Home Again

Our team arrived safely back to the west coast last Wednesday evening, and now after catching up with friends and family, I have a few more videos to post. Here are two of them, at least one more is still to come!

Circle up the wagons of thankfulness

Today, the second 6th grade class was not cooperating and some people were saying some ungrateful things, so Ms. Parker decided to turn it into a teachable moment, telling the class to circle up and be prepared for a class discussion. The students quickly moved their desk and after getting an explaination of the 'cube of respect' (as I named it) - they could only speak when the cube was in their hand - they began to talk about what they were thankful for. Some were a slow to come up with something, but all did find something in the end.

Here is a sample:

They are thankful for

a class discussion (aka no book and board learning :) )

funny friends

food on the table and clothes on my back

learning about the periodic table

great teachers and good education

parents and clothing

family and friends

opportunity to sing at the school's talent show

This discussion made me think - what am I thankful for?

a loving, supportive family

friends to laugh and cry with

God's grace

people willing to invest in my life

a warm house

healthy body, happy soul

under armor

an opportunity to go to grad school

kids who are searching to do the right thing, even though their days are full of drama :)

Friday!

Friday was kind of a crazy day at the Camden Forward School - there was apparently an 'incident' in the morning and half the teachers were in a meeting taking care of it. The remaining teachers couldn't handle holding regular class, so for most of the morning (and all afternoon, as it turned out) the students were in the sanctuary/lunch room basically playing all day. For a short while, the overseeing teachers tried to hold classes in the big room, but there were just too many kids for two teachers. We did have about two normal class periods, but they were brief. As you'll see in the video, the kids are creative with their free time :)

Also on Friday, we had the opportunity to help out with the Boatworks after school program run by Jesus Castro, who started the program last year. This year, the 6th graders are building a canoe and the older kids are building a kayak. It's pretty sweet!

Waterfront South

If you read my post a while back about waterfront south, watch this video - it covers some of what I was discussing, but also introduces Andrea, a woman working to transform the city through gardening and artwork.

New Video!

A video update about last Wednesday, December 15th.

Notes and Thoughts

Why do you report to work each day? What is the motivation for your job? I was ale to chat a bit more with the science teacher, Ms. Parker, Friday at lunchtime about why she teaches, espicially the kids in Camden. She hails from Philly, and commutes everyday to NJ. She was working at a small Christian school over there, but the school closed and her principal came to Urban Promise and asked her to come with her. She said she was always good with kids and really connected with them. She started an engineering degree in school, but somehow ended up teaching (I'm not sure exactly how) and started with the under elementary grades. Then, she was offered a middle school position and found out that really loves kids in that age range. She was also actively involved in after school programing in Philly, but had to leave those kids when she moved to teaching in NJ. She is now involved in the Boatworks program with Urban, working with the middle schoolers after school as well.

On a semi-related note, volunteering at CamdenForward School and not getting the opportunity to work with the after-school programing, honestly, has kind of made me feel like I'm in a Urban Promise bubble. While many of the kids come from challenging backgrounds, many of them (from what I can glean from short conversations with them) come from moderately affluent families who live outside of Camden and want their kids to go to a private school. I don't know if any of them will go to the high school, Urban Promise Academy when they reach 9th grade. In fact, one of the students I talked with, who lives outside of Camden, and she (an 8th grader) did not think that Camden could become a better place. The feeling I got in the high school was very different - those students definitely come from pretty rough backgrounds. Some of the students (a very limited number) when I asked what they were going to do after-school, mentioned going back home and helping out with the various siblings at home. One girl even had her own child, Serenity, that she was raising. The middle school kids, however, all mentioned hanging out at the Cherry Hill mall and shopping for clothing as their weekend choice activity. The campus of Urban Promise itself is very safe feeling - it is on its own little corner set apart from most other businesses. Granted, they've had their share of scares, but overall, I've definitely felt a 'safe bubble' feeling around there. Don't worry Mom - I'm still careful when I go outside :)

I'm still catching up with the videos - they always take longer than I expect to edit, so stay tuned!

Also, I'm not entirely sure why blogger likes to double-space the first paragraph of each post....

Walk it Out

Time for a wordy post: (to be complemented later with a video)

Today our morning devotional was lead by Pam, the intern director. She spoke on the passage in Luke about Jesus' visit to Mary and Martha and their different reactions to his presence. She challenged us to live in the moment, 'walking out' our faith here in Urban Promise on the working ground level, not just remaining in the land of wishing and dreaming that things could change.

