HOW TO...

…..clean an oyster reef tank while donning a wet suit, snorkel gear, and a couple scrub brushes.

Do’s:

•          Use the toothbrush sized brush for EVERYTHING!  It will take you two hours but your boss will literally say that it is the cleanest he has ever seen the tank. He might even give you advice on how to make it less clean to save you time…haha.
•          Be aware that guests are watching…so try not to point your butt at them the whole time.
•          Move slowly so that you don’t flail around like an overweight seal.
•          Leave a little water in the goggles so that you just have to give them a little slosh to un-fog them.

Don’ts:

•          DON’T PANIC when something brushes up your leg.  It’s just a turtle…and it’s just friendly….too friendly!
•          DON’T try to get the water out of the wetsuit by unzipping your boots at the edge of the tank.  I may have made the tank the cleanest…but I made the floor the messiest!
•          DON’T wear a wetsuit that is too big for you, air bubbles inside will gas off through the cracks at any moment, which will make you want to call, “it wasn’t me!” through the snorkel.
•          DON’T burp through the snorkel…it will act as an amplifier.

What to expect:

•          Parents taking photos of their child next to your butt…haha.  Good thing black is slimming.
•          People to think that you can’t hear them through the water. (Which brings me to my next point…)

Things overheard:

         Teenage Boy 1 – “Look!  Someone is in the tank!”
         Teenage Boy 2 – “Nah-uh. That’s not real!”
  
         Child –“¡Mira!”
         Papa –“¿Que haciendo?”
         Child –“No Sé”
 
         Little Girl –“Look mommy!”
         Mom –“Yes, she’s cleaning.  That’s her job.”
         Little Girl –“ I want a job here someday”

A Quote and Some Noonday

“Processing and planning: these two activities

occupy the majority of your thought life. We spend so much

time processing and planning that we forget that we are

supposed to be living. The only time we actually think

about the present is when we are complaining about it,

and complaining about the present once more pushes us

back to the memory of better days gone by, or forward to

the anticipation of better days to come.

What we fail to recognize is that the two vehicles

which enable our time travels are called shame and

fear. Shame takes us into the past where we continue to

relive things gone by, and fear takes us into the future

where we continue to pre-live things to come. We long

to be clairvoyant historians who have mastered both the

past and future, and we spend our lives in pursuit of this

goal because we think that if we could just work through

the stuff of our past and fully prepare ourselves for the

happenings of our future, we could secure our happiness

once and for all time. But this is a myth! Happiness is not

found in the past or future; happiness is only found in the

present. Until we learn how to be present, we will never

learn how to be happy. And until we gain the authority to

quiet our minds, to hold them still long enough to drink

in the present, we will never discover the central reality

that pervades our lives from beginning to end: God is

with us, and he is with us now!”

~A quote from Pastor Benjamin Robinson, A PATH THROUGH MIGHTY WATERS

Lately I have been quite the busy bee, but in addition to my typical exploits, I have been learning to drive stick shift (which is a whole other blog post to come) and I just finished my Noonday Fundraiser.  Noonday is a program that supports artists in third world countries and helps them to rise out of poverty.  The best part is that it is not a hand-out but an investment.  The goods we buy support a program that not only trains people to start their own businesses, keeping workers out of sweatshops, but also funds adoptions and helps individuals in ways specific to each location.  Below are some of my items and their stories. 

Tagua Seed Bracelet- Ecuador

Peru: The Alpaca Wool gloves are made by artists in a very rural section of Peru with very little employment opportunity.  Because of the Noonday program, these women can work at home and still care for their children.

Ugandan Rolled Paper Bead Necklace

Ecuador:  Made from Tagua seeds this bracelet is a prime example of a product made by artisans who see the importance of good business practices.  These particular artists not only rose out of poverty, but now they are providing jobs for other locals in the area.

Uganda: As these male artisans rise out of poverty to a new level in society, they are given a certain status.  These new Christians have taken it upon themselves to use their new status not for themselves but instead they started classes on how to be a Godly man, which includes lessons such as “how to not beat your wife”.

All in the power of a purchase!

For more on Noonday see this site: http://www.bethbernhardt.noondaycollection.com/artisans.html

Operation Bald Eagle

For a while we were told to keep it quiet, and I sat on the information that Bald Eagles were coming to our rehab center.  They didn't want crowds, especially with all the federal regulations, and with the crazys out there, the actual birds would have to be under lock and key.

Yesterday I decided to forgo sleeping in since I don't know how to do that anymore, and instead I went to the shelter to give my boss some hawk feather earrings I made.  I also collected some crickets for the cattle egret (which I am happy to see eating seven crickets at one sitting.  He didn't have an appetite for two weeks...so it was good to see him eat.)

When I got there, my boss came outside to meet me, after donning the earrings with a smile bigger than Christmas, her unbelievably big smile got even bigger as she said, "Are you ready?"  She leads me to the back pen where a beautiful eagle sat.  Such a pristine, beautiful bird, a symbol of such hope, lay battered on the ground.  It hurt my heart a little.  BUT, a wildlife vet all the way from Maryland came down bringing us supplies and instructions on the basics such as suturing.

