A week of Conferences

The title pretty much says it all. I was in my office one day this week, the rest of it was spent at conferences. First up, the KUPU Conference. So in case you aren't aware of how my internship works, heres the low down. So I am technically an Americorp Intern, which is a federal program to send interns to different locations to assist with environmental, health, education, etc issues. Its basically Peace Corp for the US only. How I got this internship is through this group called KUPU that is in charge of us Americorp interns focused strictly in Hawaiian environmental issues. Up first was a meeting with all the KUPU interns in Hawaii. It was really interesting to see the mix of the people; there were a lot more out of state people like me than I originally thought there would be. There were people from 17 up to 34 so the age range was actually quite broad, though it seems most people were around my age, looking for some work experience after college. It was also really interesting to hear all the different things everyone is doing. I think most people were out in the field a lot more than I am, doing things like removing invasive algae from coral reefs by snorkeling all day, or doing natural area reserves systems (NARS) which basically means they are putting fences up, rat traps and more invasive control. There were people from all the islands and with completely different majors as well so it really just varied a lot. This day was spent bonding doing ice breakers and such, and figuring out our menu for our service trips in a few months. I missed out on the awesome Kalapapa trip to Molokai (where the lepers were sent) and am going to a beach house on Oahu's North Shore and helping with seabirds. I guess when you are in Hawaii, you can never really lose :)

The next day was a meeting with all the Americorp people in Hawaii. This meant there were people from Legal Aid, Teach for America, Affordable Homeless and Housing Alliance, and us KUPU kids. There was an uplifting speech from the Mayor on the Big Island reminding us that we are doing something incredible for doing community service. I had forgotten that is what I was actually doing. Mostly I was focusing on the fact that I was bettering my career through more experience and networking, but I am supplying services for much cheaper than my education and experience deserves. And I seem to forget sometimes that there are people out there who don't think environmental issues should be something we give money to. Basically it was nice to be reminded of the role we are playing as Americorp interns and our duty

The next day was one of the most boring days ever. We were getting certified by Red Cross in shelter training so that in case of emergencies that required shelters we would be able to voluteer and help. The first hour wasn't too bad because it was good things to know in case we get called to come help out. Then we were working in groups to do scenarios and thats when the stupid questions began. I don't know if people don't have common sense or thought they were being funny, but honestly I don't think we need to know exactly what to do if Genghis Khan shows up to our shelter. I think the adrenaline will kick in and you will know what to do if the time comes and if you use common sense its not difficult to know what to do. Fortunately, the benefit is that I am not certified to assist in case of emergencies. I also got CPR and first aid certified last week so now I can help in all different types of emergencies!

I was also irritated at the training because I knew I had to go to work after to pack up and prepare to leave for the Big Island for a conference the next day and thought my time would be better used doing that then listening to silly questions. I left the next day at 5am (which meant I was up at 3:30 to be at the airport at 4) which is never how I want to start my day. Getting up before the sun, let alone starting work before the sun, should just be a sin in my universe. I think I had about 7 cups of coffee before noon and the conference went till 5. It was a cattlemens ranchers conference, probably the only place in the world where you see men with hatboxes (for their cowboy hats) and their cowboy boots clip clop louder than any woman's heels. It was an interesting experience, there were mostly vendors selling cattle vaccines, calfcandy?, and other weird cattle things that I had absolutely no idea about. Then there was us (DOFAW and USDA) and NRCS; the state and federal agencies. We were ignored a bit more than the others despite our many swag items. I had been so nervous about memorizing what I needed to know and it turned out to be a bit unnessary since no one really asked me any questions.

My booth

The hotel the conference took place, not too shabby

Overall it was a lot of fun to get to travel for work and nice to take some responsibility. It really meant a lot that my bosses trusted me after only a month to travel for work by myself and represent our office. I also got to meet up with a friend of mine living in Hilo for dinner at the Kona Brewing Co (a must when you're in Kona right?) which was really great. Now its back to the office for this week, though Thanksgiving is on Thursday so I will have a nice day off to make up for working on Saturday. I have plans to go with my Grandma's side of the family to Thanksgiving lunch BUFFET and then Thanksgiving dinner with my family I am living with. I am going to be so stuffed. We will see how two meals will go...I think my Friday will have to include a long run.

