September 30th

On Saturday night the 24^th, everyone dressed in his or her best western outfits for the square dance. Flannels, cut-offs, and cowboy boots were the style of choice for the night. A traditional Western cowboy came and taught us many dances in the cul-de-sac. There was a variety of dances, including the Cotton-Eyed-Joe, the Electric Slide and even a surprise swing dance, the favorite for the night. It all came to a close with a 200-year old dance-off where two suitors would try to woo a mate. The lucky individual would then pick one partner and leave the other on a bench with a flower to take their position: two more options for a fine suitor. Overall the night was really eventful and fun. As the dust settled we all walked inside to a delicious juicy steak dinner.

After the weekend, we jumped right into our last few days of classes before expedition. The workload has been tough but interesting (as always!). In Science, we had our first test! It was a very different form of test taking than we are used to because it involved leaving the classroom. We went to four different locations, less than 15 minutes from campus, and had to observe our surroundings. With these observations, we had to answer a set of questions for each designated spot. As for History, we had to apply our knowledge of the colonization of the Americas and its influence on slavery for an essay-based test. Both French and Spanish had presentations this week, which have really helped us to gain confidence in speaking the languages. Lastly, Math with MC and Karl is awesome! Whether Algebra II, Trigonometry, Pre-calculus or Calculus, we all agree that Math here at HMI—since it is smaller than our usual classes at home—allows us to gain a better and more in-depth understanding of the material. It has been an excellent week academically, a great way to conclude the past month on campus before we head out on second expedition!

Even with such a full week, we had a major change-up from the regular academic schedule. On Thursday we had Project Day, a day filled with fun tasks that needed to get done on campus. Some activities in the morning included trail work, fence building, and tree planting. The trail work involved building bridges along the mile-long loop trail, and hanging a pull-up bar off of two trees along the trail. In the afternoon some of the activities involved library work, staining outside furniture, and best of all, cleaning the grease traps and crawl spaces. Getting down and dirty, we spooned out globs of grease with ladles and spoons, putting it in tripled-up trash bags. It was quite gross and smelly! Finally we all finished the day landscaping. We shoveled mulch into wheelbarrows, dispersed it over a dirt area, then raked it out nice n’ purty. All in all, we got a lot of work done and had a blast on Project Day.

It was quite bewildering to us students when, during activity sign-ups, the activity list was posted with a range of options from “feeding tigers” to “washing diapers.” Half of the groups were told to come to activities dressed as pirates and the other half dressed as ninjas. At 2:30 on Monday, forty-two costume clad students showed up in Who’s Hall. To our dismay (laughs) all of the aforementioned activities were a hoax. Instead, we were about to take part in a school-wide game of Pirates vs. Ninjas Capture the Flag. Rules of the game: Each team hid a flag on their respective side. Flags were items from the school lost and found or “vortex” (namely a smelly towel and a cowboy hat). The deck connecting Who’s Hall and The West Building served as a boundary between the enemy territories. Now, before you start thinking this was just your average game of Pirates vs. Ninjas Capture the Flag, think again. Apprentices roamed around in various costumes (I spotted a leprechaun and a clown) and tagged unsuspecting students. Once tagged, we had the misfortune of choosing from the apprentices’ bags of spells. In the spell repertoire were: “you are now stuck in the mud” or “walk on all fours.” In the end, the victory could not be deciphered. But let’s be real, Ninjas certainly have the competitive edge.

By: Arielle Gordon-Rowe, Gavin Arnold, Danny Icaza-Milson and Andrew Meyer