voluntown

This past weekend we has a retreat at Voluntown Peace Trust in Voluntown, Connecticut. It's absolutely gorgeous there- it really makes me want to live in a small rural-ish town and have a hobby farm with two dogs and chickens and a vegetable garden. But anyway! We spent time with all of the wonderful volunteers from Syracuse, Harlem, West Harlem, Portland, Bridgeport, and Boston. We had yummy vegetarian food everyday, a lot of which was grown on their farm, talked about sustainability and how to simplify the ways we live (we had taken this- http://www.earthday.net/Footprint/index.asp- that makes me think twice about tiny things like plastic bags at the supermarket and not yet composting and on and on), swam in Beach Pond (it's funny that it's nice enough to swim in October when the leaves are changing!), hiked, played board games, picked wild grapes, slept in a beautiful cabin, made arts & crafts, and read and talked and laughed and relaxed. On the drive home, we stopped at an orchard and had farm-fresh ice cream (pumpkin flavor is delicious) and I saw a baby cow grazing and played with a little beagle puppy.

Now we're home again. Rachel and I discovered tennis balls and rackets and played on Trinity's court and walked around campus (as obnoxious as some of the local Greek life can be, the campus is really beautiful). We're going to meet up with two members of Notre Dame Americorps who live in Hartford (one's named Vanessa!) and we're also going to visit the catholic worker house here as soon as we can- I've heard amazing things about the catholic worker communities in other cities (I think they use a lower-case C in catholic) and I can't wait to meet all of them and go to their dinners and documentaries with wine nights.