Orientation Day on the Rez

The morning started with "the shower experience."  I visited the men's shower at ten minute intervals throughout the morning to check if the water Had reached a reasonable temperature for use, finally I cracked the case and found out that the handle had to be pointed at cold in order to be hot.

In the morning, I was able to talk to some of the other volunteers over breakfast.  While we were eating, Darryl Wippert, one of our connections in the community, joined us.  He spent a few hours talking to us about his life, where he had gone, and his art work.  He was a very talented artist and I feel lucky to have seen his artwork.

Next we had our first team meeting.  This meeting encompassed the preliminary team orientation and introduction to the Blackfeet program.  We played the beloved name game and miraculously no one was forgotten.  After creating descriptions of an effective team we realized that we were striving to be communicative, hard-working, patient, kind, understanding, flexible, effective, fun-loving, and later Betty reminded us the importance of Punctuality.  

After the meeting, we got our lunches from the kitchen and went to the vans to go on a tour of the reservation.  We broke up into two different groups one for each van.  We drove along the western edge of the reservation stopping to take photos of terminal moraines, mountains, and lakes as we went along.  The landscape was absolutely beautiful.  The atmosphere inside the van was enthusiastic, stories were told about the land features and songs were sung.

While driving on the reservation side, we saw sights of chief mountain, the Hudson divide, duck lake, St. Mary lake and several other beautiful sights.  We had the privilege of having a world class, "should-have-worked-for-the-discovery-channel-grade" tour guide -- otherwise known as Joe.  Joe explained all about the geological processes that lead to the development of the mountains, the glacial movements and the seemingly endless supply of beaver dams.  We also stopped in St. Mary and East Glacier to walk around, enjoy a beer with the staff and explore a hundred-year-old lodge along the way. 

Once we got back, we had a wonderful dinner at Eagle Shield Center.

Then we finished up our meeting with more talk about stuff.  Finally we wrote this journal to document our day.

- Martha and Andrew