She also mentioned that we may not know exactly how coming to Camden will impact us until later - which is a good thing for me to continue to keep in mind as I return to Seattle next week.

Yesterday, we were able to meet a number of people from other organizations that are also working to rebuild Camden. We were taken down to the historic Waterfront South area - we had been there on the initial tour, but did not get out of the car. We first met with a woman named Helene, who runs the Heart of Camden Housing organization. This organization seeks to revitalize this area of Camden by rebuilding the row homes and placing families in them that will raise the level of community in the neighborhood. Over the course of one year, with the close of the some of the industry plants at the end of the second world war, especially the New York Shipbuilding company, the employment opportunities went from 30,000 to 1,700 jobs. People left south Camden in droves, eventually leaving behind 4,000 abandoned homes. One of the largest post-war industries is scrap collection. All the scrap you can imagine is piled high and then shipped to China for processing and disposal. Because one can get money for scrap, all of the abandoned homes have been scavenged and stripped of everything but the outside walls. Appliances, windows, flooring, pipes, and doors have been ripped out and sold to the scrap collections. Many of the roofs have collapsed and frequently, one can see the sky through the open second story windows. The majority of doors and windows of the abandoned homes are boarded up, to keep out squatters and new scrap scavengers.

The Heart of Camden Housing project buys these abandoned homes and then renovates them. They rarely tear down the whole structure, partially because they don't own all the titles to an entire block of row houses. Apparently, they also want to keep the historic aspects of the community intact and seek to keep the exterior of their housing units true to their historic past. The inside is quite modern, but the outside still fits with the feel of Camden.

They operate out of an old theatre - the "Star" theatre that showed silent films, and are renovating the main screening area to be a gym for a nearby elementary school. After the roof collapsed, they basically gutted the whole building and are building from the inside out. While the inside of the gym will look new, the outside will look like the old theatre. The organization has discovered over the years that they can't fix Waterfront South without being involved in politics. Apparently, four out of the last five mayors have gone to jail for corruption; the only one that didn't was 80 years old and really just a puppet during the state take-over of Camden. Well, now the state has pulled out, but the non-profits are still there and still working hard to change Camden.

We also watched this movie called "Poet of Poverty" about Michael Doyle, a priest at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in this area of Camden. He has been there for a long while, when he was placed in this area after trying to destroy Camden draft records with a group during the Vietnam war. (He was not in favor of the war…) He is, however, a great writer and consistently wrote letters and poems about his experiences and the people of Camden. Sadly, at the end of this video, he comes to the conclusion that not much has changed over the past 25 years. He is still saying the same things about the issues in Camden that he was when he first showed up to serve.

You can watch this clip from the film "Poet of Poverty" to get a feel for what this neighborhood looked like just a few years ago (2007-8 ish)

It was really good to talk with the organizations before seeing this film, as there has been change and improvement in the neighborhood that the movie does not capture. About 200 homes have been renovated and filled with lively people and there are another 44 to be completed in the next few years. They have built a live theatre, a parking lot, an extensive garden with a greenhouse, and a 24 bedroom retreat center in the Center for Transformation run by the Sacred Heart Church. Beautiful art now covers many of the ugly pieces of wood that board up the abandoned homes, bringing warmth and vitality to the community. There is now a park with a tree-line blocking the view and smell from the sewage plant and licorice plant next-door, all playground equipment colorfully painted and fun to use. There is hope, Camden will succeed.

Raking More Leaves

School Day #2 was much the same as the first day of school this week, so this video is a smidge shorter. In the beginning of the clip, Chris is talking about our morning devotionals, which happen every day with different members of the Urban Promise staff.

First Day of School!

(Yes, I'm a bit behind with the videos....they just take so long to edit!)

Two new videos today - I had to split them up or else you'd be watching one video for over 10 minutes!

This details the first Sunday and Monday of our trip, including church, school, errands, and talking with Bruce Main, the founder of Urban Promise.

The first Day of school:

Our talk with Bruce Main:

Catching Up

Here is a video about our afternoon in Philly last Saturday! Shout out to the two great interns who showed us around - we would have been lost without you!

And one more today...

Here is the second video I made about our trip!

Smoking

The 8th graders today were talking about smoking and it's ill health effects. Everyone raised their hand when they were asked if they knew someone who smoked. Many stated that it bothered them, both how it made them cough and how the smell hung around. It didn't sound like any of them smoked themselves and most of them were very vocal in their dislike of cigarettes.

