what happened to November?

November was a busy month for me as I'm sure it was for others. Here's my recap.... Barack Obama (with the help of voters) makes history and is declared the president elect of the United States! I flew out the next day to an experiential education conference, that exceeded my expectations. If you are in any way shape or form involved in education check out aee.org. I always looked for jobs on this site but never realized how great they were until I attended this conference. I returned to work....continued moving into my new place in Whitefish. I got to catch some great mountain films when the world tour of the Banff Mountain Film Festival came to Kalispell, which you should definitely see when it comes to your town. The you tube video at the bottom of my blog is a short video the Banff tour featured, the film had won an award at the Nissan games. A few days later Courtney came to visit, we went to Glacier and then in usual McBride fasion made a whirl wind trip up to Banff Canada, the pics don't do any of the mountains justice but check 'em out anyway.

Cedar roots, C&J, Glacier NP

Glacier and Polebridge from Cyclone Fire Lookout
Courtney made some friends at Lake Louise, the one on the right peed his pants he was so excited to meet a pretty girl...don't worry Graham she didn't spend too much time with them....

Sun setting over the mountains and glacier of Lake Louise in Banff NP. So the border patrol gave me a bit of a hard time coming into the U.S. because I hadn't signed my passport, but overall it was a short stop. When we returned from Canada we had one slow morning in Whitefish and Courtney got on a plane that afternoon. I spent Thanksgiving at Kelly and Chris' house, where there was lots of good food and wonderful people. As of today I'm officially and completely moved into my place and looking forward to what is hopefully a slower December. I'm excited to go home on the 20th!

opening doors...

It was the close of the AEE conference today with the exception of one optional workshop tomorrow (which I opted into). The March Fourth Marching Band played tonight.....there were moments that the room full of educators began screaming "yes we can!" and then "yes we did!" to the drums beating in the front of the conference center at the Hilton.

This conference opened 3 days ago, with keynote speaker Carol Bellamy, a law school graduate, who moved on to become an elected public official. She has been a Business Manager of major financial institutions, a director of the U.S Peace Corps, spent 10 years as the Executive Director of UNICEF, to now have assumed leadership of World Learning. To me, the beauty of her speaking was her open discussion and excitement about the barriers broken the moment Senator Obama was named President Elect in this country. The crowd erupted into cheers many times as she discussed the current moment in history. She spoke to education in terms of policy, diversity, and opportunity. It became clear at the close of her speech that I'd joined a room of passionate, caring people; educators who intended to change the world through positive life experience.

While we all settled in to various workshops through the weekend there was an undertone of absolute joy, from fun and games with education....but also a celebration....and wonderful stories of student reactions to the the election. Despite the many "non-partisan" organizations represented, discussion around the election seemed unguarded by every individual I encountered. I was met by nothing but excitement.

Sarah it was wonderful this weekend to read how you've celebrated with people across borders in Italy. This election has been such an important world event. As I type this, all I know is...after the last eight years.....this is all, just settling in. Mostly I wish I could have spent Tues. Nov. 4, 2008, celebrating with my family , and my close fellow organizers/might as well be family....(Anna, Sarah, Michelle & Amy). As I'm typing this I'm finding that I'm a bit concerned someone will have their feelings hurt that I've not named them.....I am so lucky to have you all in my life, despite our possible distance you are all such good friends. (a.k.a. those of you that have the address to this blog). Though I was not with any of you the night of Obama's eleciton, you were and are, all in my heart. I am anxious and excited to see what work lies ahead for us all.

And Mom! Thank you for teaching me so much about education, diversity and life! I am excited to continue on in my journey of activism and education.

5 more days...

Alright, so the whole Denver trip for the workshop didn't end up working out. The new plan is to go to the Annual International Conference with the Association for Experiential Education. (AEE) aee.org is the website, and the organization is likely the best one for me to have the opportunity to get involved with. The other organization was the NSEE and the branch of that program was the EEA...got all that... :) ahh the joy of acronyms....

The conference is in Vancouver Washington...this time I'm already registered and have plane tickets. I fly out November 5th...the day after the third most important day in this country in the last eight years. Meaning the most important was in November 7th, 2000, the 2nd most important was in November 2nd, 2004...and now the third most important day is November 4th, 2008....I guess floating back to reality....it is the first most important day for this country and much of the world since the last eight years already happened.

I will be on a plane at 6:15 am mountain standard time heading to Portland OR, where I'll catch a short cab or shuttle ride to downtown Vancouver WA, to practice and study experiential education for four days with hundreds of people across the country and some from across the globe. I can't help but wonder if I'll sleep the night before, listening to the media highlight states as red or blue, tallying points...what will my thoughts be on the plane, will I sleep...will I be focused and breathe a sigh of relief at the conference, or distracted by thoughts of disappointment in our "democracy" or rather republic...I guess I'll have to wait and see....in the meantime....VOTE!!!

I am overwhelmed with emotion when I think about the massive grassroots movement that has been taking place in this country, especially in the last year. I couldn't really imagine not being involved...and wish I'd balanced volunteer time with work earlier so that I was more involved....tonight I made calls and tomorrow I will canvass the streets with other organizers. I walked in to the Kalispell Obama office, only to be reintroduced to Ryan, who I'd spoken with last month about volunteering. Last month he had little to no facial hair and wore a clean button up shirt, with no hesitance he admitted he was from L.A. Today he had much more than a 5 o'clock shadow, he was wearing a t-shirt and smelled like he had been wearing it for at minimum a 3 days...he resembled a Montanan, but smelled like an organizer. Ryan had obviously been working long days.....I walked in, signed up with him to canvass tomorrow and then agreed to make calls tonight. While I was making calls for the campaign Ryan called my phone to confirm that I was coming in to volunteer tomorrow.....Thanks to anyone passionately working their ass off for the greater good of everyone else.

