November 8, 2008

As we prepare to leave for the canyons in Utah, we have been incredibly busy in the classroom. Many of us are trying to get in last minute assignments, during the “crunch time.” One of the assignments we have recently completed was our lyric essay for English, in which we were to weave three strands together in a cohesive story. We chose a natural phenomenon, a story from our family, and a section of A River Runs Through It, and fused them together into our essays. We also just finished papers in intermediate and advanced Spanish. In intermediate Spanish, we wrote letters (in Spanish, of course) home to our parents about how RMS XXI is going for us. For advanced Spanish, we wrote letters to politicians including John McCain, Barack Obama, Bill Ritter (governor of Colorado) and George W. Bush about their immigration policies. We have also had quizzes in multiple classes including Spanish, English, French, and science.

Just as classes came to a halt before expedition, and we finally felt relieved, we received our homework for our third expedition. However, it must be noted that there is much less homework for this expedition compared to the others. We will be reading Into the Wild, by Jon Kraukauer for English, completing a field study and species account for science, and reading for P&P. The academic load for this expedition is much lighter, for which we are all grateful!

This week there have been a variety of special activities that have helped all of us de-stress during a busy week of academics and getting ready to depart for the third expedition. On Monday some of us participated in the photography activity in which Harrison taught us about using the f-stop and shutter speed on our cameras in order to take a picture with more contrast, light, and focus. Other students have been knitting during activity periods this week. Many students are knitting hats or scarves, which they hope will keep them warm in the chilly days of Leadville’s winter (which are fast approaching – or maybe even here!). Like all Fridays we had three activities: tutoring, recycling, and nature journals. The tutoring students did a variety of things this week; some work with the ESL (English as a Second Language) students while others tutored in seventh grade math in which they worked on graphs with the students. The students in the nature art journals activity composed works in which they juxtaposed the natural world with human-made objects. This week’s activities were a welcome distraction from the big workload leading up the third expedition and Thanksgiving break.

In addition to all the activities and school, we have been ramping up our efforts in AMX. We ran six miles for AMX on Monday and Friday, and two on Wednesday (in celebration of Tuesday’s election). On Tuesday we had some very competitive games of soccer, basketball, and ultimate Frisbee. Then on Thursday we had a fun time coming up with stretches to go along with the story of the princess and DJ dinosaur. Saturday we had an extreme game of mingle followed by an action-packed snowball fight.

Chores have recently taken on a new form with an added element: snow. On Wednesday it started snowing and by Thursday we woke up to many inches of snow outside the cabins. This has led to tons of snowball fights tucked into our very busy schedule. It was perfect timing for the snow seeing as we have finally gotten the hang of our many chores, and have now moved onto helping the outside crew with shoveling. With all this hard work, it is a good thing that cook crew has been very busy making many new and creative meals. Some highlights have been "Thanksgiving" dinner, risotto, potato pancakes, and breakfast sandwiches.

While the week has been cranking away, the student expedition leaders (SELs) or “SELLouts” as we have affectionately been dubbed, have been busily working away to get ready for our final expedition. We SELs had our first meeting last week with Justin, the wilderness programs manager, to discuss the expedition. In that meeting, Andrew, MoBrien, Jeannie and I (Brendan) learned about our respective canyons expeditions. Some of us will be hiking in the Grand Gulch area of Utah, while others will be heading to Jacobs Chair. We also planned what group and individual gear to bring on our expeditions. Then we looked at the maps of where we were going and found campsites based on the BLM's (Bureau of Land Management) records of water in and around the canyons. From there, we began to draft RAD Plans (Route And Description plans) of where we are going to travel. Though time-consuming, these plans will outline our travel for this expedition and will help us as we plan each day in the field. Lasttly, we set meetings with our Expeditions Leaders so we could plan and prepare to make our last HMI expedition as fun and successful as possible!

By: Sophie Ohaus, Becca Doll, Claire Munson and Brendan Buckland