Meet Our Teams!

The DIRT people are heading off on another adventure this January, this time returning to the Brazilian Amazon to participate in reforestation work in communities upriver from Santarém.  But first, we needed to get to know each other in our usual way: through three 24-hour retreats during the fall semester of 2013.  At the last of those retreats, we did a video crash course for the non-techies among us to learn how to work our video cameras, transfer footage, edit and post videos.  Huge thanks to DIRT vet Bryan Navarro for helping us learn the ropes!

Each team has a name that is based on a Portuguese word or phrase (some are still working on their pronunciation!) so they made videos that loosely try to introduce that concept.  Take a look below to meet our teams and their individual members.

And come back in January to follow our progress as we make our way through the Amazon . . .


Here is Equipe Abacaxí (Team Pineapple):
Abacaxí Intro

Intro Video Final from Shawny Anderson on Vimeo.



And here is Frigideira (Skillet):
Frigideira Intro

Equpie Frigideira Intro Video from Shawny Anderson on Vimeo.



And our team with the longest name -- Panificadora Carequinha (Little Baldy's Bakery):
Panificadora Carequinha




And our earlybird team who woke up to catch sunrise over Saint Mary's -- Fique Tranquilo (Stay Calm):
Fique Tranquilo

 Fique Tranquilo shooting video in the shade of a tree, practicing the axiom "The world is your tripod!"

Students beamed with pride when they showed the finished videos.

A captive audience in the video lab as we screen all four videos.

Our Retreat Project

For our first retreat, we always take on a project in collaboration with Julie Welch, the saintly steward of the on-campus SMC Legacy Garden.  This year Julie secured funding for a long-awaited trellis to be built at the top of the garden.  The trellis will provide shelter for certain shade-loving plants and maybe even the occasional human.  Several vets from prior DIRT trips helped set the posts in concrete a couple of days before our group arrived to build the rest of the structure.  (Thanks, Scott, Dennis, Gabe, Chris, Dylan, Connor, Megan, Meghan and newcomer Hoi!)

Here are some selected pictures from that day.