One student shared a story about how their Aunt, who is only 28, has smoked since she was 12 and won't let the kids be on the same level of the house as her when she is smoking. It is an interesting double standard that a majority of the students have to deal with their entire lives.

My favorite random story from kids in class during this smoking discussion: "I went to a church once where the pastor was smoking while he was preaching and then for communion we had bread and beer."

They also got to see the fantastic Blood Mobile video today, courtesy of Dr. McFarland's Biochem class I took last quarter. They were talking about how smoking causes CO to bind to your hemoglobin and not allow O2 to get to your body and I just had to share some of my newfound biochem information about blood. Hemoglobin is pretty hard to visualize as an 8th grader, so I showed them that video and a 3D model of hemoglobin in PyMol (a biochem program), so hopefully they remember it more clearly and correctly!

This post is short, mainly because I am working on another video and because I've been feeling sick and my head is not super clear :(

Groceries

Grocery shopping has been an interesting experience here in Camden, NJ

We've been to PathMart, Walmart, and Save A Lot. Walmart was pretty usual, but it wasn't a super Walmart, so the grocery part was kind of slim. We grabbed toiletries there, but we went to PathMart for food. What an interesting grocery store - the layout made no sense to me. Also, they didn't sell frozen chicken, we could only find chicken breasts in the refrigerated section. Hamburger was also interesting, apparently you can find high fat content (>20%) pretty easily! I guess I am just so spoiled by my fam - I just have to go to our freezer and get a package out :)

Save A Lot = no traditional brands, except maybe a few boxes of cereal. There were some fresh fruits and veggies, but otherwise it was all dry packaged food. I'm not sure if there was a real freezer section - I didn't look to closely. I just wanted some cold medicine and had to just get what they had, which was not much. I will say, however, that the prices were cheap there!

Interesting Camden tidbit - there are no grocery stores within the Camden city limits. There is one right outside, on the South side (I think) and there are some in neighboring cities, but getting fresh fruit and veggies can be a challenge. There is a plethora of corner market connivence stores, so many families only eat prepared foods that are full of preservatives and not super healthy. Apparently this is a pretty big issue in Camden, and the high school is trying to combat it by providing their own kind of lunch and breakfast food store. We met the principal last night and he explained that many students were coming to school with non-nutrious lunches, if they brought a lunch at all. If students don't eat, they can't perform well in school, so the school is trying to foster a good learning environment through what food they offer. Apparently, the best seller is your traditional PB & J, which is definitely better than the other food they were eating.

Speaking of food - can you believe that lunch time for the middle school doesn't begin until 12:47pm?? Those poor kids (and teachers and us!) have to go without food from 8 am to then! And after lunch and recess, they only have like 1.5 hours of school left! I would not last here very long....I already sneak food during class....

Also - here is a fun video that I found for the 7th graders, who are currently studying the water cycle:



Don't you feel culturally and academically educated? apparently the 'track' and 'beats' for this song were actually from a different rap band, Cross-over (or something like that - they wore all their clothing backwards) and their song "Jump."

I havent' been able to take photos or film of the kids yet, but that is a goal of mine for Friday. Today I got to know the 7th graders a bit more by asking them what they wanted to do when they grow up and where they wanted to go to college - so interesting!

A Tour of Camden

On of my goals in the past month or so has been to utilize the HD video capabilities of my camera. Accordingly, this update is in film form. I'm beginning to realize that digital media may be a good way for me to share my experiences, as I know I'm not the greatest writer and my blog posts tend to be a bit dry....

Here is the first video:

First Impressions

Cold.

Jim sounds like my old boss at Korry, Tim.

Left turn = Right turn = 'Jughandle'

Diner dinner menus can be overwhelming.

Cop cars everywhere.

PathMark doesn't sell individually frozen chicken breasts.

Colorful row houses. All boarded up.

Christmas lights on the porch = evidence someone lives here.

Parts of Camden feel like parts of Yakima. I wonder what Yakima's statistics are?

New Jersey has 566 municipalities and 604 school districts (WA has half as many)

There's a lot of water to cross, but none of its as beautiful as the water in Washington.

Into the Sunrise

In the morning, when I rise,

In the morning, when I rise,
In the morning, when I rise,
Give me Jesus.

Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
but give me Jesus.

