This has been the summer of hurry up and wait. One month traveling Europe followed by a couple weeks of sitting around with nothing to do. A week on Lake Michigan with the family, consisting mostly of reading reading reading. And then waiting waiting and some more waiting until last week's wedding extravaganza. Yay for bridesmaid win. Two days at home and now a move across the country. So here's a guide for you on how to change the world while moving 800 miles from the Midwest to the East Coast. (Note: this list is FAR from exhaustive, it just consists of the three things that jumped out at me the most.)
1. Take reusable water bottles on the trip and fill them up every opportunity you get.
2. When you have to buy water bottles try to pick a company that's making a difference, even if that difference is eensy weensy teeny tiny. Case in point: Ethos water has paired up with Starbucks to create the Ethos Water Fund. Every time someone buys an Ethos water bottle from Starbucks, 5 cents is donated to the Fund, which goes towards supporting water, sanitation, and hygiene education programs in water-stressed nations. 5 cents might not sound like a lot but thanks to elementary school math I learned that can sure add up fast, to more than $6 million so far and 420,000 people to be exact.
3. Stay the night at hotels that are trying to make an effort to be environmentally friendly. The hotel we stayed at had recycling bins everywhere and gives guests the option to reuse towels by hanging them up or leaving them on the floor to be removed and replaced by clean new towels.
I've posted this video before, but it still rings as true today as when I first heard it, maybe even truer. Along the way I kind of forgot what this blog was about. It became such a chore to think of things regularly and then to think of witty phrases to include in the blogs. So here's the deal. I always knew that there really wasn't any chance of me completing 365 things in 365 days but it was about the dream and also a little bit of symbolism, of doing something small every day rather than waiting for the big things to come around.
So here are my small things:
1. Change 4 Change. This is an idea the mastermind behind the Shine Project came up with, which I actually mentioned way back in January in my It Just Makes Cents blog post and then again in the....... wait for it, "Shine On" post. Back then I donated a couple dollars-worth of change to a box benefiting the local humane society. This time I'm aiming a little bit higher. I plan on collecting change until it fills up an entire Bubbies pickle jar and then donating all of the money to something. The Change 4 Change movement donates all of the money to scholarships that send intercity high schoolers to college. That's definitely one option, after all I'm quite a fan of school, going off to graduate school as I am. Other ideas I had was to set the money aside to support some kind of local person or group. Maybe I'll use the change I save to pay for some farmer's market shopping I do later on or write a check to a nearby farm animal sanctuary, like SASHA Farm here in Michigan. Who knows, but at least I have quite some time to decide.
2. Conserving water. I'm always looking for new ways to be environmentally friendlier. I do all of the normal things, like unplug things I'm not using and using reusable grocery bags. I try to walk as often as I can and eat as much local food as I can. But I want to do some of the not so well-known things. First year of college I was part of a group called Meatless Mondays that researched the environmental benefits of going vegan. Fun fact, the EPA estimates that the 100 million cattle in the US produce 5.5 metric tones of methane each year, which is 20% of the US's yearly methane production. Earlier this year I talked about 10 minute showers. What about skipping the shower all together? Instead of showering seven times a week, how about just four? Your hair will thank you. Seriously. Shampoo strips natural oils from your head because we are a society that fears oily-looking hair. The problem is, if you strip the oils from your hair, your hair retaliates with an extra dose of oil. So of course you have to respond with another shower. Cue the never-ending, always-accelerating cycle until we are helplessly dependent on shampoo. For a while now I've regularly alternated, showering one day but not the next. Sometimes my hair plays along, not looking oily at all the second day. Other days it's cranky and just looks plain gross. To battle the gross days I've used baby powder. I haven't quite perfected this method, sometimes I dump way too much on my head while other times no amount would have been enough, my hair just wants to look greasy that day. Another problem with this method is the potential side effects of breathing in baby powder. While I scowl at anyone who argues that this, that, or the other thing causes cancer (news flash: nearly everything increases your cancer risk from sun to cell phones to the air we breathe) I do recognize that breathing in baby powder too much can be bad for me (aka I acknowledge that too much of anything is bad), so I've been researching alternatives for your benefit and mine: try cornstarch or a water bottle shower, complete with a couple spoonfuls of baking soda. There's plenty of easy-peasy "recipes" online, as long as you don't mind their being accompanied by 101 opinions from everyone who thinks they know best.
3. Be aware of where your clothes come from. Because we don't live in a nudist colony (well, at least the majority of Americans don't), what clothes we choose to wear and how we wear them tends to be of utmost importance. While I am far from a fashion guru, I do know one or two things. One: flowery blouses from H&M made out of recycled plastic are the best and two: vegan Toms shoes are surprisingly resilient and amazingly comfortable.
4. When you're lacking in motivation make a bucket list. By including some activities like volunteering for an organization like Cross-Cultural Solutions (maybe in Thailand!) or Global Vision International, I'm making sure that my small world does not have only a population of 1. Among my bucket list items: live in London, ride an elephant (again), and write a book.