I spoke with many people tonight. One that stood out to me, was a Woman who stated that she had never voted for a Democrat in her life...(she was in her late 40's). She stated she'd always voted Republican in the past, she sounded enthusiastic when she said she was excited to vote for Obama and she thought it was one of the best opportunities in a long time for this country. This call reminded me of a woman I spoke to when canvassing for a short evening in Missoula (thanks to Michelle), the woman's house was smoke filled from cigarettes, she was heavy set and wearing something close to a moo-moo, she was likely in her 70's or 80's....She stated she'd voted Republican her entire life and could not imagine how anyone in their right mind could vote for McCain. The second to last person I called tonight planed to leave for a hunting trip tomorrow and is not returning until Monday night. He agreed to volunteer starting at 6am Tuesday morning.

I am reminded of canvassing days in Utah, the stories I have...the lessons I've learned from brief encounters with random people...citizens...with experiences, opinions.....active minds. I miss knocking on doors... mostly because I believe it breaks down the barrier of; this is MY property, MY house, how dare you knock on MY door and talk to me about...of all things... politics? As organizers I think its safe to say that we knock on doors because, WE live in a community and WE know that in order for our community to function, WE need to talk face to face, even when WE disagree.

"Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it."
(Speech, Osawatomie, August 31, 1910) --Roosevelt

Thanks for reading my blog. I love you all.

Another Day.

why did the milk in the refrigerator turn red?........Because it saw the salad dressing.

A student told me that joke, I had to ask for the punch line again and think about it before I got it....now i appreciate it more than I probably should.

My weekend is winding down I'm trying to savor the last several hours of a non-work day. Cody, Sheila, Nika (sheila's dog) and I all went hiking up big mountain yesterday. Here's some pics....The ones with Cody in his orange jacket are from last week hiking in the whitefish range behind big mountain...its hunting season, laugh it up but he looks and bounces like a deer. The Ice on the Lake above is from the same day.

blogging....

Alright...I'm not gonna lie....I always thought blogging was a little lame. Spending....a bunch of time on the computer updating...random, seemingly pointless things when you could be outside playing.... But this is actually kind of fun. I even figured out how to post some music to my site. I'm feeling fairly proud considering my computer illiteracy, though I can't take all the credit seeing how someone else did all the work to make it easy for people like me.

The work trip to Denver ended up not working out. Pro's and con's...but its nice to have a day off without various other tasks to have to accomplish. In the words of Madonna, "if we took a holiday"....i did today!....slept in...took myself out to breakfast, read the paper...which I'll get back to in a second. Took Cody on an endlessly long leash walk around town and allowed my mind to wander. There is not a cloud in the sky today...all the leaves have changed colors and some trees are just bare branches...yellows, oranges and reds still lingering before winter arrives.

Back to the paper...it was a little weird to see a letter to the editor discussing a poll that was on the local papers website. (www.dailyinterlake.com) The letter mentioned a poll the paper had run on their site regarding what the biggest influencing factor for voters in the area surrounding their pick for president. Turns out the biggest factor in this poll was race (by a large margin). Scary!!! I knew I lived in a conservative area...but I'm not sure I realized how conservative it is. Anyhow there was a note from the editor that stated the poll was not accurate and had been reconstructed to a different poll on the papers site. Still crazy to me....so thanks to anyone reading this that has done any small bit of work on this upcoming election. Specifically Amy U. who I know has been working her butt off, despite various hurdles! I'm getting my hopes up right now and I'm anxious for the 4th of Nov...in hopes Obama takes it, and takes it strongly....so we don't stay up half the night anxiously waiting...

Welcome

Hello Everyone! I've decided to start a blog...I think about everyone at home often but I don't get the chance to catch up as often as I would like to. I figure this way you all can check up on me from time to time since my work schedule is somewhat ridiculous and I play telephone tag so often but never really get the chance to catch up.

Life's been pretty good lately, though I've found myself a little home sick and I'm excited to see California over Christmas. I'm actually to the point of homesickness that if I catch a glimpse of the ocean on my friends television (even if its in L.A.) I have to fight the urge to jump in the car and head west. I guess responsibility is beginning to set in after 28 years...i fight the urge to head west so that I make sure to go to work and continue earning a pay check so that I can pay off my credit card bills and chase other adventures in my life that are a little more planned out.

Work is going alright. For those of you who don't know I accepted a promotion as an Experiential Specialist, one of two...we have a lot of say in the creation of our position. We are still working closely with the students and continuing our responsibilities as House Parents/Mentors. We essentially are trying to bring more experiential activities to the program and will attend trainings of our choice. As I type this I'm waiting to hear on a possible last minute trip to Denver for a workshop.

Cody is doing well, he still gets to go to work with me everyday and I think he's a pretty lucky dog. He even gets to run through the woods on our hiking days at work. Our move has seemed to be a little difficult for him this time around and I've noticed he's acquired more gray hairs. I'm tired of moving too, honestly. I plan to stay in this next place for at least 8 months...which many of you know is a long time for me....

Fall has been absolutely gorgeous here and I'm very excited for winter!

Not too sure what else to say in this first blog except that I love you and miss you all. I think of you often.