I am reminded of one of my favorite praise songs as we begin our journey to Camden, flying out at 6:15am this morning. For all my professed ease of sleeping on planes, this morning I was captivated by the sunrise and decided to stay awake for a while. I don't often get up early enough (actually, I don't know if I ever have!) to see the sunrise, but I was so enjoying the view that I didn't let myself close my eyes. It helped that I am sipping on a Joy tea and watching the clouds roll by under the wing. (Yes, I am typing this on the plane - who knows when I'll have enough internet to post it!)

My mom asked me last night why I was going on this trip. Honestly, I am not sure, except that I felt a unexplainable desire to go, serve, and learn. I don't know what to expect, but I'm excited to find out why I was supposed to travel to Camden. I don't expect to radically change the lives of the students and teachers that I meet, but hope that I can learn from them. I also go to serve the servants, to give them an extra set of hands and feet as they serve the students of Camden.

Don't we look lovely at 4:15am??

Also, though I think anyone reading this blog probably is friends with both Chris and I, if you haven't read through his blog, you really should. He is going on the trip with me and is an incredible writer - way more creative than my cut and dried descriptions of events and happenings. Check it out here: http://antithesisreigns.wordpress.com/

Where You're At

Recently, our team found out that we will be staying in the "Retreat" house that Urban Promise owns, for the duration of our stay. This house is georgous and was built by the Extreme Makeover Home Edition folks for a family from Camden.

Here's the house tour:



(Courtesy of Hulu)

The Marrero family consists of a dad, who worked for Urban Promise running a father's ministry, and five sons, the oldest of which was in high school during the time of the build. They were living in a cockroach-infested apartment with limited electricity and water; which, unfortunately, doesn't sound like a uncommon occurrence in this area of the US. Compare the house above with the views of Camden below:


(Images of Camden)

This house, apparently sticks out like a sore thumb in Camden - a house that belongs in the affluent suburbs in the middle of the urban poor. The saddest part of this story, however, is that the family was forced to sell the house within three years because they couldn't afford the utilites. The family lived on a fixed income and could not afford to keep with the house, even with the homeowers insurance apparently covered and frozen property taxes. They eventually sold the house back to Urban Promise (who had donated the land it sat on, next to their campus) and moved, possibly all the way to Flordia - but I can't find that article anymore...

Regardless, this story asks us - why don't we meet people where they are at? Did the Marrero's need a new house? Yes. Did they need a huge mansion? No. This house was supposed to help pull them out of their current state of poverty, but instead they found themselves even less able to put food on the table. Why do we American's hold on to the notion that bigger is always better? Or try to fit our ideas of happiness, success, and satisfaction on others? Do not take this as condoning poverty, but rather consider how meeting needs has to be done in a way that satisfies their immediate concerns and leave room for growth. Had the Marrero's house been more modest in size, maybe they would have been able to stay in Camden and flourish. On the flip side, maybe selling the house and moving out of Camden is what needed to happen to give them a boost up.

How do I serve people where they are at, yet encourage them to grow, be that academically, spiritually, financially, or emotionally? As we read recently in A Framework for Understanding Poverty, poverty is not caused just by lack of money and can't always be solved by throwing money at a situation. Beyond the financial, there are also factors such as emotions, mental state, spiritual life, physical needs, support systems, and role models that can cause poverty to persist in a situation. How do we meet those needs?

After reading this latest article, I realized even more how entirely unfamilar I am with poverty. I have never lacked one of the resources that contributes to pervading poverty, even as a 'poor' college student. I have a home, a family, friends, a job, a good mind, a Savior Jesus, caring professors, and opportunities for graduate education. I find it amazing that I can just continue to research, learn and gain new knowledge without the overhanging burden of wondering how I will put food on the table.

Jesus met people where they were at - from the woman at the well, to Nicodemus in the dark, to the Zacchaeus in his tree - ministering to each person a way germane to their needs. How can I do anything less but the same?

In preparation for Camden, NJ

What was your high school experience like? Did you go to a big school, little school, affluent school, poor school, private school or public school? I thought I went to a school with limited resources - we quickly outgrew our building, our books were old, and we didn't have a real lab space for experiments. But, after reading a chapter from Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, I was forced to re-evaluate both the level of my education and that of my community.

I come from a 80% white community (according to the latest Wikipedia data) in Ellensburg, but I attended a private school in Yakima. Yakima is 42% Hispanic (at least from the best data I could find, number is from 2009), however my school was almost 100% white. So, I can't speak exactly to the level of public education in my community, but after reading Savage Inequalities, I can safely say that we can and do support our students more in Ellensburg than they are able to in Camden, NJ.

