HELLO! It is 11:12 PM and I have to get up in about 6 hours to start travel day. OH THE JOY. Me and 3 other staff members are driving our 15-passenger vans across the ferry, across the border, and 3 hours into BANGOR, MAINE tomorrow to drop off the week 1 kids and pick up new ones! It is going to be an extremely long day but hopefully it will be fun and exciting. I'll atleast be back in the US for a few hours! We stay overnight in a hotel with the kids, then get up super early the next morning and drive back, cross the border, and ferry on over to Grand Manan to start week 2. It will be really really really tiring but then we get the next day off. So as long as I can make it til then, it'll be grand!
I'm not scheduled to be on any whale boats again this week, but hopefully things switch around so that I can finally see one! or four! At the campfire tonight all that the kids were talking about was how life-changing and awe-inspiring the breaching humpbacks were...and I sat in the corner and stewed in my jealousy. BUT. Eventually it will happen. I mean...its Whale Camp.
Rewind. Ok so after Tuesday was Wednesday. In the morning I taught my TIDEPOOL ECOLOGY lesson! It was amazing! We walked down to Red Point Beach and brought buckets and identification guides and just got to tidepool for about an hour. After that, we did my activity that I came up with during curriculum developement the day before called TidepoolOlypmics!! It. Was. Great. Basically each of the kids got to be one of the creatures in the tidepools, ex starfish or barnacle. There were four challenges, and in each one they either had an advantage or disadvantage that related to how they survived in the intertidal zone. It was really fun and basically taught them about how different animals have different adaptations to the zones they live in-- high, mid or low intertidal. Plus all of the staff that was with me said it was really great...so hurray! Anyways after that we talked about more sciency stuff like classification and zonation and got to look through their buckets to see what they found. It was awesome. After that I had another afternoon of curriculum development and basically spent it reading about whales. Highly enjoyable.
Thursday was my day off. I slept in and did not go to breakfast at 8AM. It was great. Then I took a journey on my own to the little bakeries and gift shops around the island and got an amazing chocolate croissant, a cinnamon sugar bagel, and a really cute Grand Manan shirt. I got back for lunch and then hung out with the ORDs (who are off in the day-time while kids are out on trips with the other ESIs). We went to Thrifty's, the island thrift store, where I got Levi's denim shorts and two awesome t-shirts for $3. What a steal. We also made our galaxy tank tops that we bought last week. Basically its a black tank top with bleach sprayed on...they were awesome. The day was a lot of fun and I got to explore and hang out with staff and buy some funky things.
AHH ok so today we had a staff meeting to talk about travel day and then took the 2-weekers on a trip to White Head Island and did the Indiana Jones hike with them. It was cold and rainy but not til the end, so it was pretty fun and they all seemed to have a good time. Then tonight was a campfire--indoors style because it had been raining all day. The staff did this amazing skit called Occupations, which was basically like "Proud to Be" that we used to do at Calumet campfires, and it was so funny I had such a great time. At the end, we passed around the "talking stick" and each of the kids said what was on their minds--we got so many kids who had changed while they were there or gotten so much more than they expected. One kid talked about how he is bullied at school and how he loved that everyone was so nice here. It was amazing. CAMP IS THE BEST. CAMPPPPP!!!!
Ok--need to go to bed now so I don't die on the road tomorrow. PICTURES LATERRR
Friday, June 28, 2013
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
First week of program!
AH! So the kids are here, they got here Sunday afternoon, and they are pretty awesome. There is a school group here from DC as well as 11 other campers. Only one of them is a returner, so most of them have never been here which is so cool.
Sunday afternoon we gave them the orientation at Swallowtail lighthouse and they had a bunch of fun even though it was frigid and windy. Then they came back to camp with us and got a site orientation, dinner, and pretty much unpacked and went to bed. It was very weird for me though, because at Calumet I was on from the second the kids got there to the second they fell asleep. Here, I barely did anything and it was all on the ORDs. Not complaining. More free time for me!
Monday we all got up nice and early for a whale watch aboard the Day's Catch!! I was so excited. SOOOOO excited. I took half a dramamine before going and THANK GOD because about 45 minutes into the boat ride, half of the people onboard were throwing up over the side. It was really foggy, and apparently the lack of a horizon line makes you really sick on boats. I was feeling a tiny bit weird, but literally WILLED myself to feel good because I wanted to see whales so bad. We saw two harbor seals and a harbor porpoise, but NO WHALES. I was pretty sad. It was the first boat trip of the season, though, so no one knew where the whales were yet. Ohhhh well. I will go again next week. The group is going out again tomorrow and Thursday whale watching, but I will be on campus doing curriculum development and having my day off. But I'm keeping my hopes high for next week! Hundreds of whales. I just know it. Anyways, after we got back to land everyone was so happy to be back on solid ground that it didn't really matter. Later in the day I taught my first lesson!!! It was about tides and the Bay of Fundy and why they are so extreme here (up to 54 vertical feet between low and high tide!!) which went pretty well. After dinner the ESIs are off of program, have a meeting as a staff, and then plan for tomorrow and go to bed. So different from the "camp" that I'm used to, but in a great way.