5. Join a coop. A moodling blog post cannot be complete without some mention of food. But can you really expect anything less of me? It's summertime! Every time I go to the farmer's market there's fresh fruit and homemade bread and wonderfully colorful arrays of veggies. My parents own a share of a local co-op, which means every Saturday our kitchen is overflowing with all sorts of random veggies and fruits that we either have to eat in the next week or somehow store for the winter. It's downright rustic! We've already got 40 pounds of blueberries frozen in our heavy duty freezer downstairs and last weekend my mom and I canned a bunch of beets we'd been collecting over the past few weeks from our share box (by which I mean, my mom was doing all of the work and I kept getting in her way, taking pictures of the whole process). We've even started making our own jam, and for a girl who loves her jam (see the aptly named "Are you a fan of strawberry jam" post), this is downright heavenly.
6. Donate donate donate: I'm moving out to the Boston area in two weeks and that means packing, packing, packing. But it also means donating, donating, donating. There's so much STUFF. By now I could have built a fort strong enough to withstand Michigan wind with all of the paper that has been dumped on the recycle pile. And the books. Let me tell you, I could start my own library right about now. But I've only got my one trusty green car to fill up with the things I'll need for what's sure to be a whirlwind twelve months in Grafton, MA, so I've packed some of my things (yes, including 5 boxes, count 'em- five, of books) to be kept safe for me for when I have an actual, more long-term place of my own. But that still leaves bags of clothes, piles of books, and boxes of nicknacks. All of this stuff will be donated, one armload at a time, to the local Goodwill, Salvation Army, library, and- get this- a garage sale run by the students in a university class about hoarding and the local Hoarders' Task force (you didn't know we had a hoarding task force in the area, now did you?). That sparked some very witty jokes at the dinner table the other day.
I was supposed to go to Europe to have fun and take a couple deep breaths and find my motivation again. I did have fun, but the breathing got lost in the shuffle somewhere between the 13 1/2 hour train trip through Germany and the only stopping for two days deal that I accidentally enforced everywhere... So, to catch you up on life, this post includes: a list of the change-the-world acts I've been up to and will describe in more detail in catch-up post part 2, a little summary of my trip, and a dedication to one of the most wonderful women in the world. All of this works together to explain why a one month break turned into two.
First up, the list: donating to a Seeing Eye Dog Fund in Scotland (look at me, being all worldly and donating in British pounds!), joining the Shine Project's Change 4 Change campaign, the miracle of baby powder, and recognizing I have to help myself before I can help others with the use of bucket lists.
Stop number 10: Marburg
Edinburgh Castle
And now, roadtripping through Europe, the 20 second version:
when my 2-train, 8-hour trip across Germany turned into a 13 1/2 hour trip with 6 different trains; complete with 6 hours of standing and no air conditioning.
being reunited with my sister after almost a year of separation consisting only of sporadic skype dates, a few emails, and quite a bit of facebooking.
With Lisa in Kiel
visiting friends and family I hadn't been able to see in far too long.
The Baltic Sea with Elna
the birthday boy
being there to celebrate my grandfather's birthday.
becoming reacquainted with one of my best childhood friends.
visiting Scotland for the first time ever.
traveling from the northern tip of Germany to the southern, exploring salt mines, climbing Arthur's Seat, and taking a boat ride across Loch Ness.
Kiel --->
---> Tübingen
These are our salt mine faces?
Arthur's Seat, with a foggy view of Edinburgh below
Loch Ness
Just in case that wasn't enough, here are a couple more pictures...
Hardcore chess in Salzburg
Parade below our window on morning #1 in Salzburg
Canadian choir in Salzburg
Not the best wine, but the name was too perfect to pass up
Train number 16, Vienna --> Frankfurt
Edinburgh's Royal Mile at 11 pm
Just an average day on the main streets of Glasgow
The Olympic Torch outside of the University of Glasgow
Look mountains!!
Mountains??
We got home on June 14th, three days before my birthday. My mom and aunt were supposed to skype on my birthday. I was supposed
to hear a hearty "happy birthday" from my aunt face-to-face(ish) for
the first time in... well, ever? Supposed to. My aunt had been battling breast cancer for more than a year now and had a stroke on my
birthday, or really the day after (New Zealand time), which is her
husband's birthday. Two days later, she was gone.
Tante Biba was the family member that I was
compared to the most. I looked like her, I acted like her, I even got a double first name just like her. What's that
saying about imitation being the highest form of flattery? How do you say goodbye to someone who seemed larger than life when you
were little and grew to become one of your staunchest supporters and
closest friends once you were old enough to carry on decently
intelligent conversations? With the
knowledge that she'll always be there in our traditions, that's how. If I may
imitate Tante Biba in one last way, I'd like to borrow her strength and
her positivity, because life is too short for wallowing in the regrets
but is just right for cherishing the
memories.
Britta Katrin Lamprecht Rewi
19 May 1969- 20 June 2012
After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
