steve took pictures. It was pretty cool. They're beautiful snakes! They're actually really docile too. Apparently most people that get bitten actually step on them because they're so well camouflaged (they're an ambush predator so they mostly sit still). I was a little nervous to get close but the guys convinced me to 4 or 5 feet from them and I was glad I got a close look at such a cool animal.

    I had the night off last night so after supper Laurinda and Ryan and I went up to crab dock to build a fire and roast marshmallows. It actually ended up taking us almost an hour to get the fire started because we've had rain recently so nothing was completely dry. Once we got it started we had fun and by the time we got back it was 11:00 and time to head to bed.

    Laurinda and I carved pumpkins on Saturday night and next weekend we're hoping to all go to a corn maze together at a nearby farm.

    There was a small oil spill in the Charleston Harbor last Thursday and it made it's way to our beach by Saturday afternoon so we're adjusting classes this week to avoid getting oil on equipment and kids' feet. I actually haven't been down to see it but I've heard it's in big globs on the beach at high tide line and some might be up in the salt marsh.

    I just finished the above book today. I really liked it. The beginning of the book if confusing and frustrating because it's hard to follow but it turned out to be a really interesting story. It's about a 20 something Ukranian guy who befriends a 20 something Jewish American guy who comes over to the Ukrain to find the woman who saved his Grandfather from the Nazi's during WWII. The book follows their journey as the Ukrainian and his Grandfather work at tour guides for the American and they travel around the country searching for the woman who saved his Grandfather and the village he escaped from. It also follows the history of the village and the people leading up to the Grandfather through the letters between the two friends.

Saturday, 17 October 2009

  • I have a brand new niece! She was born yesterday afternoon, her name is Umbriel Xia Buist and she was 6 lbs., 14 oz.!

    Congratulations Rosie and Eric!

Tuesday, 13 October 2009

  • I just got back from teaching a combination of "woodstalk" and "claws." Which involves walking on the two-track through the woods out to crab dock (which is around the tip of the island on Privateer Creek). On the way out we talk about forest ecology and once we get there we talk about crabs and try to catch some off the dock (which hasn't worked yet for my classes) Today on the way back I told the kids to look for worms on the two-track (because there's a cool kind of worm here that runs back and forth on top of the ground and makes little trails in the sandy soil on the path. Worms were scarce today but the kids found a dead snake. I didn't know what kind it was but decided to put it in my backpack and bring it back to look it up. This is what it looks like:





    I was a little nervous that it could be a little rattlesnake. It was only about 6 inches long, but one of the rattlesnakes on the island is a pigmy rattler that doesn't get very big. So I went back and looked it up and it turned out to be a baby rat snake. They're born with spots and as they grow up and their patterns change.

Sunday, 11 October 2009

  • The church barbecue yesterday was fun. It was at a vineyard on one of the neighboring islands. The barbecue was sooooo good. It was pork and there was a mustard-based barbecue sauce to go with it. It was the best barbecue I've ever had. It ended up raining pretty hard for a while so we moved in under the tent till the rain cleared up.

    Today at church I talked to the guy in charge of sunday school about helping with a little kids sunday school class and he said they really need help in the nursery during sunday school and I can come and help next week! I'm excited to get involved in something and to play with the kids in the nursery! He asked if I would also be interested in helping with childcare during a marriage Bible study during the week that's starting up again after being off for the summer. So I might end up doing that sometimes too.

    Here's a few pictures of what's around here:

     
    Resurrection ferns grow all over branches of the trees, especially live oaks with their spreading branches.               Between rains the ferns dry up and look totally dead like this (above) but after every rain they perk up, turn bright green again and look like this (below). They're one of my favorite things here. It's so amazing every time I see them bright green again!


    Ghost crabs are very common on the beach. They're most active at night but you can find them in the day too. They're very aware of being watched and scurry away really fast (they can actually run up to 10 mph) They're about the size of your hand, including their legs.



    This is the type of jellyfish I've seen so far. It's a moon jellyfish and it's pretty simple looking. The first time I saw one I wasn't sure it was a jellyfish till I turned it over and looked really carefully and saw the little rim around the dome.



    Here's another pic. showing the other side of a moon jelly


    Anoles are everywhere. They change colors to blend in with their surroundings like chameleons and tree frogs so they can be brown or green, most of the time they're green though. I saw one on the outside of the kitchen window last weekend even though it's on the second floor of the house. They're goood climbers!



    We see shrimp boats like this off our beach a lot. They go out mostly at night so you can see them starting out in the evening. A couple times I've been out on the beach at night and seen them out with bright spotlights so they can work in the dark.



    Live oaks are very common and the most noticable and unique trees to the area. They have multiple trunks and many branches that grow out instead of up. There are some really beautiful old ones around and they're always have spanish moss and resurrection ferns on their branches.


    Here's a peak at what the salt marshes look lilke around here. They're between all the islands and between the islands and the mainland so almost anywhere you drive around here the road will end up crossing a marsh like this. They're salt marshes because they're connected to the ocean and go up and down with the tides. A lot of the marshes have tidal creeks in the middle that can be up to 15 feet deep at high tide (we have a tidal creek and salt marsh on the property. We put a crab pot out in Privateer creek for the crab class we teach there on the dock)


    Below is a tidal creek with a salt marsh on the other side.



    Fiddler crabs in the salt marsh are in the thousands and at low tide they come out of their burrows and look for food. If you walk into the marsh they run away in huge herds in every direction from under your feet as you take each step. It's the coolest thing to see!







    Fiddler crabs are really little....they're only about 2 or 3 inches across and if you can catch them their claws aren't big enough to hurt.




Wednesday, 07 October 2009

  • Our southern version of fall is slowly creeping in little by little. We've had a cool past 4 or 5 days with heavy rain. It was cool enough to wear long pants for the past few days and today it's back to being warm. I got up this morning and put on long pants and close-toed shoes and by lunch time I had sweat all down my back from carrying my backpack and was ready to change into shorts and sandals again. I heard the high today is supposed to 88. It's hard for me to get used to idea of fall taking so long to arrive. Every day I wake up expecting it to really be cold but we still have a while to go. It's definitely cooling off though, with the temps. only getting to the 80's instead of near 100 and the humidity is down.

    I've been going to one church for the past few weeks. I think this was my 4th week there. It's an Episcopal church called St. John's and I go with the three returning naturalists (they've been going there since last fall since they stayed in the summer). In a few weeks is the annual church barbecue called the "q n' blue" because they barbecue a pig and bring in a bluegrass band. I'm excited to go and have fun and hopefully meet and get to talk to more people. We usually hurry back after church in order to make it in time for lunch at camp. We're planning on starting sunday school soon too, which will be another way to get to know some people there.

    St. John's is liturgical so there are little things that you're supposed to do and say during the service. We do communion every week and everybody gets up by row and lines up to take the wafers and wine from servers in the from of the room. This past Sunday I was cold so as I went up to get the bread and wine I had my arms crossed. As I approached the priest instead of handing me a wafer he put his hand on my head and prayed a blessing over me. I was really confused since I had only seen him do that to children before and when I opened my eyes he still  didn't offer me a wafer so I reached towards the tray and he said "Oh, do you want one of these?" and I was like "yeah." Then he told me "Oh,Usually when you cross your arms like that it means you don't want to partake in communion" and handed me wafer. It was pretty funny. After the service when he was shaking hands in the back he apologized and I said "That's okay, I didn't grow up learning liturgy so I'm trying to learn everything now. Now I know what that means!"

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  • I'm tuckered out! Just got back from class....we're learning how to put together site-specific environmental ed lesson plans.

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