The weekend

hello again!
So it is Monday...another week of classes is about to begin tomorrow. We don't have classes on Mondays because we have our 'work departments' from 2:00-5:00 every monday. I don't know if i said this or not yet, but i do 'home care' at cluny castle campus. this involves, random cleaning projects (cleaning windows, vacuuming or 'hoovering' as its called here) and restocking the 10 cleaning supplies closets....the castle has 30 bathrooms, lucky for us only 20 of them get cleaned by homecare, and lucky for ME, i haven't had to do that yet). This weekend was pretty relaxing. Friday night I stayed in with a few of my housemates and we just did homework and relaxed.
Saturday during the day i took the shuttle bus to the nearby town of Forres with my friends Nora, Dana, and Sarah. It turned out that Forres is mostly one main street with a park and a bunch of thrift stores & pharmacies. The area is not a wealthy one clearly. We did find a used book sale in someone's garage and a neat little health food store, but that was about it.
Saturday night we watched a movie together on my laptop and THEN we had a bonfire on the beach to watch the lunar eclipse! It was pretty amazing. It was high tide at the beach and our bonfire was only about 7 feet from the ocean but also climb up a giant sand dune and watch the moon from a better vantage point. The whole eclipse took a few hours but time went by pretty fast. I got to the bonfire last with 2 of my housemates (Nora & Charlotte....we needed to finish the movie we were watching first) and we tried to get to the beach in the dark. We got lost in the scrub brush and sandy paths and walked in a giant circle (it was 9:00 PM and we didn't have flashlights) until eventually we found someone who offered to steer us in the right direction. When we followed this person, she led us to a path we hadn't taken yet we ended up walking by someone who was sitting down that we had already passed but this time we were walking in the other direction! I had no idea how we eventually found the beach, sheer luck really. Last night I talked to my mom on skype (the most amazing invention ever!) and did some homework. Today I have decided to stop eating peanut butter (which is nothing like the PB back home, this is just ground up peanuts, no added ANYTHING but still delicious!) AND muesli. I have developed a muesli addiction and it is getting out of hand. I did buy some instant coffee though, so it's more of a replacing one vice with anther than anything.

Aunt Kay, self sufficiency IS the name of the game! the only problem is that it is SUCH a huge investment, it's pretty much not financially possible unless it is a community effort instead of an individual one....and with the way that people are thinking today, i don't see communities rallying together to get a wind turbine put up anytime soon. Keep working on uncle ron!

and my dear friend corey beach-first off i would like to say that your shout out needed to be amazing and i was working on it in my head and refining it. (okay that may only be slightly untrue) but second i DO enjoy CDAE's doomsday movies. it scares me into action. or at least it scares me into hopelessness! the cool thing is that my professor here showed us 'the end of suburbia' and after the movie said how he knows a lot of us feel depressed but not to worry because this week he's going to show us a movie about Cuba and how Cuba dealt with it's peak oil crisis. Unlike the Josh Farley's of the world, the professors here are all about positive change and hope, not about preaching about everything that is wrong with the world and making us feel like we're all doomed. which is cool. i'll update you on the cuba movie after we see it. and corey beach, while i have given up sugar, i miss cheese. i dream about it. I fantasize about when we bought the block of cabot vintage cheddar and then slowly peeled off the purple wax coating...MmmMmM. so who knows how long this cheese ban will last when i get home. i love you dearly and wish i was taking bowling with you right now for gym class! more updates later my CDAE friend! xoxo

Mom & Dad- it's funny you mention maple syrup because someone a few houses down heats their house with a woodstove and whenever i smell it i think of when you would make syrup in the sugar shack. we should do it again! if i get a summer job in Connecticut i am going to build a sugar shack. if you provide the evaporator! :) It's easy to get swept up in the idealistic environmentally friendly utopian world thought process here, but i'm doing my best to stay grounded. i think a healthy balance of both ways of thinking will be necessary to ensure a positive future. Dad, i will admit that i was sad when i unpacked and didn't find a letter in my suitcase, but getting one in the mail was MUCH more satisfying, so thank you! it definitely made my first week! I'll put more pictures online later today! i love you all! oxoxo