Today was a big day for my internship. Since I joined the East Liberty Development, Inc. staff in early September, another intern, Carlyn, has been planning the biggest tree plating in Western Pennsylvania. This required a ton of planning, a very early morning/long day and about 150 volunteers. The day went very smoothly, and 115 trees were successfully planted on the median of East Liberty Blvd. between Highland Avenue and Negley. While I did not get to plant a single tree, I did get there 3 1/2 hours early to set up. I also got to sign in volunteers and meet a lot of press people. I met a lot of cool people who were affiliated with ELDI and spent a lot of time being in awe of the fact that I got to help plan and pull off such a huge and exciting event!
So why did we feel the need to plant so many trees? ELDI was involved with getting rid of a traffic lane on East Liberty Blvd going each way for bike lanes, and the trees are great for creating a calming effect on traffic. So our hope is that not only will East Liberty Blvd. have great astecic appeal, but bikers will be safer.
Showing posts with label Emily. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emily. Show all posts
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Internship Goodness
Last week was another new one. We had our first day at our internships on Wednesday and our second day on Friday. I am interning with East Liberty Development Inc. (ELDI) on the east side. East Liberty does a lot of bricks and morter type development for their community. I have two supervisors, Emily and Nate. Both of them are really relaxed and care a lot about what they do. The other neat part is that they are just a few years older than me.
Right now my biggest responsibility is to finish up whatever their old intern, David, didn't. So my biggest task is to continue the cigarette butt campaign that he started. This includes getting people to agree to empty cigarette butt recepticles near their businesses. I also need to install the cigarette butt dispensers and do a couple scans after they are installed to see how many butts were not put in the recepticle. I am also doing some normal intern stuff like getting a bunch of addresses for mailing out the annual reports.
So far I am feeling very optimistic about the internship. I am excited to get involved in what East Liberty is doing in their community, as it is very visible via the buildings and projects they have already completed. They also have a lot of exciting plans for the future, and ELDI is in a very exciting growth period.
-Emily
Right now my biggest responsibility is to finish up whatever their old intern, David, didn't. So my biggest task is to continue the cigarette butt campaign that he started. This includes getting people to agree to empty cigarette butt recepticles near their businesses. I also need to install the cigarette butt dispensers and do a couple scans after they are installed to see how many butts were not put in the recepticle. I am also doing some normal intern stuff like getting a bunch of addresses for mailing out the annual reports.
So far I am feeling very optimistic about the internship. I am excited to get involved in what East Liberty is doing in their community, as it is very visible via the buildings and projects they have already completed. They also have a lot of exciting plans for the future, and ELDI is in a very exciting growth period.
-Emily
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
A Novel Idea
So a bunch of people were asking Kim, Ray, and I if we were going to start a blog while we were doing the Pittsburgh Semester. We decided (because of our genius ideas and blatant laziness) to do one together!
Here is where we are so far:
Last Tuesday we moved into the guesthouse at the Pittsburgh Project. It was built in 2005 as an LED green certified building, or something along those lines. What this means to us is that the showers take a good 15 minutes to warm up because the water is heated by solar panels on the roof. How this is going to work during the cloudy and dreary days of winter, we don't know. But really it's a pretty cool thing. They use drainage water from the roof to water the toilets, and we're provided with green cleaning products to keep our bathrooms clean and green (that was not supposed to rhyme).
Orientation consisted of a lot of eating. We went to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner one night. That was awesome because they don't use silverware! We did Indian food one night as well, which happens to be one of my favorite food genres (Kim's too!). We also went to a couple coffee shops including the Beehive on Carson Street and Beleza in the Mexican Wars Streets. Beleza is unique because seven college students from Hope College moved to Pittsburgh wanting to make a difference in the community. What came of that was this great coffee shop that I am sitting in right now!
Along with food, we also had the opportunity to experience some great cultural events. We went to a Brad Yoder concert on the Pitt campus. They do free weekly conerts throughout the summer, apparently. We also got to check out the observatory on where else, but Observatory Hill! The tour ended up being really interesting and was led by two rather geeky astronomer guys. They were actually rather endearing.
We also did a lot of driving and touring of the city and Perry Hilltop where the Pittsburgh Project, and consequently, our dorm is located.
As of today, we have been living in the burgh for a full week. Our first class was this morning. It consisted of sharing our autobiographys and then traveling to Market Square to observe how it is designed and used, which is basically a glorified way of describing people watching!
The other students here are fun. There are a whooping five of us, meaning that aside from Kim, Ray, and myself, there are two other students. Brandon is from Malone College and Anthony is Lebanon (pronounced Lebanen, don't mess it up) Valley. The five of us should be pretty close by time this thing is over.
Overall, the first week has been very good. I am anticipating a very good semester. Internships start tomorrow, so that will be the big derterminer of that.
-Emily
Here is where we are so far:
Last Tuesday we moved into the guesthouse at the Pittsburgh Project. It was built in 2005 as an LED green certified building, or something along those lines. What this means to us is that the showers take a good 15 minutes to warm up because the water is heated by solar panels on the roof. How this is going to work during the cloudy and dreary days of winter, we don't know. But really it's a pretty cool thing. They use drainage water from the roof to water the toilets, and we're provided with green cleaning products to keep our bathrooms clean and green (that was not supposed to rhyme).
Orientation consisted of a lot of eating. We went to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner one night. That was awesome because they don't use silverware! We did Indian food one night as well, which happens to be one of my favorite food genres (Kim's too!). We also went to a couple coffee shops including the Beehive on Carson Street and Beleza in the Mexican Wars Streets. Beleza is unique because seven college students from Hope College moved to Pittsburgh wanting to make a difference in the community. What came of that was this great coffee shop that I am sitting in right now!
Along with food, we also had the opportunity to experience some great cultural events. We went to a Brad Yoder concert on the Pitt campus. They do free weekly conerts throughout the summer, apparently. We also got to check out the observatory on where else, but Observatory Hill! The tour ended up being really interesting and was led by two rather geeky astronomer guys. They were actually rather endearing.
We also did a lot of driving and touring of the city and Perry Hilltop where the Pittsburgh Project, and consequently, our dorm is located.
As of today, we have been living in the burgh for a full week. Our first class was this morning. It consisted of sharing our autobiographys and then traveling to Market Square to observe how it is designed and used, which is basically a glorified way of describing people watching!
The other students here are fun. There are a whooping five of us, meaning that aside from Kim, Ray, and myself, there are two other students. Brandon is from Malone College and Anthony is Lebanon (pronounced Lebanen, don't mess it up) Valley. The five of us should be pretty close by time this thing is over.
Overall, the first week has been very good. I am anticipating a very good semester. Internships start tomorrow, so that will be the big derterminer of that.
-Emily
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