Row, Row, Row YOUR Boat

Wow. What a tiring first day.

I woke up at 6:00 to go for a run with some of the other students. Ron and Alan (two staff members) also came along. We ran through the campus trails and saw some eagles along the way.

Breakfast and tea made by Isabella.

This morning, we learned about OST (Open-Space Technology). The four principles of OST are as follows:

1) Whoever comes are the right people
2) Whenever it starts is the right time
3) Whenever it is over it is over
4) Whatever happens is the only thing that could have

It's a pretty rad way of brainstorming ideas. We all wrote ideas about what we would do in our communities to inspire positive change on index cards and then categorized them on the wall. After lunch, we broke up into smaller groups based on the categories that we grouped the cards in this morning. I spent all of my time in education, which I wasn't too happy about, but I ended up meeting Nate, so that was cool.

We had a networking/job fair type thing in the gym this afternoon. I spoke to people from Fish and Wildlife Services, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. I got a ton of business cards, and I can't wait to follow up with some of these people. We also heard from Maimee Parker, a truly inspiring woman.

Dinner. The food here is the bomb.

JOE. RIIS.

Tonight's speaker was Joe Riis, a National Geographic photographer. Oh. My. God. He showed us his pictures of the Pronghorn Migration and I almost died. He's so awesome and I can only hope to follow in his footsteps.

We had a nice ceremony at the fire ring led by two men of the Navajo Nation. They told us about their culture and the connectedness we all share with the land and with each other. Cool stuff. There were so many fireflies. I wish I had a tripod.

Gerod made a twitter.