Environmental Week in Up With People

Portland, Oregon is a very environmentally aware city. As such we felt we should educate ourselves on the environment, the impact we have on it and what we can do to protect it. So on Monday morning we began this little adventure by opening up with some statistics about different kinds of trash and how long they last (plastics being the worst). Then we watched the movie "An Inconvienent truth." It was a fascinating movie that really brought to light the serverity of the damage of our ecological state. It was cause for concern to be sure, so we took it a step further and challenged ourselves to be aware of how much waste we produce and ways to reduce that amount. BUT...this is Up With People and we do things in a slightly more hands-on fashion, and so we were required to carry ALL of the garbage that we produced over four days and then bring it in for a discussion on the last day. Well I thought I'd done pretty well until a thought occured to me... this small amount of trash is just one of seven billion people on the planet, and for just a few days. It made me think how true it is that change really begins one person at time, and that if people don't start changing there attitudes towards our environment, there won't be any more environment to care about. Over all it was a truely enligtning experience. It made me very aware of the litle things that people do make such a big difference.

On Friday we went to Mount St. Helens which is a huge volcano that is explosive and very much still active. It was AWESOME!!!. You can see in the picture smoke rising from the top - hence the label "active". It was a beautiful day and we had an wonderful view of the volcano. Portland was a great host city and I will be sad to leave all the people and sights and sounds here. Next up??? LAS VEGAS!!!!! WOOHOO