Utah Sojourn

My life and experiences while I work towards my MS in Utah.

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Location: Gitting, Manyara, Tanzania

Just finished my MS in Watershed Science at Utah State University. Am now embarking on an adventure in Tanzania through the Peace Corps. After 2 months of training, I have just started teaching secondary Chemistry and Physics, which will be for 2 years.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Spring Break!
After a night of no sleep, I commenced our drive to Seattle, WA early this morning. I only lasted about an hour before I had to pull over and have Joe drive. That ended up being the only time I drove...the guys probably knew that it was best that I sleep. That way they wouldn't have to deal with me and guys have a tendency to know best when driving too (at least that's what they think). Due to a debate over whether or not Ponderosa Pine bark smells like vanilla, we pulled off at a small rest stop somewhere in Idaho (I think) to smell the bark. It does smell faintly like vanilla but the smell fades over time (at least it did for the piece that got put in my car). Alas, I accidently deleted the pictures I took of us smelling the trees and throwing snow balls at each other. There was only a little snow in small piles but we made use of it :-).

We got to Eric's cousin's house in Seattle that evening without any problems. Well, it is possible that there were minor things that the guys didn't tell me about but I slept most of the way so I'm not aware of anything. I do remember going to Panda Express for the first time for lunch and not knowing what to get. I'm still not sure what I ordered; at least it was edible. And I think it rained as we were going through the mountains east of Seattle...go figure, rain in Washington.


Eric's cousin and her husband have a nice house and neat little boy. The husband is some sort of video game programmer I think...like many Seattle people. Apparently, everyone knows someone who works for Nintendo and can get their products very cheap. So after some soup for dinner, we played the Wii. It was pretty cool bowling and golfing with just the little hand piece. The motion isn't quite like real life, but it's better than the other controllers. Before long, the four of us students and the family crashed for the night. It was good to be out traveling again.

Friday, March 09, 2007

God's Love in a Boy
Tonight was the last Fish Fry before our spring break service trip. As usual, us students worked hard and were there late. While wrapping up things with the dinner, a group of Newmans got to playing hackysack in the hallway. I was writing up my lesson plan for my religious ed class that Sunday because I will be out of town when a little Hispanic boy (about 2) came up to me. He had come into the social hall the week before, just kind of wandering around, and I had wiped off his cheek before some girls came in to get him. So as I'm sitting at the table, he comes up, I put my hand out, and he grabs one or so of my fingers. After a minute or so, he holds up his arms like he wants me to lift him up. So I lift him up, put him on my lap, and he immediately leans into me. I held him and cuddled (he leaning into me, I putting my head on his) as I worked on my instructions for the substitute teacher. That little boy totally made my day/week/month, especially considering the stresses I have had of late, what with getting ready for spring break and all (the letters, last minute details, etc.). I saw God in that little boy as he cuddled with me at a time when I needed it. It's amazing how much joy can come from such simple actions. Eventually, the boy's father came and got him even though the boy didn't want to leave me (which also made me feel good). Joe took a picture of me holding him but I accidently deleted it (honestly)...I still can't figure out why he showed me how to delete all of the pictures on his camera at once...more on that later...

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Letters
For about the past month, I have been working on getting support letters for the other Newman people going on the spring break service trip. The letters are very similar to the Palanca letters that we had at our Emmaus retreat in Albany (during my undergrad). I actually was able to send a Palanca letter to the travelers this year as a last minute thing and individual letters to my friends on the team (college and high school!). For those who have no idea, travelers are those students who are on the retreat for the first time and the team members are those students who traveled before and are helping run the retreat now. It was gratifying to be able to get the letters out to my friends, some of whom I haven't talked to in a year or more, and show them how special they are and that I still think about them. Anyway, I'm very excited because I was able to get some support letters from some family members of those going on the trip. I have a letter from Eric's parents, Eamonn's parents and two of his sisters, and Aldo's sister, parents, and someone else important (his sister helped out). I'm amazed at how well this whole scheme is turning out and how well people have responded to my request for letters, especially the family members who have no idea who I am (I just sent letters and e-mails not knowing how they would respond). Even though I wasn't able to get in contact with everyone's family, everyone going has at least a handfull of letters because Newman folk who aren't going on the trip wrote letters of support. I'll update later when everyone receives the letters. (NOTE: This post was written after everyone had received their letters so none of the surprise was diminished due to this blog post.)

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Snowshoeing with Quinney Prospects
Tonight is a full moon, so it would be awesome to go snowshoeing again tonight under the full moon, like last month. However, I went during the day with some other students and prospective PhD students. I figured the company is a bit different, they needed people to go, and it's supposed to be cloudy tonight. So I joined up with some grad students, including my friends Amy, Christo, and Eamonn, and went snowshoeing with the prospective students in order to help woo them. All of the students are candidates to receive Quinney scholarships, which are a lot of money that you get while you work on your PhD. They are coveted scholarships and you're set with stipend funding for at least 3 years (might be more, I don't quite remember).

First off, we drove through Logan Canyon to the Bear Lake overlook. This allowed us to check the conditions of the snow in the canyon (rather paltry) and let the prospectives see Bear Lake--in all of its frozen over glory...kind of hard to see its turquoise waters under the ice. We narrowed down the many choices of places to snowshoe and decided to go to Temple Fork Sawmill because there wouldn't be any snowmobilers around and it's a pretty easy path. It was a great choice because several of the prospectives are not used to the higher elevation and any more difficult path would probably have been too much. I was even breathing hard during some of it.

The trip was good and I got to meet some new people, both current and prospective students. It'll be interesting to see if I recognize any of them this fall and to see who decided to come here.