Yesterday was the final band concert of the year at Kilbourne where all the bands, from 6th grade to the Wind Ensemble, perform in WK's gym. This is when the senior awards are given. There are two scholarships from the boosters and two awards given by the band directors. The highest award given, the highest honor for a band student, is the John Philip Sousa Award, given for superior dedication and musicianship. As I finished pounding stakes into the ground (sort of) I noticed I had a text message from my mom. I got the Sousa Award yesterday. I'm still kind of in shock.

Pounding stakes into the ground? That project, which I really finished this morning, was part of the larger goal of preparing beds for the transplanting of tomatos. Each tomato plant will be transplanted right in front of one of those stakes and then a metal cage will be put around them, secured by the stakes. This way, the tomatos will grow vertically. I'm expecting/hoping a lot of transplanting to be happening soon. I'm pretty sure that's my favorite task here. I'm pretty sure my least favorite is picking orders.

I've had a really good week. I'm realizing how much I've come to love the people here and how hard it will be to leave them. Even (or especially) Jess, who doesn't even live at Acorn. There have been a few short-term guests here lately, although all of them have left again. I really liked all of them.

There was a party at Woodfolk House on Saturday which was pretty cool. It's a pretty interesting place.

It is kind of odd to me, realizing how much has happened at home while I've been away. I wish I could have been at Extravaganza, and I certainly do miss band. But at the same time, I suspect leaving here will be harder for me than leaving home was.

Yet Another Week

The week started out rainy and bleak and for the first couple of days, I couldn't really get outside. Happily, the sun has begun to shine again in recent days, and now I'm hardly popping into the office.

It seems that I've been spent the majority of my work time in the allium beds this week. Wednesday, a party of us went about weeding them, and afterwards, I was given the task of re-mulching. I spent almost all of Thursday afternoon mulching, paying no heed the the prevelence of thorns in the hay mulch until later when I realized just how much it had scraped up my legs. There's a visible line where my capris ended (at least I was wearing longer ones that day) and another where my socks began. In between is very scratched up. After that, I began getting up early to work when it was still cool enough for me not to hate my life while wearing long pants as I completed the job.

Last night I went to Twin Oaks to play ultimite frisbee and for their visitor party. (Twin Oaks has these month-long visitor periods that are concluded by the visitors throwing a party) I'm really not any good at frisbee, but I actually came out of it feeling like I'd done alright. To be sure, I was utterly exhausted from running so hard for so long, but there was something nice about that too. The visitor party was basically a bonfire with marshmellows and other food. People came along and played guitars and sang. I finally heard Cliff, with whom I often talk music here, play guitar. Twin Oaks also has a barbershop group and they sang. That was pretty sweet.

Once again, I feel like the week passed unnervingly quickly. I kept not believing I was already so far into the week, but now as I look back, it seems like an incredibly long time. A shift has started to happen now that wasn't nearly as gradual at ProMusica. On the one hand, I'm still counting the weeks that I've been here and have the feeling that this is a short time. I guess that's part of how I can look at the four weeks ahead and think, "how can I be almost half finished already?!" But at ProMusica, after the March concerts, I felt a distinct shift in thought from, "this is how long I've been here," to "this is how long I have left."

The beginning of my week mostly went as the last two have been. I definitely have become more familiar with the way things work here and with the people and everything. I'm able to feel somewhat independent most of the time and know where to look for work to do. I feel accepted here too, and I've been asked a few times if I was thinking of ever coming back. To be honest, I'm not entirely excited for coming back home. Going back to work at Zoombezi Bay just doesn't sound like much fun.

On May Day, we had a bonfire. Burning bamboo makes great exploding sounds like gunshots. Jess came over that night. I don't know if I mentioned her before. She lives at Twin Oaks and was working over here my first week here. She's really awesome, and has this tail she wears all the time just because she can. She stayed the night and brought me to Twin Oaks yesterday.

I don't know how much I've written about Twin Oaks before either. It's another community that existed before Acorn, and is about 100 people big (as opposed to Acorn's 15 members). My main impression of Twin Oaks was... big. Besides having that many more people, things are just considerably more spread out. The property here is already significantly less (even though it felt quite big when I got here), but then I basically never go onto most of it. Pretty much any place I go/work regularly could be pointed out from the porch of Heartwood. At Twin Oaks, we did a lot of walking through woods. There's a lot more walking involved in going just about anywhere.

When I was at Twin Oaks, besides getting shown about by Jess, I helped out in the flower garden some and helped Jess move her smoker. A few weeks ago she sort of made a smoker using things from the resource (aka junk) yard and successfully has smoked cheese with it, but people living in the building where it was assembled in their fire pit were getting tired of it, so she needed to move it elsewhere. It was kind of fun hauling it around just because the contraption looks kind of ridiculous if you don't know what it is.

Other than that, I don't feel like there's a whole lot to report. It's been getting cloudy and finally started raining last night--still is. I hope things are good at home. :)