March 29

RMS XX had an amazing Saturday and Sunday. Saturday started off with a quiet morning of classes. After classes, the main focus became the trip to town to prepare for the first dance hosted by cabin 4. Everyone checked out the thrift store in town to see if there were any costumes worthy of wearing to the Hunter Hippie-themed dance. The cabin reps bought soda and balloons to deck out the climbing hall. After chopping some wood to restock our piles and eating dinner, everyone changed into their chosen costume and headed to the climbing hall. We kicked off the dance with Danny's new Karaoke machine. Cabin four sang some Spice Girls, and Joe and Wiley wrapped up the singing with some High School Musical. Logan pumped up the music, and for the next two hours, everyone was tearing up the dance floor only interrupted with some random water balloons thrown by Danny. Sunday was an optional ski day. The first crew left at 8:45 to hit the slopes at Ski Cooper early; the rest of RMS XX showed up at 11. Sunday was also the first time we were allowed to rent equipment, so there was a nice addition of snowboarders to our crew. Everyone was ready for study Hall and sleep Sunday night after 6 straight hours of skiing.

We began the school week with a regular Monday of classes. Because it is the last week before spring break, teachers have set deadlines in almost every class. Both the intermediate and advanced Spanish classes, some of the math classes, and the AP US history class had tests. For English, we have been applying the final touches to our Parents' Weekend poems, which we will read to our parents in class on Saturday. Our poetry unit, which we began on the Winter Expedition two weeks ago, has been preparing us for this final event. On Tuesday, for English Class, we went into downtown Leadville to write a letter poem to someone from Leadville; in the poem we described the town and how it related to us for a bit of practice. For Tuesday activities, a handful of us went into town with Kate to do a photowalk, where we walked around downtown Leadville with an assignment: to take a picture of something small, something large, something you can only find in Leadville, and a picture with a Leadville local. We had a lot of laughs getting rejected by possible photo subjects and enjoyed getting a little extra time downtown. In Science, we've been cranking out final drafts of our group Field Studies from the winter expedition. To break from the difficult scientific research, we drove to Twin Lakes during our Science Lab on Wednesday to see the glacial features in the surrounding landscape first hand. As an incentive to do well on the test, the Advanced Spanish class drove into town on Wednesday with Ben and Kate for a lunch at the delicious local Mexican restaurant, Manuelita's. They enjoyed ordering a delicious authentic Mexican lunch while practicing their speaking skills.

This Thursday started off like any other day but quickly became one of the most surprising days. We headed out at 6:45am for our first 6-mile run of the Fish Hatchery loop; everyone finished in awesome style. We then continued on to the normal morning routine of breakfast and chores. As soon we finished chores we were told to meet in Who's Hall for what we thought was a quick announcement. Molly proceeded to tell us how we were a good semester on the brink of making the step to great. She then turned the announcements over to Porter who announced that we were all head to Ski Cooper for one final day of skiing before Parents' Weekend and Spring Break. After a very fun day of skiing, where a few students actually took runs on a tandem tele ski, we all piled back into the vans and headed back to HMI in time for last period classes and cook crew. After dinner and study hall we headed back to our cabins at 9:45 and cleaned for the cabin inspection the following morning.

Friday was busy preparing for Parents’ Weekend. We made sure to do our chores extra well, and we cleaned again in the afternoon just to make sure everything is ready. One of the Pre-calculus classes learned about mathematical induction, while another class shot off potato guns. In English, we read our Parents’ Weekend poems aloud to practice. In French, we continued to read Le Petit Prince. Also, we just finished our winter field studies in Science class. In addition to classes, we had cabin cleaning and inspection that was worth double points. The girls' cabins were pretty spotless, but Cabin Four won with three bribes, including a cheat sheet of all of our parents and conversation starters for Cooper. After classes we were driven to Molly and Christopher's house to see our parents. After eating at a restaurant in town, we all made our way back to campus for a campfire and student performances. Some played songs on their guitars, some read poetry, the apprentices contributed a song, and Molly and Christopher read some entertaining and poignant essays. On Saturday, we fully immersed our parents into life at the RMS. We took them to classes, showed them around campus, cooked them meals, gave them little glimpses into what goes on around here. We read them our poems in English class. Sharing a poem that we wrote was really intimidating but also a really powerful experience to try to describe all that the RMS has come to mean for each of us. Some even cried. We did some interpretive geology dances in Science, trying to mimic the movements of a fault or mountain building. After a formal dinner in the evening, we all settled into Who's Hall for a slideshow of the first two months of RMS XX. So many pictures from what seems like so long ago (even though it's only two months). It's pretty amazing how much we've done it so little time. And now we depart for Spring Break. Having some time to take it easy will be nice, but we'll miss each other and the whole community a lot. I don't think anyone is totally excited to leave, and we'll certainly all be ready to come back and make the most out of the second half of the semester.

By: Jane Strader, Haley Preston, Lauren Maricle, and Zoë Solomon

Upper Photo: Cooper Mallozzi explains glacial geology at Twin Lakes.

Lower Photo: Students and parents do their best interpretation of a fault in science class.