This Christmas break, I'll be traveling to Camden to work with a group called Urban Promise. Camden is one of the poorest areas of the country - 80,000 people live in 9 sq miles. The community is close to 98% non-white and a large portion of their community lives below the poverty line. 50% of Camden is under the age of 25 and something close to 85% of births are to unwed (presumably young) mothers. With this much stacked against them, who would expect a stellar school system? Even so, reading about their education system was devastating. Though the community taxes themselves a higher percentage of their income than the neighboring suburban areas do, they still can't provide the same resources for their students.

I haven't had to deal with much racial reconciliation in my everyday life, even at SPU, we're 80% white. While there is nothing wrong with investing in a quality high school education, there is something wrong with allowing some school systems to fail their students, just from lack of resources. I don't think the cycle of poverty can't be broken without raising the level of eduction of a community, but raising the level of education takes funding - so how can it be done in a poor community? Honestly, I don't know, and Savage Inequalities doesn't offer a solution. I think, however, any solution a book like this may offer would turn into a 'cookie cutter' solution that would probably only fit 1% of the real-world situations. There are multiple factors that need to be addressed to change a system and each situation differs from the next. I am interested in learning how Urban Promise is working towards breaking the cycle of poverty by providing a higher level of education for students, for it sounds like they have a very holistic mission that seeks to better all aspects of their students' lives. I am also interested in learning if the presence of Urban Promise has affected the education in the public school system in Camden.

There will be more thoughts on this book coming soon, possibly along with other articles and group discussions that happen. In the meantime - click on the link below and watch the clip entitled "I am not a statistic" to learn some about what Urban Promise is doing in Camden, NJ.

http://www.urbanpromiseusa.org/media

And in other news...

Okay, so I apologize to the few people who may watch my blog (aka Kali and Charis) about not being very good about posting. I basically don't get internet at my apartment area and when I am out at coffee shops, I am generally studying for the GRE (yuck)...which by the way, is the weirdest test. It tests basic algebra and geometry and graph interpretation, but then it test ridiculously challenging vocabulary that nobody uses in everyday life! I don't get the rationale behind the test, how it is supposed to tell if we are ready for graduate school, but I have to take it, so I will study about how to beat the test b/c there is no way I can memorize 5000 new words by September!

Besides just studying and sewing (I finished my dress and made another skirt and now am working on a pair of pants!), I have been biking...a lot. Te week before last, I biked a total of about 50 miles (!) and then hiked about 5 miles, uphill the following Saturday.

We hiked back in Big Basin, but we took the 'Buzzard's Roost' trail. It was a 2.5 mile loop trail and included at 1100ft elevation change....needless to say, it was uphill the whole way. But the view from the top was beautiful - I felt like I was back in the great northwest because all the hills were covered in dense green foliage.

Part of the trail.

The group who went hiking.

The view from the top

[Also, just an fyi, I can't seem to keep a straight timeline on all the events I want to share, so I make no claim to chronological order]

Not sure if I mentioned a new friend Hannah and I made while in the kitchen one evening, but we met a guy from Georgia Tech, named Mike, who likes to bike. He loves to bike. And somehow convinced us to go on a bike ride after work. We bike for a total of 20 miles, moving constantly. While I'd biked that much before, Hannah and I always stopped along the way, which made it not quite as challenging.

Then, later that week, we biked again to Stanford, this time to try out the first cupcake store. (this was not their first location, but they claim to be the brand that started the cupcake store trend) It is called Sprinkles and I had heard rave reviews from coworkers about their treats. I wanted to see if I could compare it to Cupcake Royale in Seattle, and I must admit, they seem pretty similar, but then, a cupcake's a cupcake, right? Sprinkles did not have anything like my favorite kind at Cupcake Royale, Dance Party (it tastes like those delicious white cookies with oodles of pink frosting and sprinkles that you buy at the grocery store) but the Dark Chocolate one that I tried was pretty good. I love sprinkles on just about anything, so this one was great!

My cupcake.

While we were there, the shopping center was hosting a summer jazz evening, so we stayed to listen to some great music and watch all the little kids running around.

One of the cute kids. I almost got one of her laughing, looking at me, but I just missed it!

