Planning the Summer

I had a meeting with Phil and Jessa yesterday. I was waking up from a nap that I took to get rid of a headache, so I was fairly low energy. The meeting went well though and I now feel more comfortable with what I'm going to be doing this summer.

There are three buildings that I am going to be working on.

1. John's earthbag dome. This is the structure that I'm most familiar with- I've been following the progress as John, Phil and Jessa have been designing and dealing with codes people. This structure is unique because it's actually a house. From what it sounded like, nobody has lived full-time in any of the structures that Phil or Jessa have made.
2. Carol's cob pottery studio. This will be a round structure with a shed roof.
3. Michelle and Rob's strawbale and cob art studio. Three walls will be strawbale and the fourth will be cob. Cob needs to be round, so the fourth wall, the southfacing wall, will be rounded, allowing for more thermal mass.

We set up a schedule for workshops for the summer. Jessa wanted to check with the project owners to make sure that the weeks we designated to work on their buildings was alright with them, so I'm going to wait until I hear confirmation from that before posting the complete schedule, but I will say (that this sentence is getting very long and) that there are nine straight weeks of workshops that I will be helping out with. The plan is to hold workshops Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 with long lunch breaks. We're hoping that each workshop has 5 to 15 people. The workshops will start June 16th, two weeks after my internship officially starts. Phil and I will be doing prep-work in those two weeks. I'm waiting to hear more about that.

June 10th I have a doctor's appointment. July 30th I go to the Warped Tour for free tabling for the Rainforest Action Network. I honestly know nothing about this- a friend of mine (Lilly) asked me if I wanted to join her. I will be recieving information in the mail to pass out, etc. I just found out that it was July, not June, so I will have to tell Jessa next time I see her.

I'm taking care of the animals now. They are sweet and wonderful. Even the shy cat (Sara) let me pet on her for a while. Good stuff.

Just a little update...

I am officially done with this semester of school. Finally. I think I'm mostly done packing up my room as well. I'll be moving into the SENS house on Sunday. Monday through Saturday, I will be staying at a woman named Judy's house taking care of her (adorable) pets. She lives about 11 miles off campus, so it will be a nice little mini-vacation. I am coming back to campus on Tuesday at 1 to meet up with Phil and Jessa to "hammer down a bunch of details for this summer." I'm looking forward to my first week of summer.

The Intro Entry

Okay. So, this is my blog for the summer. I'm making it so that people can keep up with me and all my awesomeness as I work on my awesome summer internship. (I will talk about this more in just a moment.)

First, let me introduce myself, for those of you who may have just stumbled upon this blog somehow. My name is Erin Finsel. I'm 19 and am just beginning my summer break before my Sophomore year at Berea College. I don't know for sure, but I think I will be an independent Sustainability and Environmental Studies (SENS- I don't know where the N comes from) major. My ultimate goal (as of right now) is to have a house, a garden, maybe a few chickens and a really nice cat.

So far, at Berea, I have taken an ecological design course and next semester I will be taking an ecological architecture course. Currently, there are only a handfull of Bereans who know how to build naturally (that is, using natural, often non-traditional, local materials such as clay, dirt, timber, straw and sand.) I have been given a Compton Internship for the summer to learn the techniques of natural building from Berea grad Jessa Turner, who is starting up her own natural building business, Homegrown HideAways, and Phil Hawn, who will be graduating in December and has built multiple natural building structures on campus. I will be helping to build three different shelters in Berea while teaching workshops to educate others. I will be given up to $2000 for supplies (although, realistically, I only need about $500) and a $3000 stipend to be spent however I would like. I will be living by myself in the SENS house, a house designed for four students, complete with solar panels, a solar water heater, a strawbale wall, a greenhouse, lots of gardens and a composting toilet (among other things.) (I will be living in the SENS house next year as well, but with three other people.)

In order to receive credit for my internship, I must keep a daily log of contacts, actions and purchases that are made during my internship. Along with the overall progress made during the construction, I will provide daily statements discussing the ecological aspects of my personal actions; I will explain what I have done during that day to help promote sustainability. I will be sure to include dated and captioned pictures of the different steps of the process and any handouts or fliers that are involved with the workshops. At the end of each week, I will provide a personal reflection of my work, my thoughts on the project and the lessons I have learned regarding natural building and ecological design in regards to residential construction. I will send an electronic copy of my journal to my sponsor, Richard Olson, at the end of each week. I predict that this online blog will be updated accordingly, although hopefully a little more personal, since the majority of my readers will be people I know personally.

I think this is a decent introduction. My internship officially starts on the first, so there might not be too much posted before then, unless I experience all kinds of strange things once I move into the SENS house that I think should be shared.

Wish me luck!