Today I had a jam packed day at the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign and it was a happy reminder of why it's one of my fav campuses to visit.
I had meetings with the usual peeps this morning - I've been working for the past 6 months or so with the pre-med curriculum developer on building a semester at our Belize site into their undergrad curriculum, which has been quite an undertaking. I also went to the Green Career Fair this afternoon, which was a career fair for organizations and companies that encourage and live by sustainable practices. While I was there, I met two kids who were on the board for an organization called Students for Environmental Concerns and it just so happened that they were having a Green Action Night today and they were like, "Hey, you should totally come by." Obviously, I had to since I got the invite.
I did the norm info session for students after the fair, blah blah blah, but then I wandered over to this Green Action Night. It was all the student and community organizations who had anything to do with sustainability on some level - faculty members, university initiative reps, student groups, etc. It was an awesome group of people that they had assembled - about 200 people came and went - and we all just mingled, ate delicious home made veggie chilli and hummus, and shared information on our programs, different opportunities that are out there, different ways to integrate them into university curriculum, and just what was going on in the world. It was such a fun night full of hippies, young and old.
So yay for hippies! I'm off to Indiana University tomorrow (not nearly as cool) and then Cincinnati for a weekend conference and a visit with Suzi, Adam, and the babe. I can't wait!
P.S. - I'm officially international again for 2 months begining end of March...where, I'm not sure yet...Mexico most likely, but I'm negotiating Thailand, so we'll see how it goes! =)
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
free stuff!
I know I haven't been writing much. Nothing terribly exciting to write home about. I've been under the weather with some gross mucus disease for the past week or so and thus have been trying to entertain myself with movies and knitting.
Cool website for documentaries: www.freedocumentaries.org
You can stream or download hundreds of documentaries, sorted by category or title. Hooray for free stuff!
Hope your weekend is more fun than mine. =)
Peace.
Cool website for documentaries: www.freedocumentaries.org
You can stream or download hundreds of documentaries, sorted by category or title. Hooray for free stuff!
Hope your weekend is more fun than mine. =)
Peace.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
goodbye blue mondays
So I decided to wait to drive to Wisconsin. I've had meetings all day in this little town in Minnesota, population 17000. It appears to be very quaint driving down their "downtown" area, so I stopped to grab a coffee, get some work done and soak up the local flair.
The coffee house everyone recommended is called Goodbye Blue Mondays. The place looks like a collection of all the garage sale rejects from the 90s - just a bunch of random furniture, scattered throughout a space filled with murals and local art. The best part were the lamps though; every little table, whatever the shape, size or texture, got it's very own lamp and they were all awesome. I wish I could've taken more pictures of them, but I didn't want to be that weird out of town girl who was taking pictures of all the lamps. So I just took pictures of mine, which was very A-C-Slater-Balloom-Pant-Pattern...pink with black and gold geometric shapes flying around the cylindrical base and then a wedding cake like shade. My description just cannot do it justice. I'll put the picture up on Flickr later, but just know that it was truly awesome.
What was even more awesome than the lamps was the hot dog stand next store, which advertises "Hot Dog Happy Hour" in which all hot dogs are half off between 3PM and 5PM! Amazing!
So. If you're ever passing through Northfield, MN (it's about an hour south of Minneapolis), definitely stop in and say hi. People here are pretty nice and the hot dogs are half off, so everybody wins!
The coffee house everyone recommended is called Goodbye Blue Mondays. The place looks like a collection of all the garage sale rejects from the 90s - just a bunch of random furniture, scattered throughout a space filled with murals and local art. The best part were the lamps though; every little table, whatever the shape, size or texture, got it's very own lamp and they were all awesome. I wish I could've taken more pictures of them, but I didn't want to be that weird out of town girl who was taking pictures of all the lamps. So I just took pictures of mine, which was very A-C-Slater-Balloom-Pant-Pattern...pink with black and gold geometric shapes flying around the cylindrical base and then a wedding cake like shade. My description just cannot do it justice. I'll put the picture up on Flickr later, but just know that it was truly awesome.
What was even more awesome than the lamps was the hot dog stand next store, which advertises "Hot Dog Happy Hour" in which all hot dogs are half off between 3PM and 5PM! Amazing!
So. If you're ever passing through Northfield, MN (it's about an hour south of Minneapolis), definitely stop in and say hi. People here are pretty nice and the hot dogs are half off, so everybody wins!
quick catch up
I've been bad at this, I know. I was all geared up to reminisce and then I got busy with work and blah blah blah. Anyway, I've been "road warrior"-ing through Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota for the past few weeks and it's been a pretty intense experience. I swear, sometimes the culture shock in the US is harder for me than it is when I go abroad.
For all of those who don't get what I do, here's a brief overview of what I've been doing for the past few weeks:
Visited University of Wisconsin, Madison to meet with their Center for Global Health. We're working to bring medical students and masters of public health students to our sites to help with our health initiatives in rural communities. After some extensive meetings with their directors and faculty members, checking out a Public Health Symposium, and rounding up some undergraduates at a public service panel discussion, I called it a day (or week) and headed out.
Met with Iowa State University faculty. We're working with their international education and honors college to put together a really interesting service-learning program which involves different levels of difficulty, I guess. We started with one fairly easy one in Peru this past summer, with students working on a variety of projects and going through reflection courses with an Iowa State faculty member. We're doing a Oaxaca program this coming summer as well as the Peru program and we will eventually be adding on a Ghana program and hopefully a Brazil program. Their goal is to get freshman to participate in the Peru program, leading into the more difficult programs in Mexico, Brazil and Ghana in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th years. It's an interesting model and still very much in the development stages, so we shall see how it works.
Just spent a week in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota. We don't currently have a program running with them, but I'm working on it! I had a presentation with a variety of faculty members last week and a series of meetings, so hopefully sometime in the near future we'll figure out where to start.
And now I'm off again...to...Wisconsin again?
For all of those who don't get what I do, here's a brief overview of what I've been doing for the past few weeks:
Visited University of Wisconsin, Madison to meet with their Center for Global Health. We're working to bring medical students and masters of public health students to our sites to help with our health initiatives in rural communities. After some extensive meetings with their directors and faculty members, checking out a Public Health Symposium, and rounding up some undergraduates at a public service panel discussion, I called it a day (or week) and headed out.
Met with Iowa State University faculty. We're working with their international education and honors college to put together a really interesting service-learning program which involves different levels of difficulty, I guess. We started with one fairly easy one in Peru this past summer, with students working on a variety of projects and going through reflection courses with an Iowa State faculty member. We're doing a Oaxaca program this coming summer as well as the Peru program and we will eventually be adding on a Ghana program and hopefully a Brazil program. Their goal is to get freshman to participate in the Peru program, leading into the more difficult programs in Mexico, Brazil and Ghana in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th years. It's an interesting model and still very much in the development stages, so we shall see how it works.
Just spent a week in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota. We don't currently have a program running with them, but I'm working on it! I had a presentation with a variety of faculty members last week and a series of meetings, so hopefully sometime in the near future we'll figure out where to start.
And now I'm off again...to...Wisconsin again?
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