PIC and Hamakua Marsh

This week was absolutely crazy. The Pacific Island Committee Conference was finally here, after a month of planning. This was a conference with all US Pacific Islands, including Guam, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, American Samoa, and the Marshall Islands. I had an epiphany a few days before the conference that I would be doing registration, which involved me having to hear peoples names, and mark them off on whether they paid or not. And I struggle with accents. This was going to be interesting. Fortunately once registration got into full swing, I was left doing parking validation and receipts, which suited me just fine. We were working most of the morning and therefore wasn't really able to listen to the lectures till the afternoon. The afternoon lectures were about the effects of climate change on Pacific Islands, something I am extremely interested in. I even got to see a couple of people I had met at the Hawaiian Conservation Conference I had gone to over the summer.

The next day was going to be an even longer one. Not only did we have a day at the Conference, but also an evening event we were hosting for the visiting islanders. I had been working with Kokua Kalihi Valley as our location to attempt to get some donations for the dinner. This had resulted in me making Craigslist ads for coconuts and writing interdepartment memos asking for coconuts, firewood, and ulu (breadfruit). The people at KKV had planned to do an imu (cooking in the ground) complete with salmon, kalua, venison, and some veggies. I spent the afternoon driving everyone around to get enough vehicles to drive 40 people into Kalihi Valley, and then we ended up having far too many cars. Once we arrived, we could see two tents with twinkling lights and appetizers of smoked salmon, venison, fruit, and ava. Dinner had fruit salad, hau soup, taro bread, poi, chicken, kalua, and many other delicious things! It was really great to have a traditional Hawaiian dinner with good company.

The Spread

Day 3 I helped set up for the Society of American Foresters Conference, which involved putting out displays of boxes from each of the states. Around the world, countries were partaking in this project to have a box show the best things about forests from their home to celebrate the International Year of the Forests. The other benefit was that other groups that had been setting up had left out all their give away items and while I wasnt going to the conference (far too expensive) I did get a lot of cool swag. Add in the cool stuff from the Forest Service for helping at the PIC and I have tons of cool US Forest items.

My swag!

Since everyone was at the SAF conference, I went to fill my time doing some field work at Hamakua marsh. We had been told we were going to be pulling pickleweed to help make it a better environment for the wetland birds. While previously I had been not looking forward to this, it ended up being tons of fun. I don't know why I have yet to learn that with the right crew of people and a nice steady pace, field work is actually really fun. I had been promised use of atvs, but instead got to learn how to use chainsaws. I have this tendency to agree to do things without thinking and this was definitely one of those times. I agreed to be the first one to try it without remembering how dangerous I am near deadly items. I believe my clumsiness plays a large role in my decision making, and it apparently wasn't remembered till the blade was going. Fortunately, I did not drop any branches on myself, fall on the blade, cut anyone else, and actually gained some confidence in doing some really awesome things like face cuts! No, not cutting someones face, but the legit way of cutting trees where you cut a wedge on one side and tap it on the other so you can manipulate its fall. It was really awesome. I also got to see some cool birds: stilts, coots, and moorhens.

The Marsh

Our fun crew, Katie, Arthur, and James

And to cap off my week, how about some GIS. GIS stands for Geospatial Information Systems and involved combining maps with data. The cool thing I was going to learn about, was how we could include the web in all this. ESRI, the group that releases all the main GIS programs was putting on a seminar on how to outreach your maps to the public using the internet. A few weeks before I had gone to a seminar where they discussed how to do this, and now I was going to a workshop to put it all into action. It was really fun and surprisingly easy (which is truly shocking for GIS, the last project I did took me 5 hours just to get it right), and I have already begun thinking about how we could use it in a couple of our projects! So heres a quick map I made in 5 minutes at the seminar showing a couple of locations of my favorite places.

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