Monday May 23

Have I mentioned how hilarious my supervisor at the ReStore is?

Lucy and I kept begging him to smash things. He finally let us video this.

The mulch is to make it less muddy.

Here are some pictures of last Wednesday on the build site. It was very muddy since it had rained the day before.
I was back in the office today. I get tired no matter what job I do, but it's a different kind of tired when I'm sitting around all day vs. using my body. The office makes me the bad kind of tired -- sort of agitated. I had the most boring project ever today. For all their more regular volunteers, they keep a spreadsheet of the hours they work. I had to consolidate that data for 2015 into a new spreadsheet. Let me just say, there are a lot of old white guy names at Habitat. Several hours were dedicated to tallying the hours of the 19 Bobs who had worked for Habitat during 2015.
But it's really rewarding to see how grateful my supervisor Harper is. Her face just lights up whenever I do something for her.

May Project Update #3

The last few days of my May Project at Challenger Learning Center consisted of a mix of tasks that were both familiar and completely new to me.  I started out making more kits, which although I have improved upon greatly, are still pretty repetitive.  This was the last set that needed to be done, however, so it was oddly rewarding to find them all laid out in front of me completed and finished.  One of the more unfamiliar tasks I was assigned was to catalog and organize the various sizes and lengths of PVC pipe and connectors in the storage room.  Keep in mind that, although fairly organized, the storage room consists of hallways that tight enough to hold one person at a time.  The PVC, however, was of various lengths ranging from 5 inches to 12 feet.  This took a couple of hours and a lot of balancing.

Next on my agenda was to see if it was feasible to incorporate a certain project into one of the summer camp programs.  The project itself was a kit that, once completed, would assemble into a glider made only from foam plates, a few washers, and glue/tape.  This was a pretty messy process to do the first time, but after you do it once, it becomes a lot easier to organize.  The finished product itself was actually pretty impressive, with my average throw landing around 20 feet.

My final task, although unusual, may have been the most time-consuming one I was assigned.  Recording the results of surveys given to the 5th graders that came to Challenger Learning Center.  The questions were as follows:

1. I am a boy/girl (circle one) in the ______ grade.
2. The subject I like most in school is _____.
3. The subject I like least in school is _____.
4. For my career, I would like to be ________.
5. I am very interested in science
        a) Strongly Agree   b) Agree   c) Disagree   d)Strongly Disagree
6. Describe two ways you used teamwork in your mission today.
7. Which of the following is NOT a part of a rocket?
        a) fin   b) wing   c) nosecone   d) body
8. Complete the sentence below for describing Newton's Law of Motion:
       For every action there is ______________________.


Although it seems like a fairly straightforward survey, it was actually pretty hilarious to see what some of the kids would put for their answers.  I made an Imgur album with some of my favorite responses, which you can view via this link.

However, there were a lot of responses to go through, and it did eventually begin to feel less like a fun way to spend my day and more like a chore.  There were times when I had to use more than one sheet of paper to get all the tallies for one school group.  But considering some of the other things I could have been doing, it really wasn't all that bad.

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Overall, I found my time and the Challenger Learning Center to be a very diverse and rewarding experience.  I was able to experience firsthand the effort and dedication that is put into exposing children to the limits (or lack thereof) of STEM.  But what I appreciated the most was just how much I felt at ease with the wonderful people I spent the past few weeks with.  It was easy to feel like I was working with them rather than for them, and that made my May Project much more engaging.

Friday May 20

Over the past week I have been working both in the ReStore and on the build site.

The houses sort of slope down this hill.

I'll talk a little more about the build site! The houses are sort of on one side of a cul-de-sac.

Subflooring! The blueboard is for insulation.

7 houses are currently under construction, but they are planning to have 4 more done by the end of the summer.
In this week alone, we have put up walls and the structure for a roof on 4 of the houses.
More pictures and videos to come.

Day 4

Day 4:

Katherine is back! Today we cleaned stalls again and then headed up to a new barn where they keep the adoption pigs. The barn is called "Menagerie".

THE PIGS ARE SO CUTE. I truly think pigs are some of the most underrated animals. Many of the pigs are personable with huge personalities. However many were given up by there owners due to their "unmanageable size". People pay upwards of $2000 for tea cup pigs and get scammed and stuck with pot belly pigs instead. These pigs, still just as cute, are only slightly larger. Keep in mind normal pig size is not factory pig size. So these pigs are a nice medium size and absolutely adorable.

Day 3...

Day 3:

Katherine decided not to come today in order to rest before her soccer game. Both of our backs hurt like hell: lots of heavy lifting.

There's a barn cat named Chester here. I'm learning that all of the names are very clever. All of the horses that come in without trimmed hooves are named after shoe designers, like Armani and Gucci. And a whole group of horses from Texas are named after Texan things "Tex" and "Houston" and "Austin".

