4 - 2 = 2 and a gingerbread house

A few days ago, four became two. Emily and Beccy finished for the season, but they will both be back. Emily in December and Beccy in the spring. Nevertheless it was a sad day. Emotionally, but also on a mathematical level.

- There are 3 meals in one day: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.
- There are 7 days in one week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday... I think you get the picture.
- That equals: 7 * 3 = 21 Meals in a week.
- Subtract the breakfasts because they involve very little cooking, 21 - 7 = 14.
- Subtract the two non-breakfast meals we have on Iona, 14 - 2 = 12.
- Two days a week are days off, and that makes it easier to not do any cooking without feeling guilty, so maybe we can subtract an average 25% of the days-off non-breakfast meals that I was supposed to cook if it was a work day, 12 - (4 - 3,5) = 11,5, in the case of one other person (25% of 2 meals = 0,5 meals).
- There are only two of us here, which means that I have to cook 5,75 meals a week. 11,5 / 2 = 5,75.

I have to cook

((7 * 3) - 7 - 2 - (4 -3,5)) / 2, Meals a week!

Instead of the previous

((7 * 3) - 7 - 2 - (4 - 3,25)) / 4, Meals a week!

That is a difference of 2,9375 meals a week!

Needless to say, I got grumpy. Not only should I get cold, lonely and only see sun a few hours a day, I was also going to cook 2,9375 more meals a week. I needed to get all these frustrations out somehow. All this energy, frustration and adrenalin bottled up inside me.

I built a gingerbread Camas.

As you do.









Ginger bread Camas (up left), ginger bread south building (up right).

Ginger bread northbuilding (down left), gingerbread Camas (down right).












/ Josef

Day Trips

Blogblogblog…

It was quite a while ago I wrote on this blog. It was quite a while ago anyone wrote on this blog. Lots have happened. The first chapter will be called

The day we went on a dear hunt

One day, we went on a dear hunt. Actually, it was a dear rut. I am not exactly sure what a ’rut’ is. I asked one of the rangers that was leading the way. He explained it to me, and I answered: ”ahh, ok… I see”, but I didn’t. It has something to do with the dear mating season. But we were told that we might see some stags fighting, and that was enough to get me sold.

I’m getting ahead of myself. The day started of with a road trip.
With a tank full of petrol, a bucket full of crisps,a car full of people
and 50’s rock classic blasting from the speakers we started off on the scenic route towards Salen. Possible spotting of eagles, a very exciting jump with the sharan over a bridge, we arrived at the waterfall by the Ulva Ferry just in time for the crisps to be all gone. We climbed trees, and were off again to Calgary Bay and some sort of art-in-nature thingy. It started to rain, we got soaked, we headed of to Dervaig, saw a lighthouse (from very far away), visited a very small bookshop, went to Tobermory, ate fish and chips, and got ready for a dear hunt, I mean rut.


When Cally had finished peeing behind the car, we walk into the wild. The wild in this case was a few minutes walk through a small woodland. Some of us saw a big stag just in front of us, before it ran away. But I think all of us saw a couple of more stags walking around on the surrounding hillsides through binoculars. No fighting though.

Darragh drove us home safely through the dark, and we arrived back at Camas late that night, happy after a very nice day trip. A few days later we were very sad to see our last four volunteers leave us. They have been brilliant and we have all had an excellent season. Darragh, Cally, Rob and Tom, come and visit us! And also Jeayeun, Ros and Rosie, come!

The second chapter is called

The day we went to a Lighthouse

One day, we went to a light house. Not any old light house, we went to Ardnamurchen lighthouse. For those who don’t know: Ardnamurchen lighthouse was build out of granite from the Camas quarry. Needless to say: We were all very excited.

We went on the ferry from Tobermory to Kilchoan. It was a very exciting ferry ride. According to one of my colleagues, the ferryman was pretty hot. But that wasn’t what made the ferry ride exciting. A force 7 wind from west was forecast. And we did feel the waves on the ferry. It was rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. If you stand on one side, for example, the left side. And you jump just when the ferry is starting to rock to the left, it is quite scary. It feels like you are jumping very high.

We were jumping for thirty minutes.

When we got to the light house, we got to go all the way to the top. We stood in the little glass room where the light is! How exciting! Some facts about Ardnamuchen lighthouse:
- It was built in 1849 and designed by Alan Stevenson.
- It stands 36 meters tall on the most westerly point of the british mainland.
- It has two light flashes, flashing every 20 seconds.

