The large summer event that I've been helping to prepare for at work is the annual Renewable Energy Fair. Each summer, REAP takes a couple of blocks of the Park Strip and turns it into a large festival with live performers, a beer garden, food vendors, and, of course, workshops and demonstrations about renewable energy, alternative energy, and energy efficiency.

The other day, I prepared some materials for a kids' workshop at the fair. It reminded me of preparing for CASPY! It was a little crafts project called "Wind Can Do Work," where kids put together a little windmill that lifts a paperclip weight. Of course, I assembled one myself to make sure that the instructions were straightforward and that we had all of the necessary materials. As the windmill turns, a string attached to the end wraps around a straw, and you add paperclips as weights and see how many paperclips a certain amount of wind can lift. Yay, physics! (W = F*d) Something that I actually do still remember!

Kids' workshop for the Renewable Energy Fair: "Wind Can Do Work"

Outside of work, I've just been enjoying my last few days here. We made sure to enjoy the good weather while it lasted, running each day, then eating dinner in the sunroom while watching the sunset. Here's a recent meal that Stella and I made:

Veggies for fried rice

Fried rice -- yum!

And the sunset that followed:

The return of nice weather

As I mentioned in my last post, we went to see the Batman marathon: all three movies back-to-back, from 6pm to 3am. It was a really awesome experience. It was really shocking and sad to hear about the shooting in Aurora the next morning though. We were at a Century 16 in Anchorage ourselves, and I was just in Denver last summer. It's really unfortunate to hear about these kinds of things. The movies were incredible though. It was great to see all of them together, since there were many details that we had forgotten about in each movie and that linked the three.

For those wondering how we fared in this 9-hour event, we went in very prepared! We had a full plan for our marathon. We bought po' boys (yummy Cajun sandwiches) from Gumbo House and brought cookies and banana bread that we baked the night before. With the calories and sugar, combined with general excitement about the event, I didn't even feel sleepy! With six of us (Stella, Jensen, Oisin, Carla, Natalie, and me) there together, it was just a giant party.

Not so beautiful, but most delicious oatmeal chocolate chip walnut cookies

Chocolate chip banana bread

Yesterday, I went down to Seward with Stella, Oisin, Geoff, and Iva, along with the other interns from the various energy organizations in Anchorage: the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, the Alaska Energy Authority, the Institute of the North, and the Renewable Energy Alaska Project. We got a tour of the heat exchange pump system that the Alaska SeaLife Center utilizes to garner heat from the water of the surrounding Resurrection Bay.

Pipes in the heat exchange system at the Alaska SeaLife Center

Heat exchanger

It's a cool project, and they said that they can get a coefficient of performance (COP) of approximately 3, meaning that they can get 3 units of energy back for each unit put into the system. Even though I wasn't an engineer, I could understand and appreciate the concept behind the heat exchange system (a guy on our tour decided that all of us who were not engineers probably struggled to understand anything that was going on and was extremely obnoxious in belittling half of our group).

Since we were already at the SeaLife Center, we also went to check out the animals!

Steller sea lion

In the afternoon, we went to AVTEC, Alaska's vo-tech center, for another tour. It was interesting to see all of the machinery that students learn about. There is also a wind turbine right outside the building. We had the opportunity to climb up the turbine!

Wind turbine at AVTEC that I climbed

Donning climbing equipment, I went in through the latched door, strapped myself in, and climbed up. It was pretty cool, though I realized that I have terrible upper body strength/am too fat, since I struggled to pull up my own weight. Normally, when people climb up the turbine, they would also be carrying several pounds of tools. Despite these sad realizations, it was good exercise and a cool experience to see the inside and top of the turbine.

Oisin and I are ready to climb!

Looking down during the climb up the inside of the wind turbine

We were supposed to head out of Seward around 3:30pm to get home by 5:30pm. As we got our tour at AVTEC, however, we found out that the Seward Highway (the only road back to Anchorage) was closed down. Apparently, someone had kidnapped someone and hijacked his car at gunpoint at mile 69 of the highway, and so it was closed in an effort to search for the car... Being in Seward, we were at mile 0, and Anchorage was 128 miles away, so we were basically stranded in Seward. Finally, a little before 5pm, we heard that we could get back on the road and headed home. It turns out that the man needed to use the bathroom and got out of the car, and the driver was able to get away with a spare key. They still haven't found the hijacker/kidnapper though.

