smack into a Boston weekend

Now I'm sitting in the Tufts library, eeking out a few hours on the computer to respond to emails and watch an episode of Glee. Last time I was in a college library was at Macalester, and it makes me chuckle at how similar smaller college libraries can be (every two minutes doing a scan of whether you know anyone, someone across the room saying "bless you" when I sneeze, and a few people loudly talking about their wild weekends). Makes me miss Macalester a little, but not enough to want to do another academic year there...you can do it, Seniors!

This weekend I spent in Boston visiting Jen (my roommate and friend from Mac) and walking around downtown with 3 of the Plowshare volunteers. I had mentioned to them how I always have this secret desire/expectation to run into someone I know in a US city, though I know they're huge and it's unrealistic. 10 minutes later I run into another Mac grad! And on our way back to the Commons park, we pass a Quidditch game! As if that weren't epic enough, a huge orchestra was having a concert at the park playing that composition that sounds like conquering the American frontier (it's really peppy but I unfortunately can not type out my singing syllables), so as the Quidditch game was ending and everyone cheered, the piece was climaxing and oh how you had to be there :) I'd only been to Boston once before, so it was really interesting to have new imagery for it. I still sat on one of the duck statues and had a picture made of me, hoping to put it side-by-side with the one of me when I was 8.

I needed to get away from the farm this weekend more than the other weekends. The week started off fine and beautiful, but come Thursday things started to get tough. I caught a cold and had my first few mornings at a newly settled house with a resident as recent to the farm as I am. "Claire" is about 20, super hyper and switches moods and actions very quickly. She usually does and says the opposite of what you say, and you have to have immense patience and space with her. However, there isn't the whole day to wait for someone to come around, so when it comes down to actually leaving the house (having not accomplished tooth brushing or bed making) she can get panicky...and slaps people. So I had my first series of smacking Thursday, then the subsequent days. Not the best way to start a day. She does this with many people and it is something we're trying to deal with, but I don't know...she stresses me out way more than any of the other residents. I'm not sure that it's the best for me or the farm to assign a new volunteer like me to her at all at this point. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I really wanted to go to the Common Ground Festival (a local, huge and exciting agriculture fest) in Maine this weekend, but I was so exhausted come Friday/Saturday (my days off are Sun/Mon) that I didn't have the energy to drive 5 hrs to a camp site and perk on up Sunday morning for a full day's worth of activities. It is something I'm determined to attend, so maybe next time. Instead I went to Boston and saw a wonderful happy friend of mine :) Next weekend, though, I'm going to the White Mtns to camp with a volunteer or two - should be one of the most beautiful weekends in the mountains with the freshly colored leaves and before the first frost. Definitely looking forward to that.

On the farm, turns out I won't get to learn milking until the Spring when more cows will hopefully be giving milk and they can train me on one or two who will get used to me. So far I've massaged a cow's utter  - a funny experience with a few tail whackings (I'm just getting beaten up, aren't I?). Those veins are huge and I feel like I'm kneading dough. I have helped heard cows which definitely takes practice (in my own body language and what spots on the cow give them what signals) and when I give the pigs water, their enormous bodies finally rouse to sniff me out. Little joys of life :)

We've also started something called Eurythmy once a week (they do this in Waldorf schools) where we do fluid motions with or without these metal poles to vowel sounds. haha, a little weird to explain and I'm not the best person to ask, but imagine a yoga teacher asking you to do some basic dance moves and catch poles you throw. The instructor used to live in Asheville and is Russian with his long white hair in pony tail. One of the residents is obsessed with him and says "THANK YOU VADEEM!" whenever he sees him for no reason at all. (This guy is also great at bird impressions and likes to beat box quietly in the background a lot). So now, we've all started saying "thank you" in that way whenever we're done with Eurythmy :)

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