Sunday, March 20, 2011

Tracking the moon from Haiti (for 7th grade science)

The moon is absolutely beautiful tonight!  It is a very full and round golden moon.  It's also very low, right above the trees.

When I performed the altitude test, I measured 4 and a half fists up from the starting position.

I am curious to see what the moon altitude is back home in NJ.

5 comments:

  1. Thank you for looking at the moon. It was also 45 degrees here in NJ.

    We have some questions:

    Is the town imporoving? (from RJ and Anthony)
    Have you seen any craters from the Earthquake, if so how big are they? (From ApP)
    What is the temperature there? (from Myles)
    How is the food, what is your favorite dish so far? More specifically fruits and can you bring some back? (from Bobby)
    How do you like helping the people? (RJ)
    Is it hard to communicate in Creole? (Jessica)
    Are you having fun? (Andrew)
    What is the restroom situation? (Julia and Isiah)

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  2. Some Questions from Block 2:

    Will you be bringing back anything, antiques, souvieners, etc? (Tyreek)
    What type of animals have you seen? (Tyler)
    Can you post any pictures or video so we can see what it looks like there? (Alyssa)
    What are the living condions like for the people in your area? (Winona)
    Can you tell us about the people you are working with? (Dan)

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  3. @RJ and Anthony- From the looks of it one would say no, however you see progress being made everyday. I have seen workers out as early as 6am breaking down the ruble and cleaning the streets and such.

    @ApP- I have not seen any craters, but I have seen buildings that look like they should crumble about any minute now. :(

    @Myles- The temperature is PERFECT!!! It's about 85-95 during the day and about low to mid 70's at night. Last night felt like I was freezing and I actually had to get a cover.

    @Bobby- I cannot bring home food or plants. As far as my favorite dish...I had the best chesse omelette today! I have no idea what ALL of the ingredients were but it was amazing!

    @RJ- I haven't started actually volunteering yet, that project starts tomorrow. In Haiti it seems as though things change last minute and you just go with the flow. The kids didn't have school today because they had the elections yesterday. So there really wasn't much work to be done because the workers had to continue making the forms for the concrete to go in for support. So today we took a tour of downtown Port Au Prince (I'll post video and photos later tonight).

    @Jessica- I have been practicing Creole since January 2010 when I found out I had an opportunity to go to Haiti to help. The boys in the home here can speak great English so I try to make them answer me in English and I speak in Creole so we both get experience.

    @Andrew- I am having a blast. Today we went to the town where they made the iron works made from steel drums (remember that do now?) It was so cool seeing them being made in person. I had fun because there was a little boy there and I was playing hide and go seek with him and making him laugh. He was probably about 3 years old. I took a picture with him and will post that as well.

    @Julia and Isiah- So....yeah....the restrooms...lol
    Let's just say that it is a perfect situation to take some serious stats. There is a water truck that delivers clean water here almost everyday. When the water truck comes it plays the theme of Titantic (which seems ironic) and so then the boys in the home feel up two barrels in our bathroom and every time we use the bathroom we take water from the barrels and pour it into a smaller bucket that is more manageable to lift. Then we have to dump it down the toilet as fast as we can and try to get the pressure right to "flush" correctly. Here is where the stats come in, same process for take a shower. But this time you stand in what should be a working shower and you use a cup to wet yourself and then use your soap and shampoos and then rinse yourself. I never realized how much shampoo I used before because it took forever and about 10 2 cup fulls of water just to rinse it out. I was proud though it only took a bucket of about 2 to 2.5 gallons of water to "shower". The reason the showering system is like this is because the earthquake caused the house to shift and now the plumbing doesn't match up with the pipes.

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  4. @Tyreek- I went shopping today and bought some pieces of the iron work we looked out during one of our do nows. It's nice to be able to support the Haitian economy, although I know it seems like the world needs support.

    @Tyler- WOW!!! I saw a giant cow today and it might have seemed he was giant because he was standing next to the tinyest river ever and there weren't any full buildings around but it did make for a "Wow" moment. I saw the most cutest baby chicken and a really cool dog at Hotel Olaffson. I took some pictures of her, she was a total ham.

    @Alyssa- I totally will! In fact I am going to try to get some up tonight. I have been hanging out with the boys from the home and trying to get them to teach me how to dougie since they listen to it ALL of the time on youtube.

    @Winona- I asked the same question when we were taking the tour today. I wasn't sure what "normal" Haiti had looked like before. I found out that Haitians, for the most part live in tiny houses, in which they don't really live in they just rest there but instead the live in the street and out front of their house meaning all of their cooking is usually done out front or between the two houses, etc.

    @Dan- The other volunteers are great! We already feel like family and when we got to the boys home, all of the boys welcomed us with cold fresh water and BIG hugs! The company I am with is extremely professional and really look out for our safety and tell you how to deal with certain situations. For example today we were out front of the presidential palace that had crumbled during the quake and little kids (like 7-9 years old) came up and put their hand through the window and said, "Hey You"! We were told to say, "No, Mesi", which means no thank you but your heart breaks when they tell you, "Grangou", which means I'm hungry. Today I gave in and gave a street boy a dollar which is 40 Haitian Gouds. (I was able to buy a pack of 3 decent razors for 50 Gouds, so normally that would cost around $2.00 in the US. So it will get them pretty far). But I told the little boy to, "NO LOU" which means to be quiet in a round about way. And he squeezed my hand so hard and said, "Mesi". Then he walked to another part of our van and was begging again, so I turned around and said "Hey You" with a big smile. He laughed and gave me back the dollar but I gave it back. It was definitely a different experience to say the least.

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  5. PS..That's wild about the moon! I thought it seemed really low last night. I couldn't see it tonight. I'll look again tomorrow night.

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