Introduction

Emily and Karlie are writing this blog as a way to chronicle their first full year out of college. Watch them test the waters with the tips of their toes, and slowly stretch out their wings and fly, fly, away. Poetry... is not what you will find in these posts.
Americorps scooped up Emily and sent her off to Washington state, and Karlie is nestled in a house in the Champlain Islands teaching music to 3-14 year olds.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Hawk and Salmon Festivals

One of the things I love about AmeriCorps so far is that any volunteering we do on the weekends, or outside of our main service sites can count towards our total hours we need by the end of our service term.  The past two weekends I have volunteered at two different festivals.

First I volunteered at the town museum while a Hawk Festival was going on in Pateros. For this festival, different groups such as the Audobon society and other fish and wildlife specialists brought hawks and other raptors to town for people to come see in the park. A surprising amount of people are really into birds, so it seemed like they got a lot of people! Tracy, the other AmeriCorps member in Pateros, and I kept the museum open so people could come visit while the festival was going on. But we also took some time to look at the birds!


Whatchu lookin' at?



This past weekend, I continued the trend of nontraditional fall festivals and went to a Salmon Festival at Leavenworth Fish Hatchery. This was a free event for families to come and learn all sorts of things about fish! And eat food, And play games. And kayak. And rock climb. Everything a kid would want to do was there. But also fish related. It was great.

I was at the Gyotaku station for the day, which is Japanese fish printing. Fishermen originally made these prints to record their fish of the day, but now it is more of an art form. And the prints are now made with rubber fish. It was a fun activity, and so many kids wanted to do it that it made the day go by quickly. 




1. Paint fish

2. Put paper over fish

3. Rub fish

4. Ta-Da!


My beautiful creation




There are so many different volunteer opportunities in this area, and I am going to take advantage of as many as possible this year. I always felt like I was too busy during college to take advantage of things like this in Vermont, which was really a terrible excuse, but I am glad I finally am! Might as well take advantage of the short time that I will have here.

And I'll leave you with one final picture. A little piece of cuteness. An Amerikitten.



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