first day of class!

so today we had our first day of class! it was "applied sustainability" and went from 9:15 to 12:15 and 2:15 to 5:15. which was an EXHAUSTING day, since i have gotten used to being lazy and taking a lot of tea breaks. it was a pretty normal 'intro' class. we watched a movie (that i've already seen) about a small mountain town (Ladakh) in India near Tibet. it showed how 'modernization' destroyed the community's way of life. The town became 'modernized' so fast that it was easy to 'draw the line' between the causes and effects of such a change. The movie was called 'learning from ladakh'. We also went over the sylabus and discussed a research paper that will be 33% of our grade.

I'm very excited to write the paper. I'm going to write mine about food security. What makes it so interesting is that we have to write the paper as if if is an 'energy descent' plan; or how to wean ourselves off fossil fuels (down to 50% of what we are using now). I decided to write about food security at an individual level; as opposed to a city level or village level. Every man for themself! (but not really, because that's mean!)

A few days ago my roommates decided that they really wanted cookies, however we don't have flour or sugar in our house. they decided that if they mixed together a little bit of everything in our kitchen and baked it, then somehow, cookies would magically come out of the oven! They ended up mixing muesli cereal (oat flakes, chopped dates, raisins, sunflower seeds & almonds), a cut up apple, two mushy bananas, candy coated hershey kisses, eggs, cornflakes, milk, and cocoa powder. when they came out of the oven, they smelled exactly like a wet dog! We named them dog bars. (needless to say, they were not a hit) however, i did post a few pictures of the process at www.webshots.com/user/findascot

being here is exposing me to all of these wonderful ideas like permaculture, sustainable energy, alternative building.....there are so many things i want to learn and not enough time!