Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The Start of My Internship - Getting Settled In

We left Chambersburg Sunday morning around 7:30 a.m., headed for Terra Haute, Indiana. It was a much quicker drive than we had anticipated....we arrived around 5:30 p.m. that same day. We're so used to taking longer, driving the motorhome, that driving the car makes much shorter work of a trip like this. Since White Violet Center wasn't expecting me until Tuesday, I shot off an e-mail Sunday night that we had arrived in town and were spending the night at a Day's Inn nearby. It turned out that Monday was a better day for me to arrive since Robyn had several appointments on Tuesday that would have conflicted with getting my orientation done.
I did some paperwork, Robyn gave Linda and I a tour of the facilities. I got my TB test and I'll go back tomorrow afternoon to have it read (it isn't doing anything...it actually disappeared from my arm). My room wasn't ready for me to move into in Owens Hall so they let us stay in one of the guest houses. What a gorgeous house it is and it was made from scrap materials. The hardwood floors are made from the wood in the bottom of tractor trailer floors. Odds and ends pieced together to make a beautiful cottage and it sits near a small lake. The house to the right of us is of straw bale construction so the walls are really thick but it makes for an excellent insulator. There was another cottage to the left of us but I'm not sure of any of the specifics on that one. We had a very pleasant evening in the house.
My room I spent yesterday afternoon helping to pick tomatoes cleaning dirt from potatoes that had been dug. This morning I started out picking green beans and purple ones too but got called away about 10:30 to go do my room orientation with Sister Martha. Linda and I moved all of my stuff into my room. My room is roughly 10' x 17'. As you might be able to see in the picture I have a TV, twin size bed, desk, big metal armoire with lots of storage space inside, a dresser, a nice recliner and another shelving unit. my room 2



kitchen Just down the hall is a large kitchen with everything I could possible need to cook with. This kitchen is only for the interns use so since there's three of us here...we each get a shelf in the refrigerator for our food and there is ample cupboard space for dry goods, although for right now I've got my stored in the armoire unit in my room.
There is super fast WiFi here, so it will be easy to keep up with blogging and surfing the internet. The campus is really huge and very beautiful, with lots of walking and meditation paths.
We finished up moving me into my room, around lunchtime. Right after lunch Linda left to start home. This afternoon I picked pears andtomatos 2 8-20 cleaned tomatoes and potatoes in preparation for CSA pickups tomorrow. There are about 70 members in their CSA program with three locations where they can get their weekly allotment of basil veggies and fruit. From what everyone says, Wednesdays are crazy days here.


Fresh Basil....some was picked and dried. 



There are two other interns here right now...Bree and Rusty. I went with Bree last night to tend to the alpacas. She splits her week betweenalpacas playing in water gardening and the alpacas. We checked how much hay and fresh water they had. Bree hooked up the sprinkler for them so they could cool off. Boy, did they like that ! The dominant alpacas would spit and push the others away. Sometimes one would lay down on top of the sprinkler so the others wouldn't get any of the water. They were really cute to watch and each one really seems to have its own personality.
Everyone is super nice and helpful. Sister Maureen (Sister Mo) is really cool...she's the director of White Violet Center. Linda helped her this morning while she was waiting for my room to be ready (the wait for my room was due to it needing a deep clean and the floor needed to be waxed). Linda got to work with some of the skeins of yarn that had arrived from the processor. They send the fiber to an outside processor to be turned into clean yarn.
Well, you're up to date on my two days here. More later...
Blogger Labels: Internship,Terra,Haute,Indiana,White Violet Center,

1 comment:

Bobbie and Jim said...

So happy to read you have arrived for your internship. Very interesting to read about your first day. I also saw alpacas this week when I visited a local fiber mill....interestingly enough 90% of their business is processing other people's alpaca fleeces and make it into skeins of yarn. I saw their herd of 70 alpacas....so cute!