The Simple Joys of Life!: The sun finally came out for only a day!

So this week began just as rainy as before. I was really hoping that this rain would just go away or as my sister and parents would ask for it to move to Texas! I would be glad if it did move to Texas!

As Sunday started the beginning of the work week and with little time left to get the last few things done, every day is needed to help prepare and plan for the week classes. I found many times on Sunday printing many pages at the office computer trying to print the document with the least errors for my classes. Also having to find a map of the world that would print large enough for my liking was an even bigger challenge. In my cultural foods class, I wanted to make a world that was large enough so that everyone could see the places that we were visiting at but instead I played around on paint and taking images off the internet I was able to piece the world together to finally have it the size that I wanted. Early Monday morning I was at the office straight after breakfast to begin work again on a trivia paper and to go buy the supplies that I needed for all my classes. After a store run and working hard on preparing for the classes I looked up and I was running so late that I needed to quickly eat lunch to make it to summercise on time. When I got to summercise the kids seemed to be really playful and energized to be there this week. In my culture class, we visited Greece and learned about all the different foods that are healthy that they eat in Greece and made some Greek Tomato Pitas. Most of the kids loved the pitas, but some didn’t and that happens when you try to teach about cultures to kids that live in a different culture of their own. For the vitamin class I talked about Vitamin C and how it helps your body. For our snack I wanted to show the kids that hard work sometimes makes sweet results, so everyone made fresh squeezed orange and grapefruit juice with sliced strawberries in it. In flag football I had the kids learning drills about running and a passing technique to help them run with the ball. For the game we tried to play capture the flag and that didn’t go as well as planned but no one got too hurt this time, just some minor scrapes. On Tuesday it was our Outdoor Adventures class and we were hiking to Gold Hill (also known as the berry picking trail) behind the new hospital being built. That morning of preparing for the class I went to the store to buy the snack items for the class. I went to the rec center to make the snack which was gorp (granola, other, raisins, and peanuts) the other things that we added were dried mangos, apricots, and coconut. Since there are three interns teaching the class and only two of us were able to prep for the class we had the other intern get the water jug and cups ready for the class. When summercise started and the kids were ready to go, the other intern and I had some miscommunication and didn’t prepare the water jug and cups for the class so our class got held up for an extra 15 minutes to get the materials. As we began the hike out to Gold Hill we knew that there might be danger next to the hospital that was being built so we needed to stop to encourage and go over safety and discipline with the kids. It was a little overcast and windy for the day but when we got to the top of our hike we talked about how important it was to leave no trace, after snack we had planned to pass out compasses and I had prepared an activity with them. The other intern must have felt bad that it was a little wet from the drizzle and windy so they decided to call in the hike early, which was disappointing because they didn’t play any activity or get to do anything fun with the compasses. As we were walking back to the rec it was really hard to get control of many of the kids. Back at the rec we had more than an hour left to do an activity with them so we decided to teach them about the compass and do the planned activity inside instead. With that day over and still the rest of the week to go I was in need of some really nice weather and just to relax by myself. At around 10pm the weather finally started to clear up and the sun finally came out in over two weeks. I had to go and sit on the beach just to relax and found some really neat seaglass.

Wednesday was the same as Monday but for culture we visited the Middle East. On Thursday morning I had my rotation in QCC, which is the nursing home care facility located in the hospital. I learned from a dietitian how to write charts and I was able to make recommendations and suggestions for the patient and make a write up in there chart. That is an experience that I cannot have been more excited about. In summercise that day we went on a hike to learn about survival skills and how to build a shelter without having any materials. After learning how to make a shelter and a fire everyone was ready to leave. With the day still being amazing outside me and the other interns went to the beach to look for more seaglass and soak up the sun! While we were there we found a man who was gold panning and had found gold! I got to see the gold and it was so neat looking. On Friday a group of four interns went to Teller, AK. The road trip was really pretty and seeing all the mountains made me really want to move up here to Alaska but only in the summer because I could not handle the winters up here. When we arrived in Teller we went to the location that our mini summercise was to be held. When we first started summercise only two kids showed up to spend the day with us but we had some people that brought more kids over and we were able to teach them about nutrition and exercise. We decided to teach a lesson on how if you eat two potato chips it takes 5 min of exercise to burn it off, but if you eat two baby carrots it only takes 30sec. So when we passed out the chips and the kids ate them we all stood up and worked out jumping and hopping around for min, then ate the carrots and did another 30 seconds of exercise. We thought that it is always better to teach them by making them do something that is good for their health. Well we did the same thing with 3 m and m's and 3 grapes but this time the kids wanted to eat them but not do the exercise, I think at this point they really didn't like us! But it taught them that some foods are just not worth eating unless your willing to work it off and it is better to eat filling calories then empty ones. It was a long day but it was really fun. On the trip back we stopped on the side of the road and took a very short hike to some nearby rocks to climb on them and take some neat pics. Needless to say it is always easier to get up then down. On the way down, I was more worried about ripping my pants on the side of the rock because they are so baggy on my now, and I didn't think about the fact that my arm was sliding down the side of the rock also and I managed to eat face on the rock and scrape up my arm and leg. Eh I'm still a tree climbing kid at heart. But it was a really great experience and it was pure fun! I still can't believe that I only have 10 days left until I'm on a plane back to Texas, but I'm really excited to get back to my family and friends, though I would be so incredibly happy if the heat goes away when I get there because I don't think that I could handle that again!