Green Key

LAST WEEKEND WAS GREEN KEY!



Green Key is one of the three big weekends at Dartmouth (the others being Homecoming in the fall and Winter Carnival in the winter) and it was a blast! Depending on who you ask, Green Key started anytime between Monday and Thursday of last week, though the consensus is generally Wednesday. What is Green Key? Well, basically it's a chance for Dartmouth students to relax, enjoy each other's company and frolic in the sun.

There were a lot of parties, both during the day and at night. They weren't just typical frat parties though - there were parties with bands and pig roasts and big inflatable toys. The weather was, for the most part, gorgeous. All the pictures above are from my Green Key weekend.

Explanations of photos, clockwise from top right corner:

1. On Thursday, my Introduction to the Dartmouth Outing Club PE class went to practice woodsmen's skills with a member of the Dartmouth Forestry Team. We threw axes (this picture shows my only successful attempt), sawed logs, made fires, tossed logs around and did some other lumberjack-y things. It was great!

2. One of the fraternities had a paint party and it was amazing. Their house is being torn down and rebuilt this summer, so they provided nontoxic, washable paint for everyone to throw all over themselves and the basement. It was a huge, colorful dance party and was, in my opinion, one of my favorite parties of the weekend.

3. This picture is from another fraternity party we went to, but this one didn't involve any paint. We got to dress up and be classy and eat hor d'oeuvres!

4. My other favorite party of the weekend was definitely Block Party, where this picture was taken. Webster Avenue was closed to cars and a band came to play on the front lawn of a fraternity. It was on Friday afternoon, the weather was glorious and everyone was carefree and happy. This is also where the inflatables were. It doesn't get much better than this.

5. This was Saturday night, pre-dance parties. Green Key was great because I got to meet a lot of new people (everyone for some reason seemed friendlier over the weekend) and hang out with friends who have been really busy lately.

6. Just throwing some axes, don't worry about it!

Awesome video!

I just found this video and it's amazing! It reminds me why I love it here so much!

My week

I'm busy once again studying for a chemistry test. Luckily this is the last term of chem I'm taking (if you can't tell by now, chemistry is NOT my subject). Tonight I'm going to a high school stereotypes themed party and I think I'm going as a teacher's pet - jumper, polo, headband, etc. My friend Angie is going as a foreign exchange student, so yesterday we went to West Lebanon (home of Wal-Mart, Kmart, TJ Maxx and some other stores) to find her a Hello Kitty mini-backpack. I was really skeptical that we would be able to find one (it's a little... specific, especially to be hunting for in a small New Hampshire town) but the first store we went to had a Hello Kitty mini-backpack on sale for $6. What a steal!

We also went into a pet store and looked at a bunch of rodents and birds. They had a 14-year-old parrot that cost $10,000. After that we came back to Hanover and saw the movie Babies at the Nugget, the local movie theater where movies are only $4.50 for Dartmouth students. Babies was possibly the cutest movie ever. EVER. It's essentially clips of babies' lives for an hour and a half with no dialogue.

Next post: First Year Parents Weekend! My parents were here last weekend and it was wonderful.

Student Assembly elections

I was assigned to the Student Assembly beat for The D this term, which means I got to cover the student body presidential and vice presidential elections in April (part of the reason I was so busy)!

It was really cool to know what was going on all the time with the elections. I got to talk to the candidates a lot and meet people I would probably never have met otherwise. It also taught me a lot about SA, which is basically Dartmouth's student government organization, and what issues that are important to different groups on campus.

Eric Tanner '11 won the presidency and Brandon Aiono '11 won the vice presidency so any of you '14s reading this will likely hear Eric (and maybe Brandon) speak at some point during orientation.

Here they are! This picture is taken from The D website and went along with an article I wrote about Eric (who's one the left) and Brandon.

Catherine's visit!

A few weeks ago my best friend from home visited me at Dartmouth! She's a freshman at Georgetown and came up during their Easter break. The weather cooperated and it was in the mid-70s the whole time she was here!

She said it felt like we were at Camp Dartmouth because it was so warm and everyone was basking on the Green. It was a great weekend because it was right after the first week of classes for spring term so life hadn't gotten quite so busy yet.

It was great to show her everything here! She saw The D offices and Foco (Food Court) and the places where I spend all my time. We walked down and sat by the Connecticut River one night and we hiked to the Gile Mountain fire tower one evening. The fire tower has gorgeous 360° views of the area. It's near Norwich, VT (about 15 minutes away from campus) but you can see Baker Tower and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center from the top!

We also dyed eggs for Easter and went to a fraternity dance party (these two things are very unrelated, but I just wanted to give you a comprehensive idea of what we did while she was here).

Overall we had a great weekend together!

Spring break

It's been a long time since my last post - sorry everybody! I thought spring term would be less chaotic than winter, but I'm realizing that every term here is crazy busy (in the best way possible!). I'm going to go ahead and break up things that have happened recently into different posts so that I don't scare you off with an overwhelmingly long essay about my life (though I'm sure everyone is dying to read something like that, right?). So that leads me into...

