what a week

I've had so many thoughts and feelings this week that I feel it must've been a month already. Time is so relative.

I've had  fun. I went sledding with two cute little girls in Hancock last weekend, the first time I've been sledding in a few years. I had some good laughs at a few bars. I was reminded of how much I love Mulan. I ate delicious Indian buffet and got some feel-good clothes at the Salvation Army. I'm also getting closer to the other AmeriCorps volunteer, Erin, by taking winter hikes or talking about what seeds we want to order and what kind of gardens we want to grow. I'm especially excited about an herb garden - I've always wanted to grow and make my own tea and medicate myself with herbs.

I sat with a dead body. A lot of people who believe in Anthroposophy have a vigil for their dead family member, where for the entirety of three days, someone has to sit with the corpse to help release the spirit. You can sing, read, think positive thoughts, play music, just as long as you are with the person. Our Eurythmist's mom died and many co-workers and some volunteers volunteered to take 2-3 hour night shifts to help the family out (they are Russian immigrants and not many of them live here). Erin and I woke up at 3am to drive there and experience the small lit candles, the inscense, the Steiner books, and the real, lifeless body, covered in dyed silk veils, that lay in an open casket in front of us. It made me think of how I want to go - I had always assumed cremation, with my ashes scattered on some meaningful piece of land, but this vigil made a good impression on me. It was a good experience.

I cried from built-up frustration at the volunteer meeting we have every week with the boss. I've been having a rough time with one of the residents in my house who has severe emotional damage (from his poor upbringing) and a low IQ. He always makes public phone calls (on speaker phone, wandering around the house) cursing and saying (and hearing) awful things. When I tried to ask him to make phone calls in his room, he blew up on me, threatened me, etc. Very simple requests, if they're anything that would make him change his ways, are 98% of the time understood by him as attacks, and he will do anything to try to put himself above you. He targets the fact that I'm only a volunteer, only a female, and therefore I know nothing. A few days later him and another resident in the house had a real verbal (and nearly physical) fight. The man he was insulting was black, and you can imagine the direction he took his attacks. This resident is such a challenge for me to even tolerate, it's such a different type of resident who for me requires much more patience and will-power that I don't have in the moment. I'm not trying to hang out with him to establish a closer relationship with him because any time I'm off or don't have to see him, I don't want to. I can't feel very at home when I feel like I have to walk on egg shells to try to prevent another illogical blow-up, feeling like my body is trapping what I actually think so I can spit out what I am told to say. I could go on for so long...the point is, I'm struggling with that.

Oh, Spring, come a little sooner this year, ok?

SNOW like WOAH

My house is pretty warm so I always sleep with the windows cracked. When I woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday to snow flakes and a damp blanket over my body, I knew the blizzard had begun. It didn't stop snowing until Wednesday night! The whole day's worth of shoveling those nearly 2 ft of snow had to be essentially redone because of all the wind. I felt like I was in a sandstorm with the amount of dunes and ripples stacking outside our houses. Needless to say, there's been a lot of fun, cold falls, hot chocolate and cider since. I have yet to steal a kid's sleigh and zoom down one of our hills.

Other than that, not much new. Paul the volunteer has a friend from Holland staying for 3 weeks to help out and experience a little bit of America. (They're also going to New York and bigger places together - I'd be slightly  dissapointed if my only impression of America was a small place in the woods). It's always fun to have people visit and mix things up. I also recently decided that every Friday I'm going to spend more time on the computer and look up possibilities for next year. As of now, I'm just looking at sustainable/agriculture-related jobs in and outside of the US. If any of you souls out there have a great organization or place to recommend to me, please do so at any time in the next 4 months!

Til next time... 

Needle in the balloon

I am baack! (Also using a  German computer and constantly struggling with the keypad).

Vacation was great. I went home to Chapel Hill to see my parents and my sister Christine for 10 days. During that time I slept in (greatest feeling ever), ate, saw a few friends, and played in the lovely fluffy snow of North Carolina. I miss fat,slow flakes and it melting and still looking pretty. Not only has snow meant immense fun in my childhood, but even a few days off of school or early dismissals. And early dismissals meant one thing - getting to watch Garfield, which always annoyingly played the 30 minutes before I normally got back from school. During the vacation, we also looked for some bridesmaid dress potentials (my oldest sister is getting married in June in the Redwood forest of CA), went swimming in a pool, saw a musical version of the "Christmas Carol" (filled with "hahaha"s and "ho ho ho"s!) and went to a slightly awkward and half-entertaining German party (some of them my parents knew). Who knew you could gather so many Germans in one house in Chapel Hill.

Christmas Eve was nice. We went to a Moravian Lovefeast at our Church and caught up with some youth leaders and Christians I hadn't spoken to in years. We drank a warm German wine concoction (pronounced glue-vine), sang, and opened a few presents. Christine promised to either help me visit her in MN or come visit here, the best present she could've given me. If you're reading this Christine, now it's online so that means it's official.

For New Years I took a 9hour megabus ride down to DC to visit my college friend MaryBeth and see another college friend Sara. MaryBeth lives in a 7-person LVC (Lutheran Volunteer Corps) house and we bond over the pros and cons of communal living. New Years Eve we had plenty of wine before heading out to a dance club where we danced the whole night and met guys from Swaziland who had Macalester connections. The rest of the weekend was resting, watching the intense movie of "The Last King of Scotland" (very good), and walking around monuments and other DC neighborhoods. I had a really good time and I was a little scared of coming back to Plowshare.

But now I'm here and things are looking up. It was exciting to see everyone and catch up with the volunteers. I have officially moved into the Red House and though I'm still transitioning (new responsibilities, no longer involved with the Hill House which I miss, and very creepy and loud noises from my walls and the heater in my room) I think this will help me feel more involved in the communal living thing. My room is almost always a sunny golden (when it's light out, of course) because of the windows and direction it faces, which I love.

Last night we celebrated Epiphany. The whole community ate warm rice pudding, three people found an almond that made them one of the wise kings for the night. I and two others sang solos for the "we three kings" song and the Christmas tree was lit (REAL candles, ahh) for the last time. It's moments like these that fill me with peace and content - it all feels right.

I was talking to my volunteer friend, Natalie, about her vacation. She spent it on the farm and two of her friends visited her for a short time. She described the situation as these people from the outside popping her balloon, shocking her with the reality of the world that goes on outside of Plowshare. I feel this way when I visit my brother, Boston, or home, when I read the newspaper and remember that horrendous things, exciting political decisions, war, all of that is still going on. I use the internet only a few times a week, watch a TV show once a week, and when I have time and spot a newspaper on the farm, soak that up maybe once a week. In a way, it is nice. I can focus more on myself, on how to deal with people and social challenges, and on nature. And it's not like that this experience on the farm doesn't expose me to diversity - I have never worked with people with special needs before, nor known anything about anthroposophy, eurythmy, social therapy, certain crafts, etc., so my eyes are definitely being opened. Still, I sometimes crave a more consistent connection with the bigger world. It is hard to, in the time and energy that I have left in the day, choose running to a computer to look up news over hanging out with the volunteers. At Macalester, that type of thing was much easier to be exposed to. But then again, Macalester is also a bubble. So when will I not be in a bubble? Maybe I need to love my bubble just a little bit more.

P.S. My sister, Heide, is working on this project and needs to collect $1700 more to make it happen. Check out the website if you're interested or think you can help: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=522-244