And to finish this post off, here is a thought that could be one of my GRE essay questions and one that I have thought about when I walk down the halls of NASA:

"It is more important to allocate money for immediate, existing social problems than to spend it on long-term research that might help future generations."

What do you think?

Dancing and Cello Music

A few weeks ago, I found out that Ames has a ballroom dancing club (actually, Ames a large number of clubs, including a cat rescue club...) Every Tuesday night the get together and learn some form of dance, a new one every month. They also have Casino Rueda lessons every week. The beginner lessons are free, so Hannah and I decided to try one out. And it was a lot of fun! I haven't had too many ballroom classes, so this was definitely a challenge for me. The style of dance is sort of a cross between salsa and country four-square dancing, I think - is that where they change partners? Anyways, the basics moves are salsa moves, but it is done in a circle and you swich partners during the dance. There is also a caller, who calls out the next move. Unfortunately for me, they're all in Spanish....eh, at least I'm not quizzed on their meaning and have to learn to spell them....

I have learned some of the moves as a lead and some as a follow, and let me tell you, it is much eaiser being a follow! Here is a video to give you a taste for what it looks like:

The other new art-related thing I have been introduced to is an artist named Zoe Keating. She plays really sweet cello music by live layering of loops she creates via a foot pedle and computer. You should listen to the link below before watch the music video - you will never believe one woman makes the track until you watch her create it!

Sun Will Set

Keeping busy...

So, I have still not caught up to the current date, so I'll keep writing, but in small bits and pieces.

One of my goals this summer was to sew a dress every week. Well, then I changed it to every other week. And now, if I get three items done this summer, I'll be a happy camper. I challenged my sister to a dress contest, so I'm not going to post pictures now, but I will say that mine is a lovely red dress with hand-rolled roses on the shoulder...

One of the most fun Saturday mornings I've had in a while was just last weekend when Hannah and I decided to volunteer our time at the model rocket launch being hosted at Ames. We showed up early in the morning and right away began helping set up the launch pads. There are twenty four launch pads, set up in groups of six. Each group had a box that had six wires going out and one wire going in. The one wire going in was connected to a master control box set apart from all the launch pads, where all the actual launching took place. Each of the six clips going out had two alligator clips on them, which were connected to the ignitors on each rocket.

Look at all the people! (This was early in the day...many more people came) They are all lining up at the tables there to get their rockets checked for safety.

There were hundreds of people that came out for this launch. Hannah and I were 'pad mothers', which meant that we helped each parent and/or child that came out to a pad set up their rocket. We had to slide it on the rail, attach the clips to the ignighters, and then have them check the continuity (indicated by a red light on the big box) which meant their rocket should be good to go. After each group launched, we swooped in to collect the spent ignighters so that they would not fly all over the airstrip and then help the next group set up. However, there were so many rockets and they went so fast with the launches that we moved from pad to pad constantly, helping one group set up while the last one we had helped was being launched. It was none stop all day, but great fun!

Personal favorite - I think the kid called it his 'droid-mobile'

This is what a pad looks like. With a rocket on it.

There were two groups there that built two different kind of rockets that held fresh eggs in the nose cone. They wanted to see if they would break upon descent. What do you think happened?

Six of the egg rockets taking off at once!

Surprisingly, many of the eggs did not break, however I did see on that had broken and was sloshing all around inside the nose cone. Over all we launched 209 rockets!

One day this last weekend Hannah and I also decided to ride into Mountain View and check out the goodwill and to just get outside on our bikes. Round trip, it was a little under 10 miles, but we got to come back from the goodwill via the Stevens Creek trail. It took us quite a while to find an entrance to the trail...we turned around about three times before we actually got on it. It is a wonderful trail, with paved pathways through a forest-y area and no cars in sight! It took us all the way from El Camino to Moffett Blvd. without once having to go on a regular road. It apparently is a very long trail that goes other places, but we haven't explored it very far.

A part of the trail.

Peaches and Strawberries

Probably my new favorite part of living in California is the access to fresh fruit. I love eating my pluot or nectarine at lunch and then snacking on fresh peaches and strawberries after dinner. The farmers market is such a great place to get fruit every week. I stock up every Sunday with my favorite vendors. I'm sure I probably pay a smidgen too much per pound, but the fruit is super delicious!

This is where I buy my peaches. I like the snow and yellow peaches.

I don't buy peppers, but the colors were so vibrant, I couldn't pass up the picture.