SPRING BREAK!

It was almost a month ago now, but it was unbelievably fun! I went with the ultimate frisbee team to a tournament in Georgia. We road tripped down in a bunch of minivans that we rented from the College. There were about 85 of us total!

As you may have realized, New Hampshire is not all that close to Georgia, so it was a ton of driving to get down there. The driving was one of my favorite parts though (no joke). I got to meet a bunch of male and female frisbee players I didn't already know or know very well.

We stayed at people's family's houses all down the East Coast and it was wonderful! Everyone's parents were incredibly generous and kind and it was so relaxing to be back in a home, even if it wasn't mine.

And then we played frisbee in Georgia, and the first day it was really hot (yay sunburns!). The second day was rainy but it was still fun. I am from Seattle after all, so the rain is pretty familiar. After Georgia, we went up to beach houses in South Carolina. It was so idyllic! We had two houses right on the beach and we went on beach walks and perused cute little shops and hung out. I found the best shell I've ever found too! This doesn't sound very exciting, but trust me, it's a pretty great shell.

After that we road tripped back up to Hanover. I was nervous about the trip beforehand because I felt like I didn't know most of the people very well, but it was a fantastic (how many positive adjectives can I use in one post? This is just how great it was!) experience and now I want to go every year. I got to go to a bunch of states I'd never been to before - Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia - and meet new people and relax and play frisbee. We also played a lot of Bananagrams, which I highly recommend to everyone if you've never played before!

Summary: Spring break was wonderful/excellent/lovely/awesome/amazing/fantastic! Sorry for the blogging hiatus - I'm back in action now.

End of term

I have not been very good about updating my blog lately, but it's been a very hectic end of term. I miraculously managed to not fail chemistry.

My mom visited at the very beginning and we went to Boston together, which was great. I hadn't seen my mom for three and a half months and I really missed her. We went shopping and walked around (but only a little - the weather was crazy bad!).

She also came up to campus for a day or so before we went to Boston, so I got to show her around. We walked legitimately everywhere we could on campus - Occom Pond, Leverone Field House, my dorms by the Connecticut River, etc. If you look at a map of campus, you'll see that we criss-crossed it a lot. I also showed her the newsroom at The D (where I spend probably 10 hours a week) and how I walk to class and such.

Tomorrow is her birthday so I'm mailing her a package with coffee from Dirt Cowboy Cafe and a book and seeds and a card. And confetti, which will probably make a mess when she opens the package but it's pretty and sparkly so hopefully she won't mind.

I love Dartmouth students because...

When someone forgets their ID card (which you use to buy food) or the strip on theirs won't swipe, more than one student will say, "Here, you can use mine."

It warms my heart a little every time I see someone buy a stranger's meal. It sounds corny but it's true.

Cool classes

There is an English class here called "Bob Dylan" and it focuses on reading Bob Dylan lyrics. Is that not insanely cool? I want to take this class so badly. SO BADLY. Maybe Sophomore Summer? Next term I'm taking a class called "Learning and Education Across Cultures" and another called "The Anthropology of International Health." Sometimes I'm blown away by the awesome classes we have access to here. None of the above mentioned classes even have prerequisites.

I just looked up the professor who teaches the class about Bob Dylan. His areas of expertise are:

"19th- and early 20th-century American literature; literary theory; autobiography; Edgar Allan Poe; Wallace Stevens; Robert Frost; Bob Dylan."

Amazing!

Winter wonderland

I'm sitting in the Tower Room right now - it's a pleasant, sleep-inducing room with green velvety chairs and nice woodwork (it all looks very Ivy League collegiate, if that makes sense). The above pictures are me, obviously not studying, and the view from my chair in the Tower Room.

It snowed a lot last night, and it finally looks like I imagined Hanover winter would. I love seeing the tree branches covered in snow, but then they drop clumps of it on you when you're not expecting it. Later I'm going to go out onto the Green or the area right in front of the library and dance around for my parents on the Baker Tower webcam.

Steam tunnel

Last week I had the opportunity to tour the steam plant and take a walk through the steam tunnel. It was actually one of the coolest things I've done at Dartmouth. The heat on campus is steam-powered, so next to the Hopkins Center is a plant that churns out a ton of steam - there's a huge smokestack that comes out of the building that's always spewing steam into the air.

To get to the tunnel, our tour guide, who if I recall correctly was the plant manager, opened a hatch in the ground that looked like the entrance to a bomb shelter. So down we went, probably about 10-15 underground. The tunnel runs all the way from the power plant to the Moore Building, and runs right next to the Green and Baker-Berry.

The tunnel was about the size of my dorm hallway (relatively large, I thought) and there were big pipes that carried really hot steam to different buildings. Apparently the tunnel pays for itself because it has made it so much easier to get heating to new buildings on campus.

