YOU'RE INVITED!

Save the Date:  Tuesday the 13th of July
Time: 5:30 PM
Where: Mercy Corp Headquarters
            28 SW First Ave

I'm going to be giving a presentation about my experiences going to the United World College in Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The description of this year is INDESCRIBABLY GLORIOUS.  Come to see why :)

Water, is it really a free good?

Here in Portland, we are lucky to access abundant water supplies, that is drinkable straight from the tap.  But increasingly around the world water supplies are being exploited, depleting either the quantity and/or quality of water sources.  Recently, the UN posted a statistic stating By 2025, 1 800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.  Source: FAO

There is a website which approximately calculates your household's daily water usage - and the results will surprise you.  We see our actual physical water usage - but there is a new concept called "virtual water usage" and this has the largest impact.  This is calculated by our daily consumption of products which need water during production such as foods, electronics, and energy.


http://www.h2oconserve.org/?page_id=503    Take the quiz and discover for yourself how much you consume, and find some tips for conserving water - because even if you live in Portland, water is still a limited resource, and we do not want our own tragedy of the commons.


As an end note though, I am proud of my cities efforts - currently I wake up every morning to the sound of heavy machinery drilling and digging, and beeping down the street as they tear up the antiquated water mains and replace them, to prevent leakage - as part of a water conservation initiative in the city.


For those of you who are really interested, there is a book called "Blue Covenant" about the emerging water scarcity worldwide - which also evaluates the anthropological causes.


As always, Cheers and more to come,


Hilary


P.S.  I'm excited to be going on a great three day adventure with my Mom and Dad this weekend.  We're going to climb South Sister in Southern Oregon and spend some time on the hot rock at Smith Rock as well.  

If time flies, where does the time fly to?

Today is the second official day of summer, but I've already been out of school for almost a month.  While it feels as if I saw all those wonderful people only yesterday, it also feels like ages - because I know how much happens in just one day for us, so multiply that by 30.

Where do I begin to tell the stories?  Hopefully, I will be posting more often now, catching you up on all the adventures.

But, today is a significant day, because I just finished my FIRST GUITAR LESSON!
I've been talking about starting to play the guitar for a long time, and I always admire the people who can just sit down and play a couple of songs or just start improving.  Especially my younger sister Serena, she's awesome now, and a composer.  She even wrote me a song for my birthday :)  She taught me the chords to one of her first songs "The Amazing Race" so that is my next task to tackle.  Today I learned how to play "Collide" by Howie Day, and "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol.

I'm hoping to add quite a few more to my repertoire by the end of the summer.  I have fond memories of some of the first weekends in Mostar, spent listening to guitar and singing on Andy, Amer, and Mustafa's balcony in Susac - bundled up in blankets, under the stars in the evenings.  I have to give a shout out to Andy, thanking him for donating his guitar to us first years.

Hulda, I cannot wait until the next time I see you, because we can finally jam out on the guitars and ukuleles with worship music :)

This morning I enjoyed a video conference with some students from Scotland through Mercy Corp and the Global Citizen Corp - they taught us a lesson about the Millennium Development Goals, and a current initiative for Education throughout the world, using the World Cup.

This evening, there is a presentation about Bosnia, by a guy who lived in Sarajevo and was an aid worker during the conflict years.  I'm really interested in what he has to say.  I'm also excited because they invited me to do a short presentation about UWCiM's efforts in Bosnia regarding integration of the education system on Thursday!

Lots of thinkings swirling around!  Where's it going to lead, who knows.

Until the Next Adventure, Cheers,

Hilary