So I usually post on the weekend (or at least I have twice) but this weekend was crazy hectic. Saturday was Vershire's annual SnowShoeathon, which is kinda sponsored/corun by the Mountain School. We'd been organizing and setting up for the previous week. The day of, an few other kids and I went down to the village to pass out snowshoes. Then, one of my dormmates, Izzy, and I hiked up the trail (which I'd already hiked down once in order to help carve the trail) behind everyone else to pick up the flags. It wasn't particularly vigorous since we had to stop and wait for every screaming child (it's hard for them), but it was freezing cold. We've had the coldest February on record here in Vermont. I'd like to say I'm getting used to it, and that might be a pretty fair claim. That isn't to say that I don't long for LA and its sunshine and my sandals but.... The worst days are always Mondays for some reason; that's when we get particularly intolerable wind. Unfortunately, they have a saying here "There's no such thing as bad weather, there's only bad clothes."
Going back to the weekend, on Sunday I attended a Tibetan Buddhist New Year's ceremony at Vershire's own Worship Center. After spending a lot of time in Thai and Burmese temples, it definitely wasn't what I imagined. They ceremony involved a lot of chanting and throwing things into fire and at one point we all threw barley flour at each other. It was pretty fun and interesting to see the differences between Thai Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. I'm hoping to return to the center on Sundays for meditation.
Over the week, I had my tree quiz - which my father finds particularly funny (his response was "just point and say 'TREE!' and you're done). In actuality, it takes a lot of practice but I can identify most trees on campus pretty well at this point. I also learned how to manage a forest, and we did a workshop with a forester on wood crew in which we looked at what types of trees are best to chop down in terms of profit, environment, animals, and tree health. We also got to play with a paint gun. In outdoor program, we went orienteering and we're meant to use a compass and a map to find six different points. My group did pretty well until we got completely lost and spent 20 minutes trudging up the road trying to find point D (which we did find, by the way). Tomorrow I heard they're dropping us off somewhere random and we have to find our way back to campus. Yipee. In science hike, we finally picked our sites - that is to say the place I'll be studying for the rest of the semester. Mine's down a hill (which you get to slide down) along a brook all the way at the property line. There looks to be a natural dam right across it. On the way back, the four of us tried to climb back the slope we slide down. It's a miracle I made it... there were moments when I was literally hanging off a tree to keep myself from sliding back onto the boy behind me.
I'm still taking care of the rams, even though tomorrow is my last day... I wonder what new adventures await me...
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