back to the land of the living
Wow, it’s been so long since I wrote in there that it just feels entirely weird… yet not entirely unnatural.
Can’t believe that it’s been over two months since my last proper update. That is just ridiculous…
Life has been treating me really quite well lately though… I had my birthday in mid april, which was splendid… I had hotpot with some friends, which was just delish… My parents got me shiny for my birthday, so now I can actually run games that are less than 2 years old… haha. and it’s treated me really well, because now, I can do much more with photoshop and digital photography with the increased processing power..
Currently, I am in a mostly carless state… my parents traded in the old Toyota 4Runner SUV (yay!), to get a car for my sister… so she has a shiny new VW 2007 GTI… it’s also standard, so combined with the fact that it’s also my sister’s car now, I don’t have ready access to a car. I don’t really have any complaints about that right now, since I’m not using it to get to work at all. I’ve just been using monthly bus passes, and it takes me about 40 minutes to get to work, which isn’t shabby at all, and sometimes my sister carpools me 1/2 way to work anyways, so it’s worked out.
Speaking of work, work has been just super… The other interns I work with are all pretty cool, and the job itself is pretty chill. For most of april, me and two other girls went into elementary schools to give presentations about food. We talked about where food comes from, healthy food choices, and taught them to grow some of their own vegetables. All in all, we went to about 25 different class rooms, so we talked to over 600 kids withint about a 3 week span or so, so that was a really neat experience. I also got to know the vancouver transit system REALLY well, so that was just one of the side benefits of that, I guess. The kids usually seemed pretty keen about the whole presentation, especially being able to grow food.
We’ve also been working on this terraced garden that we call the “means of production”. Basically a grassy hill in a park that the Environmental Youth Alliance took over and just started to a garden in. The really cool thing about this garden is that it is being used to grow supplies for artists supplies! willows for basket weaving or charcoal for drawing, irises for making paper, and various trees that are used for intricate inlay work on carpentry projects like guitars or cabinets and such. As well, they have got a small fruit orchard, with a number of pear and apple trees, and various varieties of strawberries and blueberries!
We’ve also been growing a whole variety of plants, in order to save for seed. It’s all organic and natural gardening, and we’ve grown at least 4 kinds of beans, tomatoes, 3 kinds of lettuce, beets, chard, oriental greens, herbs and more!
We’ve also gone to this school, to help them beautify their school grounds by replacing compacted grass and gravel with all sorts of native plants. And another project we’re currently doing is the conversion of a rooftop ornamental garden at the YWCA into a viable vegetable garden. There’s been the share of not-so-pleasant experiences, like shovelling rotting compost that had been left unturned for 4 months too long, or spending the good part of an bonejarring afternoon pickaxing compact clay, but really, i can’t complain. it’s all been such an interesting learning experience. Last week was spent at the Vancouver children’s festival, where we ran a booth, where kids came and planted seeds to take home, in a small biodegradeable pot that could be placed right into the ground when transplanting. Just amazing! We were provided with delicious, nutritious and free food (courtesy of Capers community markets) Organic milk, fair trade chocolate samples, and much more. On top of it all, the marketing coordinator at capers seemed to really like me, and told me to apply for a job there if I wanted one after my internship was over! sweet! After work that whole week, we would sneak into the volunteer tent to snack on some more free food, and then go to the beach and just hang out, and chill out. One day, I found some bread buns on the ground, and just decided to start juggling them.
Speaking of juggling… that is something that I learned to do at work!! And got paid for it!!! Every wednesday, one of the intern facilitates a workshop, and so everyone has just been bringing their skill to the table, and teaching all sorts of great things… One was a workshop on juggling. We’ve also done salsa and merengue dance, designing board games, making duct tape wallets, learning meditation, or the intricacies of hacky sack. One intern also ran an event called Foods Not Bombs (where we approached businesses for food donations that was perfectly edible, but was not fit to sell), and then cooked vegetarian meals for people who were living in poverty/on the streets, and went to nearby parks to distribute. Two other workshops were on acting and finding oneself through voice and movement.
This week, we’ve been learning how to install drip irrigation in this small apple orchard in the community garden that we work in… It’s a pretty interesting idea, and something that really does give one a sense of accomplishment, after a good day of work. Our next impending project is to create an art piece for the World Youth Forum in mid-June.. One that integrates the concepts of what urban agriculture is about, so that should be really quite exciting… I think that we’ll be doing a mandala, essentially a geometrical pattern that is supposed to symbolically represent a microcosm of the universe from the human perspective. They’re often used for meditation… So we’ll be making this out of plants, sticks, stones, sand, and perhaps even found objects… It should be a really interesting project!
I’ve also become involved with the thrive! guide, which is a guide on sustainable living in Vancouver… It’s going to be a 200 page booklet that will be available as a resource for people to find out how to live more lightly on this planet of ours. I’m volunteering as a research and writing assistant, so that has been a pretty interesting experience, for sure! It will be super good experience, and just terrific being part of something that is so positive, which is important when you are fighting this seemingly endless battle for the future.
This isn’t to say that I haven’t been enjoying myself… I’ve been super lucky this past month or so… A whole bunch of my friends from Guelph have been coming to visit Vancouver! My friend Jenn came earlier in april as did ebru, and Dear will be coming tommorow, so it’s good to see these terrific people, after not seen them basically since the end of august! And it seems like a whole bunch of guelphies are starting to make their way westwards, which is just awesome!
Speaking of making their way westward, my dearest Katie has also decided to check out the scene on the West coast… she’s quit her job at the aquarium, and will be moving back home to her parents for a month to recharge, and then driving all the way across the continent, essentially! I really hope that I’ll somehow be able to fly one-way to drive at least part of the way with her, so that she doesn’t have to drive by her lonesome, because really, that is not much fun at all. So I guess that will be the end of beach bumming, diving in shark tanks, and watching the Atlantic ocean crash on the shore, and startling the ghost crabs. It will also mean she can watch the waves of the Pacific crash instead, and the end of mysterious phone calls that will suddenly decide to crap out, and the two of us being within a 3 hour drive of each other. After a year of not living about a 50 hour drive away, it’ll be a nice change, and it’s still hard to really grasp the fact that I will be able to hold her in my arms again. *sigh* So yeah, that’s basically been me this past month or two… There’s been more especially in my mental realm, but that shall have to wait for another day..