Field Trip!

Well, the Coho Salmon run has ended. We took out 6 school groups this past week from preschool to high school (on probation, failed out of other school type high schoolers) and only 4 groups saw any fish, and most of those groups just saw a sad, wasting away female. Only one group saw her do anything besides swim a little downstream (she muscled her way over some shallow rocks creating this wall of water behind her).

I'm glad it's over. Heidi and I have discovered that any age group can come out for the creekwalks, but the walk's appropriateness is entirely dependent on the teacher's control of their students and the students' respect for others.

With the end of the Coho Salmon run also comes the end of creekwalks. This weekend is the last weekend of volunteer naturalist led creekwalks that SPAWN puts together, and HOORAY. I am so sick of coming to the office and returning a bazillion phone calls saying the exact same thing to every person.

This new week ERA brings me and Heidi first to the Eureka/Fortuna, CA area (where the AmeriCorps WSP home office is) for a MLK Jr Service Day and then Education Training.

Tomorrow is the Service day - we'll canvas the area teaching people about disaster preparedness (i love knocking on unsuspecting people's doors in the middle of the day when they're napping, or reading, or otherwise enjoying their leisurely day off and then telling them all about awful things like tsunamis and earthquakes. yay).

Tuesday and Wednesday is Education Training. AmeriCorps WSP requires that we go into a classroom a set number of times and teach a set curriculum. I'm actually really looking forward to this part. I feel like a lot of salmon related questions I answer I'm not necessarily answering completely correctly - I'm using the background information that I already have and picking up on what others say to draw out answers. So I'm excited to really learn this stuff and become a true salmon expert. At least, I hope to become an expert.

The good news is that AmeriCorps will pay for or provide all of our meals for those days, and reimburse our travel (though the reimbursement for these things takes a long time - I still haven't received reimbursement from my October Training week. I'm not looking forward to spending money I'd rather spend on something else and then not having it back for 4 or 5 months).

I'll bring my camera. And I *might* take pictures.