Much time has past since I last blogged, mainly because I have been trying to stay busy. I have been working decently long hours, but have also been biking and hiking and reading and sewing. Two weekends ago, my roommate, a few of my co-workers, and a couple of other interns went hiking in the Santa Cruz area on a Saturday, in a place called Big Basin. It was a lovely forest of large redwood trees. No, these were not the famous giant redwoods, but they were pretty darn big! And it smelled so lovely there, like I was back at Rimrock at my family's cabin. We took one short, flat, easy trail that took us to see the 'Mother' and 'Father' of the forest and then took another pretty easy trail to a small waterfall. Overall we hiked about 5 miles. I will say though that the drive to the area and back was pretty terrible. We didn't realize that part of route 239 is virtually a one lane windy road down the side of the mountain with many blind corners and steep drop offs. Everyone in the car breathed a great sigh of relief when we made it safely to Big Basin. I, fortunately was not driving, but we did take a better road out of the mountains.

Yay! We found the waterfall!

The trail to the waterfall.

The 'Mother' of the forest tree

Friday, the day before our hike, Hannah and I took a trip out to Standford. On our bikes. We stopped along the way there, but I must admit, 10 miles is not all that far away. We meandered through the campus, which is quite lovely, and took a bunch of pictures. I'm posting a few here, but I will have an album up on Facebook sometime soon. Overall, we rode about 20 miles that day, and surprisingly I wasn't very sore! We did take the time to walk through the Palo Alto main drag and today we are headed back to the area to try out a cupcake place called Sprinkles. We'll see if it is as good as Cupcake Royale in Seattle...

At the entrance to Stanford off El Camino Real

(and yes, Kali, this is evidence that I wore my yoga pants in public)

Two of the statue men at Stanford...I can't remember what they represent.

Moving forward to Sunday, Hannah and I went to military church and then to the farmer's market. I had wanted to go to the chapel on base last year, but it was always so out of the way from where I was at in San Jose that I never went. Well, we went this summer and I must admit it was slightly awkward. I think we walked in on a Sunday School class that was in the main chapel right before service, but there was only four people in pews, so I am not sure. They also had the church all set up for VBS the coming week, so it looked like we should be in Egypt. Also, the stained glass windows of the church had a general military symbol at the top of each one, a Biblical symbol in the middle and a symbol for a branch of the military at the bottom. They also didn't have any sort of a worship team, the pastor just played a video with the words and vocals for the congregation to sing along with. We also kind of stood out because we were the only new faces in a crowd of about 30 people and were referred as the 'new ladies in the back' more than once during the service. He preached on a passage in Luke, discussing truth. I don't remember all the details now, but it will be interesting to hear Pastor Mark from back in Seattle preach on the same passage in the coming weeks.

More to come soon!

Jumping in

I still remember, this time last year, during my first summer at NASA Ames, when I had a lot of free time during the day. This summer, it's like I never left. Most of the people are the same, the building is the same, and I still don't have a desk, but I have been able to jump right and hit the ground running with my projects for the next 10 weeks. Yes, I said projects - my mentor offically assigned me one project (which will be my honors project), but also has asked me to help on another project on the side. Plus, Hannah, Tanya and I are still finishing up our microgravity project (paper due thursday!) and are going to hopefully utilize some of the machines at Ames to help with the workup and analysis of the nanowires. Overall, the week just flew by, with all the meetings, paperwork and trainings I had to attend.

I'm living at the NASA Exchange Lodge (NEL) this year, which is through the first of two gates on base and only about 6 blocks away from my building. Thus, my new investment is a bike. I bought a sweet red Schwinn Sporterra, a hybrid bike. This bike is a cross between a road bike and a mountain bike. The tires are wider than a road's, but narrower than a mountain bike's. Also, the tread much more significant than a road bike's, but again, less intense than a mountain bike's. It is a pretty light bike and I have a men's version, which has the straight across top bar. The handle bars are like what one would find on a mountain bike, straight across, not curved like those on a road bike. Overall, it's a pretty sweet ride.

(Picture of my bike)

I've been trying to get good use out of it while down here, and yesterday Hannah and I rode into Mountain view to run a few errands. I wanted to get a library card and she wanted to go explore the greatness that is the Daiso! We had a lot of fun winding through isles full of things packaged with Japanese writing! I found tin foil, a pair of wooden chopsticks, and a mini wok! It was a good thing I brought my backpack on this trip. We also stopped by a mexican grocery and I packed 5lbs of rice home. Overall, through all of our stops, we ended up biking around 9.5 miles! And I hadn't really biked extensively....ever.

