October 23

Last weekend was a rather low-key weekend. We had been working hard and were ready for a slower pace, even for only two days. We chopped wood, did laundry, and went into town on Saturday. Leadville was having its annual Assets Expo. Over thirty booths advertised local businesses. There was free food for anyone who took some precious time out of their thrift store shopping to walk over there. Once again, there was an "interesting" theme for Saturday dinner, GenderBender. Each student dressed in the opposite gender's clothes, prompting some interesting outfits. After the delicious and slightly awkward meal, we carved pumpkins. Maureen brought in numerous pumpkins from her mother's garden for us to carve. Designs included many "XIX"s as well as creative witches and spiders. After cleaning up the pumpkin mess, and saving some of it for muffins the next morning, people watched either "Indiana Jones" or "Miracle." Sunday morning was full of the loud snores of sleepers and the loud yells of quidditch players. Many people woke up early to play quidditch in the fresh six inches of snow on the field. The rest of Sunday was spent baking, watching movies, swimming at the pool, or hanging out at Provin' Grounds (the local coffee shop).

The week started off with Yoga for AMX; Richard Simmons also made a guest appearance. In science, we learned about the rock cycle, and, in history, we studied the events leading up to the Revolutionary War. Karl's roommate, Amanda, taught an activity in which we used old topographical maps as the inspiration for two-dimensional art. Tuesday morning's cook crew made blueberry pancakes while everyone else went out for field games. For English class, we went into downtown Leadville to write letter poems, which were imitations of work by Richard Hugo. We began our discussion of plate tectonics in science. For activities, we cut loose a bit at the local pool with its water slides and water basketball court. Wednesday morning was the PSAT. There was a bit of stress in the air, but what better place to take a standardized test than looking out a big window on the distant snow-covered mountains?

Though Thursday was a fairly normal day, the excitement was building for Parents' Weekend. We finalized our poems in English, worked on our leadership models in P&P, and cleaned our cabins. Before dinner Molly and the rest of the faculty surprised us all by taking us to a BBQ. We drove for ten minutes to a picnic area where we got to eat all the burgers and hotdogs we could. We got a wiffle-ball game going and socialized. The next day was filled with a bit of stress and lots of excitement. This was the day we were going to see our parents. We had classes as usual, but after we cleaned and made the HMI campus look as good as new, we all got into the vans at six and drove to Molly and Christopher's house where our parents were waiting. As we drove up, we all saw our parents. Many of us had mixed feelings about seeing them again - we missed them, but seeing them was also a reminder that the semester was half over. Everyone greeted each other on Molly's driveway. We went to dinner in town with our families, taking a lot of pride in getting to show our parents around this town we've started calling another home. After dinner, everyone met back at campus for a campfire, with stories, songs and words of wisdom from Molly and Christopher. After the fire and a pretty full day, everyone went to bed for a much needed rest, some to stay with their family in town, and some to stay in their own bed at HMI.

Saturday morning started as usual with AMX, except that our parents came along, too! We just went for a short walk down to the Beaver Pond and back, but it was nice to spend some time with our parents and be able to introduce them to all of our new friends. When we got back, we had breakfast. It was a delicious breakfast with the longest food line in the history of Who's Hall. We took our parents to all of our classes and gave them a tour of campus. In science class, we did an interpretive dance of different geological phenomena. It was funny to see our parents try and dance. In math, we went on a scavenger hunt to find measurements of different things, such as the distance of Mt. Elbert to HMI, the height of the tallest tree on campus, and real world representations of 30-60-90 triangles. In history, we had a debate between the federalists and anti-federalists. For English we read our "Parents' Weekend Poems" that we had been working on all week for our parents. Some of the parents cried while we read the poems because they were so touched. It was an extraordinary experience to see the effect of our writing on other people. After lunch we had some free time with our parents to go hang out and shop in town. Saturday night was our formal dinner, so we got all dressed up with our parents and came to dine in Who's Hall, the Library, and the Classroom and then had dessert in the climbing hall. Afterwards we saw a slideshow of pictures from the first half of the semester. After the slideshow, we said goodbye to all our friends and left with our parents to spend the rest of the weekend with them.

By: Kelley Hall, Sam McBride, Keith Snyder, and John Marino