Day 7: Training and more Staff Challenge!
After two days of amazing adventures, it was back to work today. In the morning we cleaned the main Chalet building and Speaker after the guests left. With so many vollies working, we were done within thirty minutes! We went outside and helped out Cameron, a summer vollie (he has been mostly helping out Christoph our grounds maintainer), with outdoor work. We helped out with de-branching of pine trees by throwing pine branches (that fell during a recent storm) into a giant pile. The pile grew taller and taller...soon far above my head. Afterwards, I helped de-bark a log on the ground. I learned that the fallen trees need to be de-barked or else bugs will nest in the bark and then infest the healthy trees. I enjoyed de-barking much more than cleaning...it was quite peaceful.

After lunchtime, we had a long break until kitchen training. With a few other summer vollies, we completed another task on the staff challenge....climbing through an oven and writing a poem while in the oven!! The oven is no longer functioning and about 2-3 feet long and 1.5 feet tall. I felt slightly claustrophobic but I slid through the oven with ease. While half-way between the kitchen and the library, I wrote a haiku:
This oven is small.
It is very small and tiny.
Please get me out please.

After I got out, I hung my poem among the collection in the kitchen of poems written while in the oven.

In the oven!

Writing my haiku in the oven

We had kitchen training today and reviewed how different machines work in the kitchen. Then we cooked dinner, ate dinner and cleaned up!

I also earned points by doing an environmental activity/presentation tonight. First, Steph, a spring vollie, gave a presentation with a group quiz activity abut meat and the environment. I gave my presentation on recycling and the activity I had groups design an ideal eco-friendly world (I was inspired by GCO!). I gave different facts about why to recycle, two environmental affects: the Great Pacific Trash Vortex and electronic recycling. We watched a clip of a 60 minutes episode that explored electronic recycling. Computer monitors, cell phones and other electronics are getting sent to places including Hong Kong, where the electronics are stripped for precious metals exposing the workers to pollution  and causing adverse health affects, instead of being recycled properly in the U.S.

 Afterwards, Mariam and Cate (summer vollies!) gave a presentation on clean water and we did a fun activity that went along with it. The presentations show how much we need to improve our current environmental state. I think that we truly need to make our lives more eco-friendly in different ways together each day from eating less meat to not buying as many electronics to decrease the pollution and waste.

Staff Challenge: 69 more points to go!!!!!!!!
 Thanks for reading!