Today I taught a stream & pond lesson with two other ESIs down at Dark Harbor. The stream is really great for walking along and we had a lot of fun. We did some water quality tests with the kids, explained what a watershed is, had some boat races and the kids just explored. I've been in a group with the non-school group all week and they are sooo much fun. After we finished our lesson and ate lunch at the Anchorage, everyone went on the puffin boat and I came back here to do curriculum development. I came up with a Tide Pool Olympics activity that is pretty cool, and I'm teaching it tomorrow with my boss! Yay me! We're also collecting a bunch of tidal creatures and bringing them back to the camp and setting up an aquarium. I am so excited. I loooove stuff like that. I could literally spend all day finding thing at the tide pools. YAHOO!
Other random facts:
My seaglass collection (and rock collection) is growing. There are beautiful lupines everywhere. Pheasants live outside and sound like roosters doing a half-crow. Coffee is now a twice a day essential.
Sunday afternoon we gave them the orientation at Swallowtail lighthouse and they had a bunch of fun even though it was frigid and windy. Then they came back to camp with us and got a site orientation, dinner, and pretty much unpacked and went to bed. It was very weird for me though, because at Calumet I was on from the second the kids got there to the second they fell asleep. Here, I barely did anything and it was all on the ORDs. Not complaining. More free time for me!
Monday we all got up nice and early for a whale watch aboard the Day's Catch!! I was so excited. SOOOOO excited. I took half a dramamine before going and THANK GOD because about 45 minutes into the boat ride, half of the people onboard were throwing up over the side. It was really foggy, and apparently the lack of a horizon line makes you really sick on boats. I was feeling a tiny bit weird, but literally WILLED myself to feel good because I wanted to see whales so bad. We saw two harbor seals and a harbor porpoise, but NO WHALES. I was pretty sad. It was the first boat trip of the season, though, so no one knew where the whales were yet. Ohhhh well. I will go again next week. The group is going out again tomorrow and Thursday whale watching, but I will be on campus doing curriculum development and having my day off. But I'm keeping my hopes high for next week! Hundreds of whales. I just know it. Anyways, after we got back to land everyone was so happy to be back on solid ground that it didn't really matter. Later in the day I taught my first lesson!!! It was about tides and the Bay of Fundy and why they are so extreme here (up to 54 vertical feet between low and high tide!!) which went pretty well. After dinner the ESIs are off of program, have a meeting as a staff, and then plan for tomorrow and go to bed. So different from the "camp" that I'm used to, but in a great way.
Today I taught a stream & pond lesson with two other ESIs down at Dark Harbor. The stream is really great for walking along and we had a lot of fun. We did some water quality tests with the kids, explained what a watershed is, had some boat races and the kids just explored. I've been in a group with the non-school group all week and they are sooo much fun. After we finished our lesson and ate lunch at the Anchorage, everyone went on the puffin boat and I came back here to do curriculum development. I came up with a Tide Pool Olympics activity that is pretty cool, and I'm teaching it tomorrow with my boss! Yay me! We're also collecting a bunch of tidal creatures and bringing them back to the camp and setting up an aquarium. I am so excited. I loooove stuff like that. I could literally spend all day finding thing at the tide pools. YAHOO!
Other random facts:
My seaglass collection (and rock collection) is growing. There are beautiful lupines everywhere. Pheasants live outside and sound like roosters doing a half-crow. Coffee is now a twice a day essential.
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| i sure do. |
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| Dark Harbor Stream |
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| I LOVE BUGS. go go iphone camera. |
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Staff Training
Well. I've been here on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick for three full days now. Can that be right? We have done so much in these past few days and I've learned so many new things that it feels like a week atleast. The kids come tomorrow afternoon so then the real fun starts--but here's what I've done so far!
Wednesday night I finally arrived around 11pm after a 6 hour red-eye flight, 7 hour drive, and 1.5 hour ferry. Kindof surprised I made it, actually. Anyways, I stopped into the office and met two of our staff trainers who welcomed me and directed me to the staff house. When I walked in I found all of the staff (all 6 of them) waiting up to meet me, which was really sweet. They were all really excited to meet me and helped me get all my stuff into the house. The 5 environmental science instructors (ESIs) live in the staff house, which is basically this cute little old cottage that's kindof leaning to one side. Its very cozy and filled to the brim with books on marine mammals, insects, birds, plants, and any other natural thing you can find on the island. The two dorm instructors (ORDs) live in the girls and boys dorm buildings right next door. SOOO after getting in, I unpacked a little bit and fell asleep.
