Half Way Mark

This last week was a lot of fun. Our class project was to build a wood storage shelter for the fireplace and cob oven here on campus. So the first day was a long day of filling in the rubble trench. A trench is dug and a foundation is needed for structures in order to prevent the freeze and thawing moving around your structure. So we threw in tons and tons of many rocks, preferably angular granite ones. The next day our class as a whole designed the structure to be built. The base is stacked stones and the rest of the the structure is cob, wattle and daub, and an arch from the adobe blocks we made the first week. We managed to finish the main structure by the end of the week, which was awesome. Can't wait to put up pictures. Cobbing was a lot of fun, you get to dance around in a clay, sand, water, and straw pile with your friends until it is perfect enough to put on the wall. Having so many people work on this structure was fun, but also frustrating. Luckily everyone had something to do all the time, but the vast amount of ideas made it hard sometimes to cope with. So our experienced teachers would stop us and we'd have a group discussion and everything turned out awesome. It was also great at the end of the day to go for a great refreshing swim afterwards.

Quick funny story. A few nights ago a woke up to cold clammy paws running across my chest. I sat up turned on my flashlight and glimpsed a small rodent like figure, most likely a squirrel jump out of my tent door. I guess I left it open and I had granola bars which ended up being crumbs all over the floor.  Haha whoops.

Thursday night we planned to have pizza made out of the cob oven, but since the oven still has work to be done on it we couldn't use the oven. The kitchen made pizza anyway and afterwards that was a party in the Q hut, where our "cube" is and a big party was thrown for our teacher Ace's birthday and Cillian's. It turned out to be a great night with lots of yestermorrow folk.
Friday I made a mini rocket stove out of left over cob! And that night a bunch of us watched a documentary, Yes Men save the world. Which I highly recommend everyone seeing, because it is awesome and hilarious what these guys are doing to fuck over corporate america. Here is the wiki link.

Saturday I relaxed, swam a lot, worked on my practicum. We also went to blueberry lake: swam, played bocce ball, and picked blueberries. Love them blueberries. Oh and they are free! Sunday was sorta the same thing but instead of blueberry lake we went to a waterfall.
Can't believe it's half way over.