Since the barn was short handed today, I got to go down and work at the quarantine stables for the first time. There are specific tools for each horse, not because they are sick, but usually because they are new and unknown, personality and ailment wise, to the staff. There is an adorable family of warmbloods down there (that make the biggest mess). It's made up of a stallion, mare, and foal. There is also another bull headed stallion down there, (soon to be gelded), a miniature named Gucci, and a massive dun Percheron who's old and currently going blind with a severe case of cataracts. The Percheron came in weighing around 900 pounds. 1000 is the average weight for a lean race horse, and 2000 is the average weight of a draft horse like a Percheron. She is currently up to 1200 pounds in 5 months, incredible progress.

Here's Day 2 journal...

Day 2:

Arrived at 7 again today. Still carpooled, still woke up very early. We went straight to mucking staples this morning. Around 10 am a tour group of home schooled families (so children of various ages and their parents) arrived for a tour of the farm. What I learned from the tour (which Katherine and I were instructed to tag along on):

The farm has 2 areas, an 'upper' level made up of 2 horse barns, 1pig/goat barn, 1 poultry barn, and 5 paddocks. The rest, and majority, of the ranch consists of multiple outdoor pastures with shelters and other paddocks varying in size as well as 2 more horse barns. This 'lower' area is the quarantine area: the space delegated for recent intake animals. Usually volunteers are restricted from this area however Linda decided tagging along with this tour group would be a good way for Katherine and I to see this area and learn some more about the whole operation.

The animals on the farm are rescued from various horrible places. Many of the animals are classified as "seizures": animals taken from an abusive of neglectful home and others are "surrenders": animals surrendered to Long Meadow by the owner due to an inability to take care of the in some capacity.

In the case of seizures, Long Meadow staff and law enforcement come in to seize the animal and then the owner faces subsequent charges. However, before the seizure takes place, the Humane Society works with the owners to try and facilitate proper care of the animals, teaching the owner about animal care and what is needed. I found this to be a very good method, leaving seizure as the last resort and worst case scenario. After a seizure, the animal is taken to the quarantine barn, animals are brought back to weight, cured of all ailments, dewormed, and gelded (if a stallion). They then begin the slow process of recovery, training, and human exposure to become adoptable.

Sometimes frustrated owners come with trailers to the stables to retrieve their animals again. They may threaten violence and compromise the safety of the animal or staff. This is rare, and we have not seen this happen in our time there.

On a very separate note...I learned today that we have an alpaca and 2 massive cows saved from the slaughterhouse.

The tour helped us understand much more about Long Meadow. The end.

ps. Sorry this is kind of bland. This feels like homework, and, maybe it is just me, but I thought school was over...

So I decided to journal....now I'm deciding to blog (essentially typing my journal into the blog). [no pictures :(...yet]

Day 1:

Katherine and I decided to carpool out to the ranch. It was a major struggle to get up before 6 am        -__-. The ranch is in very rural Missouri, a part us city slickers do not get to visit very often. Location wise, someone would really have to be searching for this place if they were to find it, much unlike the other humane society locations in Saint Louis.

We started the day with a brief session with our sponsor, Linda, to talk about rules, policies, horse safety, and the classic "we are not liable for any injuries incurred from volunteering" statement. After watching a short horse care and safety film, we went out to muck stalls, a daily activity all staff and volunteers participate in. As more advanced volunteers with a significant amount of horse experience, Katherine and I got the opportunity to help lead horses during morning turn in/out. The horses were well trained, sweet, and, for the most part, easily leadable, each with personalities of their own. Apparently this is a far cry from the creatures that came in when they were first rescued. After cleaning the stables and bringing in horses, Linda sent us down to another barn called "Playhouse" where they keep the bird rescues. There were ducks, roosters, hens, and turkeys down there. "Stray" turkeys is what they were classified as, however I suspect they are simply wild turkeys someone turned in. But the Humane Society has a policy requiring them to take in all animals brought in. Down there we cleaned the trailer before it was time to leave at 1:30 for practice.

First day: cleaning, horse care, cleaning, manual labor, and cleaning, and you know...some more cleaning

Update with even more pictures

Yesterday was pretty boring. We sorted and put away clothes that had been donated and washed. Then we put stickers in books and counted them and sorted them into levels. Then we spent the rest of the day inventorying and organizing the toiletries section of the warehouse. This part of the warehouse has dental kits and hygiene kits plus lots of extras of what goes in them. It was really disorganized. There was so much there that we didn't get anywhere near finishing.

Some of the many books in the warehouse. On the right are
some of the shelves with boxes full of books.

Today was a little more fun. We spent the morning painting the boutique room in one of the schools. The foundation's colors are purple and green so we painted the room those colors. We couldn't finish completely today because we had to wait for the paint to dry. Tomorrow a few people will go back to the school and finish painting the door frames purple. They also want all the students in the school to put their hand prints in purple on the bench so that when they come in to get their clothes they can see their hand prints. When we got back to the warehouse we finished counting and sorting the boxes of toiletries they we started the yesterday. We finally finished and took like a 5 minute break and we had 30 minutes left before it was time to leave and that's when they told us that there were like 20 more boxes of toiletries that we had to go through. So that was a fun surprise. Anyway, not too bad of a day.

When we thought we were finished sorting.
Also we found this stuffed monkey.

The boutique room we painted. We did the green and
purple and the tops of the other walls are purple too.