Each day that I hadn't been at staff training, the instructors had been taking turns giving full lesson plans to the rest of us (who played the role of campers). Today, two ESIs were teaching us about the bog environment, so after breakfast we piled in one of the three 15-passenger vans and drove to the bog. I learned so much I never knew about bogs--like how the tannins from the roots of the plants leach out and make the water in them acidic, which doesn't allow for decomposition. Layers just keep piling on top of the old plants and this is how the bog grows. Dead bodies from thousands of years ago that had been sacrificed to the bogs in Europe (for spiritual / mythical reasons) had actually been preserved by the acidic environment and found recently. Pretty crazy. Also saw some cool carnivorous plants like the pitcher plant and sundew. Who knew bogs were actually interesting?
After that lesson, we did a geology lesson at Flock of Sheep where, long story short, we saw some really cool columnar basalt, learned how the island was formed, and brushed up on our knowledge of the rock cycle. YEAH GEOLOGY.
That night we all watched a horror movie called Bleeders...filmed and set in Grand Manan about flesh-eating inbreds that inhabit underground tunnels on the island. Actually more like a comedy. It was awesome.
Friday we set out on the ferry to White Head Island (named for its sparkling quartz cliffs), about a 30 minute ferry ride from GMI. We did a forest lesson to start off, ate lunch at Pebble Beach (where I found some really cool conglomerate rocks and seaglass) and headed to the Indiana Jones hike!! It was a really neat hike between canyon-like rock formations. Beautiful plants everywhere and a very fun hike (which is saying something. I don't hike.) To end the day, we watched the sunset at Southwest Head lighthouse. It was most beautiful place I had seen yet...the cliffs were breathtaking and we were having fun taking pictures. There's a jumping picture of all of us that I need to get my hands on...
Anyways, today we were basically just prepping for the kids to come tomorrow. I have so much left to learn and feel a little unprepared, but I think it'll be fine. MY FIRST WHALE WATCH IS MONDAY MORNING. I am so excited. Bring on the humpbacks baby.
Wednesday night I finally arrived around 11pm after a 6 hour red-eye flight, 7 hour drive, and 1.5 hour ferry. Kindof surprised I made it, actually. Anyways, I stopped into the office and met two of our staff trainers who welcomed me and directed me to the staff house. When I walked in I found all of the staff (all 6 of them) waiting up to meet me, which was really sweet. They were all really excited to meet me and helped me get all my stuff into the house. The 5 environmental science instructors (ESIs) live in the staff house, which is basically this cute little old cottage that's kindof leaning to one side. Its very cozy and filled to the brim with books on marine mammals, insects, birds, plants, and any other natural thing you can find on the island. The two dorm instructors (ORDs) live in the girls and boys dorm buildings right next door. SOOO after getting in, I unpacked a little bit and fell asleep.
Each day that I hadn't been at staff training, the instructors had been taking turns giving full lesson plans to the rest of us (who played the role of campers). Today, two ESIs were teaching us about the bog environment, so after breakfast we piled in one of the three 15-passenger vans and drove to the bog. I learned so much I never knew about bogs--like how the tannins from the roots of the plants leach out and make the water in them acidic, which doesn't allow for decomposition. Layers just keep piling on top of the old plants and this is how the bog grows. Dead bodies from thousands of years ago that had been sacrificed to the bogs in Europe (for spiritual / mythical reasons) had actually been preserved by the acidic environment and found recently. Pretty crazy. Also saw some cool carnivorous plants like the pitcher plant and sundew. Who knew bogs were actually interesting?
After that lesson, we did a geology lesson at Flock of Sheep where, long story short, we saw some really cool columnar basalt, learned how the island was formed, and brushed up on our knowledge of the rock cycle. YEAH GEOLOGY.
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| columnar basalt. woah. |
That night we all watched a horror movie called Bleeders...filmed and set in Grand Manan about flesh-eating inbreds that inhabit underground tunnels on the island. Actually more like a comedy. It was awesome.
Friday we set out on the ferry to White Head Island (named for its sparkling quartz cliffs), about a 30 minute ferry ride from GMI. We did a forest lesson to start off, ate lunch at Pebble Beach (where I found some really cool conglomerate rocks and seaglass) and headed to the Indiana Jones hike!! It was a really neat hike between canyon-like rock formations. Beautiful plants everywhere and a very fun hike (which is saying something. I don't hike.) To end the day, we watched the sunset at Southwest Head lighthouse. It was most beautiful place I had seen yet...the cliffs were breathtaking and we were having fun taking pictures. There's a jumping picture of all of us that I need to get my hands on...
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| Indiana Jones hike on White Head. |
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| View from Southwest Head. |
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