This week I created a clay bust of Gertrude Stein as a collaborative project. I forgot how much I love ceramics, and how calming and meditative the process is. I love the feeling of sculpting and having the total control over the piece that clay offers. In relation to the text, it is like our hands are giving life to the clay, and the union between clay/ material and hands, like woman and man, or In-Vitro process and human give life. Also, the way I learned to approach clay modeling is to start with a ball, then from the ball create an egg. The egg is a starting point where anything can be created. If you want to create a woman, the egg is faced up, for a man, faced down because men are usually more top heavy. Animals and other things can be started from the side or any angle. This reminds me of the process of creation in biology.

While working on the project, I learned about Stein and her work, and got a taste of the passion that people have over her work. It was inspiring to hear how Kenna and Cameron felt about poetry, and the magic that words had on them.  Personally I have never been an avid reader or poet, and words never had such a strong presence in my life, but hearing their feelings spoken made my connection with text deeper.

Since the end of last quarter, I have been leading The Evergreen Yoga Service Collective in starting up as a club again and getting a weekly yoga schedule out. Last thursday we released our weekly schedule, and have five classes a week! I am so excited, and it took a lot of work and planning to get here. From meetings, contacting people, getting a new advisor, workshops, and more, I am really proud of the other coordinators and myself.

We are offering FREE yoga classes to STUDENTS and NON STUDENTS, and have a variety of classes from acro/ partner yoga, flow classes, advanced classes and a chakra workshop. We are now aiming to go to the Yoga Service Conference in New York this May, and host other workshops and collaborate with other clubs.

My passion is to share and practice yoga, and having this space to teach and learn from others, while increasing the accessibility for yoga in our community is so fulfilling, and is allowing me to learn quickly.

This week I also wrote a piece of my grant for the grant writing class, and found it an extremely repetitive and timely process, but very rewarding. I am learning how to write with rigid guidelines, and write very directly with as much information in a small amount of space as possible. I feel like its boosting my left brain thinking, which is difficult, but needed.