The NEL is pretty unexciting. It's like living back in Emerson, but with only one kitchen for everybody. And all the doors open into outdoor halways, like an apartment complex. It can get really boring around here really fast. I am trying to find out new places to go or things to do in a reasonable distance, but today I just slept til 10am, read until 2pm and then biked into Mountain View to get my library card and sit down to do some last bits of school work. I need to get some papers turned in early this coming week and was not motivated to do so in my room. I also swung by Le Boulanger, a bakery, on my way back to Moffett field, which looked like a nice bakery. I wasn't entirely impressed with the baked goods selection, I much prefer Macrina's in Seattle. The muffins didn't appear all that fresh or delicious, so I just ate a bagel. I'll just have to try another bakery another day!

AsCans and Tours!

Thursday, the 29th of April was a day packed full of tours of JSC and the NBL, where we got to see many things that the usual public does not get to see!

The day began with a tour of the facility where all the ISS mockups are stored. There were full scale models of each one, as well as a model of the Orion capsule. The Orion is currently has an unknown future, but the engineers are continuing to perfect the structure.

Here is an image of some of the modules:

In this building there were also about 2.5 full-scale shuttle mockups: two stand-alone noses with the personal cabins, one with the cockpit and the cargo bay, and one of just the cargo bay. The one with just the cargo bay also had a model of the robotic arm that takes every item out of the shuttle, so that they could practice the manuevers to get everything out.

This is the largest model, with the cockpit and cargo bay. The tail has been cut off and the wings removed, as they are not necessary and would not fit in the building:

Also, we got to sit in one of the crew member chairs: (the orange part is a parachute that is strapped to the crew member)

We were supposed to the training area for thermal tile repairs, which is basically a couple of tables and a projector that projected on to the side of the shuttle mock up, but there were astronauts in training, so we had to skip it and were not allowed to take pictures of them.

Then we got to see a Soyez shuttle close up, at least the crew parts of it, and it is really small!

Three people get to sit in those buckets for 2+ days, curled up in the fetal posistion, while the rocket catches up with the ISS. The shuttle carries up to 7 people, a bit more comfortably.... The capsule you see in the picture is actually one that went to space on Exploration 1. Very cool to see!

After finishing in the mock-up training facility, we were shuttled over to a conference room where we learned about the space suits. Did you know that they have about three different models to work with?

Here is an image of all the layers that go into a suit, the yellow one is a rubber bladder layer that allows the suit to be pressurized:

Suit testing occurs all the time, they even use some 'hollywood' suits that are not functional, but are used to test the suit-vehicle interfaces when designing the Lunar Electric Vehicle (which is being renamed since Obama says we are not going back to the moon...) Also, they even test new suit designs on the microgravity plane!

Next, Hannah and I traveled over to the NBL, where we had done our chamber training, to get a tour. We missed our tour last Friday because we needed to prep for the surprise ground test on Monday. Javier, one of the flight docs, gave us a great tour. We learned all about the history of the facility, were there are similar pools in the world and even got to see the Orien capsule that they were building for the pool.

The pool itself is 40ft deep, which is why it is so blue. It is extremely clean water because all 6.5 million gallons are filtered every 20 hours. For each astronaut in the pool there are at least 4 divers and one has a camera on the astronaut's face at all times. While we were there, there were two astronauts just getting out of the pool and since Javier knew them, he asked them to take a picture with us!

They are wearing basically their underwear, which is their main cooling system while in the space suit. The long underwear has rubber tubes woven through it and water runs through the tubes to cool them down. The one on the right in the picture is Steve Swanson, and he has been to space a few times. Here is his bio. The one on the left is a newly selected Astronaut Cannidate, or AsCan, and is just beginning his training.

After the NBL tour, we traveled back over to JSC proper and went to see Mission Control! We sat in the viewing area and learned about what each person does while watching them run a shuttle landing simulation.

Then we walked over to the Apollo Mission Control Center, where we got to go inside the room and actually sit at the consoles! It was very neat to touch and experiance a part of the history of the space program.

Here I am at a console:

And the room:

That room concluded our tours for the day, which was fine because I was exhausted, and we traveled back to the home we were staying at. Friday consisted of just giving a video presentation of our project, so I don't have much more to say about our experiance. But, you should check back soon for a video of our trip and project, as well as a link to a photo album of all our photos!