After leaving the light house, we had lunch and went to a wild life center thing. There we crawled though a fake wildcat tunnel, looked at birds, drank tea and got bitten by a plastic shark.

All in all a very good day!

The next chapter is very short.

A very short Chapter

We are now trying to fill our 2011 season. It is looking good so far, but we still have weeks we want to fill. If you are someone, or know someone, who might like to bring a group to Camas, get in touch!
If you would like to volunteer at Camas, get in touch!
If you are interested in the program worker job at Camas, get in touch!

The end.

Vacancy.....

Oh I forgot to mention - we are looking for a new programme worker to join the team next spring, if you are interested go to the iona website http://www.iona.org.uk/ and follow the links to staff vacancies.

A weekend with potential new members.....

Sorry this is a bit late our Becky did write a wonderful piece but we managed to loose it! So here is my account of when P Mac brought 7 fun folk to come and experience Camas and think about joining up to the Iona Community...

We started the weekend off with a lovely meal and welcomes on the Friday night (with some extra visitors in the form of my cousin, her hubby and their gorgeous little baby Flynn!) followed by hot chocolates and an early night in preparation for the day ahead.

Saturday was lovely, windy but glorious sunshine, so everyone headed off for a days walk on Erriad, it was beautiful -they had an otter sighting, and one of the guys even went swimming - brrrr!

Sunday was a lovely day, it started well with the announcement of an engagement - congratulations you guys! Followed by discussions, and then an evening of fun in the form of Mafia!

A short but very very sweet weekend, it was a lovely way to have our final bit of time with the volunteers....

Good conversation, fun and a constructive weekend, we hope to see everyone back next year on the new members programme!

Bring a mate week

Hello hello.

This week we were visited by our nearest and dearest - 'Bring a mate week' was a chance for our friends and families to come and visit Camas for the week and see what we've really been getting up to here.

It was a particularly fun-filled week. Everybody got on well together so we were like one strange extended family. There was lots more berry-picking. Josef's friend Calle visited all the way from Sweden to star in the Kayaking competition: two capsizes in one minute. We camped out in the rain and listened to stories around the campfire, we walked backwards off a wall and three people managed to climb back to the top.

Aside from all the activities we got on with keeping Camas in working order. During the mornings we fixed the place up a little, built ourselves a new bench out of scraps and Darragh took his dad along to collect some cow poo for the cob oven. Happy days.

The week finished off with the Camas end of season party, a shindig to celebrate the great season we've had. We prepared a bountiful banquet which was eaten in a beautifully furbished Artroom. Then we had a performance ceilidh around the downstairs stove and finished the night off with a bout of sock-wrestling. Rob and Josef are still caught in a stale-mate.

Thanks to all our guests and visitors for the week and party. If you couldn't make either this year make sure you come along for the next one. It was a blast.

A berry good week

This was a week led by Kathy Galloway called exploring creation. We had a group of lovely people from all over the world and with lots of different experiences. We went blackberry picking in the pouring rain while others enjoyed tea in the polytunnel, a bit of a sore point for some, as well as digging spuds for the tea. This was also a week of trees and their fruit, the plum tree (which has been hidden away until recently) gave us some beautiful plums which we were made into an amazing dessert. The blackthorn produced sloes which we will also find good use for.

We went on a few day trips, to Ardalanish where Aeneas told us the story of the how they became organic weavers and why he thinks his hebredian sheep look handsome and happy and how he talks to ravens! We also went to the tidal island of Erraid and, after lunch and selkie stories at the lighthouse observatory, walked to the seal colony to see if there were any sealskins on the shore.

Our last night was filled with good food, songs, comedy, and wonderful poems about Buddhas and wooden spoons warriors!

Thanks from the Camas staff to all our guests for a really enjoyable week.

High Five, Scuba Dive!

This week Camas was visited by one of our longest running groups: Abercorn school from Glasgow.
It was a week of high fives (or scuba dives if you weren't quick enough), arm wrestling, cook offs and made you looks.

Everybody had a great time, except Rob who lost out on the Camas Cook Off and was forced to wear a Beard of Shame. Two of the group performed at the Iona Ceilidh and almost everybody had a dance, even though it meant someone lost a bet and now has double work in Spanish.

All in all it was an excellent week and we were sad to see the group leave, but extra sad this week as our three of our volunteers (Rosie, Ros and Jeayeun) left at the same time. Those of you had the pleasure of meeting them will know that they're sorely missed.

Next week we have a group ran by one of the Iona Community's former leaders, Kathy Galloway, along the theme of 'Experiencing Creation'. Stay tuned for the update!