The bird was found on a beach living on the dead things it could find there.  It lacked an eye and the wing needed stitches.  No one knows what happened to her.  The vet sedated her with a liquid from a vial and brought her out to the table.  It was important to sedate her, because her talons, in addition to being sharp can squeeze with 115 lbs of pressure (that Red Tailed Hawk that grabbed me a few posts before only grabs with 20-30 lbs of pressure....and we all know what she can do to a mouse.)

Once she was under, I was sent to get warm soapy water and some ointment.  I came back to see him pulling fatty scar tissue out of the wing wound.  Then I stood by her good wing and watched.  The wound was cleaned and sutured before the vet moved on to the eye.  As he cleaned around it, she started to stir...which required me to gentle restrain the good wing so that she wouldn't beat that one up.  At that moment, I touched a Bald Eagle.  The symbol of our nation and hopefully a future success story on how we can save a critter from extinction.  Whoa...life moment!

The talons are tricky work!

  The eye was completely gone, but the tear duct worked well enough to keep the area flushed.  So we left the eye as it was.  She will never be released because she will never be able to hunt with that eye.  Her depth perception will cause her to bang up more that just that wing.  AND thus begins our hunt, we need to find her a permanent home.  No zoo will ever take her since she is not "a pristine exhibit species" without the one eye.  So we would need a facility that wasn't interested in display but still has the proper permits.

Wish us luck!

(Ps. The reason I don't have to keep this a secret anymore is because for some reason a reporter from the local paper managed to pop-up during the operation.  The command to keep it quiet is out the door when the press arrives...haha)

Spiritual Fitness

This blog is titled after a Podcast from New Philadelphia church.  I started attending New Philly when I was teaching in South Korea.  While attending this church I learned about my personal identity, forgiveness, confidence, and freedom while experiencing more breakthroughs than I could imagine.

Anyway, I was listening to a podcast of theirs the other day and I decided it was high time to share it.  The speaker has an interesting method of preaching, but he is sincere and jovial.  The breakdown is as follows:

To grow in life, we need a balanced diet; protein, fruit, veggies, dairy, and yes even carbs.  But just as we need to be concerned with our physical fitness, we need to also be concerned with our spiritual fitness.  That also is consisting of a balanced diet.  Without a proper serving of fellowship, spiritual teaching (sermons), prayer, bible reading, and meditation, our growth as Christians can be stunted.

I asked God, what am I lacking?  "Where am I malnourished?"  And the response was direct.  It's the only thing I don't actually do.  Meditation.

My first thought is, "What?  Meditation is for yogis and is not part of seeking the one true God." But it is in the scripture.  I typed meditate in into an online site that finds the word in the any version of the bible.  It appeared 18 times in the Old Testament.   The word meditation was found an additional six times.

Examples include-

           Joshua 1:8

"This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success."

          Psalm 48:9

"Lord, here in your Temple we meditate upon your kindness and your love."

          Psalm 145:5

"I will meditate about your glory, splendor, majesty, and miracles."

Needless to say.  I had a lot to think about.  And especially meditate about.  But where does one start?  Why, in the family perhaps.  My spiritual father is my pastor from New Philadelphia. His spiritual father is Pastor Benjamin Robeson from California, and he has his own spiritual father Pastor Daniels.  There is a lot of security knowing that the people you trust and look up to are accountable to other people, who are accountable to other people.  Ha ha...but I digress.  Pastor Benjamin wrote a book on meditation.  It is free to download at this link.

I have just started the book, so I am not sure how things will go.  I do know that I have the attention span of a gnat, but I am ready to see myself free to grow as I work on my spiritual fitness.  

Photos from the Secret Lab!

Ok...the title may be more exciting than the actual post.  But remember the water quality lab with the best view and the microscope worth the price of my first born child.  Yeah, I got some photos from up there.

The Microscope...and view.

The view up close.  Love that!

Getting ready to break the vacuum tube and test the copper.

YAY!  I am a blue shirt now!!!!

Yep...it's official.  I have completed over 100 hours at the aquarium, which means I lose my white volunteer shirt and get a nice blue polo that doesn't divide the volunteers and paid staff.  SO HAPPY!

What Happened to October?

No, really...what happened?  One second it was September, and now it's dark at 5:30pm.  This is unacceptable!

I didn't mean to let so much time pass since my last blog.  I guess things have gotten away from me both at work and on the volunteer fronts.



First of all, I know you are dying to hear about scrubbing the tanks at the Aquarium in my official volunteer wet suit.  It didn't happen, but hey, the tank will just keep getting dirtier.  There is hope yet!

I did the color run 5k.  Have no idea what time we made because I was too excited to get pummeled with color to remember anything else.  I have to thank epic blue man for the nice starting line photo.

On completely unrelated notes:

1).  My pirate costume for Trick or Treat Under the Sea at the Aquarium was a hit...but it also forced me to get dinner from the drive-thru of (don't judge me) taco bell.  Yikes, ya know...you get cravings sometimes.

2). I went on my first road trip where I learned valuable lessons about gas consumption, attentiveness to the road, and how to speed without speeding.  This trip involved hiking, apple picking and eating Ethiopian food.
3). I am starting the Job search since my contract ends in 2 months.  I do have the ability to extend bi-weekly after that point until I get a job.  Applying currently to a few different things, the most exciting being a educational animal curator in the Sonoran Desert.
4).  Because the Desert Job requires more raptor experience, my boss at the shelter gave me some raptor training training.  Ha ha.

Who is schooling who?