It's now my last week in Alaska. It seems like the time has gone by both quickly and slowly. I'm ready to go back to the warmth and darkness of the east coast, though I do feel as if I've gotten used to living here, in a way.

This weekend has been amazing. The hike on Saturday was already awesome, and then Sunday was just like the perfect day. It started with a visit to the weekend market, where Charlie and I tried some new foods:

Russian spicy beef piroshki

Beer-battered halibut (yes, that is a big scoop of butter)

Then, we went on an amazing drive. We were going to a reception at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, which was sort of a social disaster for us but led to many other wonderful sights. It's just incredible that there are no time constraints at all here. We just drove along Seward Highway, one of the most beautiful highways in the world, with the luxury of stopping at every lookout point that we wanted to see, for as long as we wanted. And we did stop many, many times. By the time we got home, we'd been out driving around for about 8 hours. This is just going to be a series of photos because I honestly don't have words to describe them.

Tip of Turnagain Arm from the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center

Portage Lake & Glacier

Thank you to dear Carol and Gary, whose blog and photos we discovered via a Google image search when researching Portage Lake, for inspiring the following photo:

"One can actually stand at the shore and pull out an iceberg from Portage Lake. What a fantastic way to experience and touch the past." -- Carol and Gary, 06/22/2011

Recreation area along Seward Highway

Looking out from Beluga Point

Train tracks along Seward Highway at Beluga Point

Charlie is tiny; Alaska is huge

Walking back to the car along the tracks

Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge

Sunset back home

The end of an incredible day

Today, I went grocery shopping with Stella and Jensen, the other Yalies in the program who just arrived, and then they came over for dinner. We were able to successfully recreate the Alaskan red salmon in lemon and brown sugar that Mead made! It's nice to have more friends in town. They came just in time for the summer solstice later this week, so we're all planning to hike out to Flattop Mountain, which is apparently a big party that night.

And finally, the reason that I'm up this late writing this post is because Charlie and I had an unbelievable two-hour conversation about our use of Google products. We are basically Google doppelgangers. We shared our organizational systems of our Gmail inboxes, calendars, browsers, and more, and it was just an incredibly nerdy and awesome time. We completely rudely ignored our new housemate and missed the sunset. It was so worth it though. What are the chances that two random people who end up living together in Alaska are from NJ, love Asian food, and are Google geeks? I'm not sure, but it's pretty awesome.

Good night!

My computer at work has been doing the evil pinwheel of death (thanks for the terminology, Alex, haha), but we managed to get around it so that I can actually do some work! I also got a desk phone today, yay!

Yesterday was an interesting day. I went to a Yale-Harvard-Princeton Clubs lunch + speaker event. The superintendent of the Anchorage school districts, who is retiring after 13 years, spoke, and I learned a lot about Anchorage. There are over 90 languages spoken by the schools' population--so diverse. There's also a K-12 Spanish language immersion program. That's so impressive and sounds like a really cool opportunity.

At the event, I also met Karen, who offered to take me to see the bore tide that has been all over the news. I went with her and her husband, Chris, to try to catch a glimpse along the incredibly beautiful Seward Highway, which ranks in the world's most scenic drives. The traffic was crazy! It seems like everyone was out trying to see it. It was also just a beautiful day though. While we didn't see the bore tide (or maybe the tide just lived up to its name...), we got a great view anyway.

View from along Seward Highway

There are also people who climb the rocks on the other side of the highway! Apparently, this is just normal though.

A rock climber on Seward Highway

Karen and Chris took me to the Village Inn, a cute IHOP-like place, for dinner and told me some great stories and advice about Anchorage and about life after college in general. The hospitality, kindness, and enthusiasm of people here is just incredible.

I ended the day quietly watching the sunset from the backyard. It's rainy today, but I guess something had to balance out yesterday! I'm off to a cookout at a coworker's new house, so I'll leave you with this:

Taken at 11:30pm from the back porch