And we saw a little white mouse right when we got down there and our tour guide speculated it had gotten away from a science building.

Winter Carnival!

It's Winter Carnival this weekend and I'm loving every minute of it. Every year there is a snow sculpture on the Green (you can read my article in The Dartmouth about its history if you'd like) and this year we have our very own replica of the Colosseum, to match the theme "I Came. I Saw. I Carnivaled."


The opening ceremony for Carnival included a performance by the Cords, who are one of my favorite a capella groups on campus, a speech by President Jim Kim (with some pretty funny references to the Hanover Police Department's new alcohol policies), ski team members holding torches, and fireworks. I went to FoCo (aka Food Court) afterward for dinner and President Kim and his family were there. His baby is adorable and President Kim was incredibly friendly when students came up to introduce themselves, even though he was eating dinner with his family.



There have been lots of fun parties this weekend and today I went to the Occom Pond Party, which is an event set up for students and the community on Occom Pond. There were so many wonderfully cute little kids and we went for a sleigh ride and took pictures of the different little ice sculptures. My friends and I also got to go up in Baker Tower, which was awesome because we got breathtaking views of the campus.



Yesterday I did the Polar Bear Swim, which involved waiting in line for two hours to jump into a hole cut in Occom Pond. It was exhilarating and the weather was beautiful and then I went and picked up a care package from my parents. All in all yesterday was an excellent day, as was today.


P.S. I know my neon orange crocheted swimsuit from the thrift store makes you jealous! And hopefully by now you realize the picture of the person jumping into the pond isn't me; that's my floormate Harry.

Dartmouth haikus

Today is sunny.
So pretty - frolicking time?
Still below freezing.

The tests never stop.
Midterms are way too often.
Just call them exams.

Winter Carnival!
I am psyched for this weekend.
Dartmouth is awesome.

Procrastination.
Oh dear, my chem lab is soon.
Better get to work.

Mr. President

Dartmouth students are unbelievably creative and talented. This is a video created by two senior members of the Dartmouth Chords, one of the a capella groups on campus. The love for President Jim Kim on this campus is amazing. I saw him once walking out of Parkhurst (the administrative building) and we smiled and waved at each other and it made my day. I still smile just thinking about it.

Dartmouth word cloud!

I have this obsession with a website called Wordle. You essentially just type in words (or copy and paste them from the Dartmouth Admission website!) and it will create a word cloud. The more times you type a word when you're creating your Wordle, the larger it will be. Like I said, I'm obsessed. I used one for a presentation in my writing class Fall Term and everyone was impressed. If only they knew how easy it was.

The River

I have a love-hate relationship with my residence hall (aka dorm). On one hand, I have a lovely group of friends from my building. On the other, the building itself is old in a not-old-enough-to-be-quaint sort of way. I think it was built in the 1960s, which was generally not a very good decade for architecture. Its aesthetically qualities are only minimally bothersome though - it's really the combination of being far away and in an ugly building that make me resent my classmates in other residence halls sometimes.

Stand With Haiti

As I'm sure you know, Haiti was struck by a catastrophic earthquake last week. The lack of infrastructure and enormous level of poverty have made this disaster particularly devastating. As you may also know, Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim is one of the founders of Partners In Health, an organization that has been working on health-related projects in Haiti for over 20 years.

Although the earthquake is tragic, it has been inspiring to see the way the Dartmouth community has mobilized help the Haitian people. There is one team of Dartmouth medical professionals already in Haiti and another is departing this week.

Student leaders have organized a group called Students at Dartmouth for Haiti Relief (SDHR). Normally I try not to post a list of links, but this is a special circumstance. I hope everyone will consider donating to Partners In Health, as this organization is one of the few working Haiti with the previously established resources to efficiently care for people.

Partners In Health: Stand With Haiti

Donate to Partners In Health

SDHR Facebook page

P.S. Here's a picture of me at the SDHR kick-off event (taken by my wonderful classmate and fellow blogger Brian Kim '13)! I'm on the left.

Random thoughts

• Are non-Dartmouth people as aware of the current crisis in Haiti following the earthquake? I think perhaps people here are more acutely aware because of President Kim's work in Haiti with Partners In Health. I feel for the Haitians and I'm praying for them.

• I like walking through the engineering school (which I have to do to get to main campus from my residence hall) and seeing frisbee people I know. They're all so friendly and hardworking. Note to future engineers: Thayer School of Engineering is a very cool building that I plan to explore with a floormate soon, but carved in several places is, "To prepare the most capable and faithful for the most responsible positions and the most difficult service." No pressure or anything.

• I really want to go on this trip I heard about recently. It's 10 days after the end of Spring Term. About 15 students go to Eastern Europe and visit concentration camps and historical sites and then restore a Jewish cemetery that has fallen into disrepair after being disassembled or misused by the Nazis during WWII. It sounds so powerful. I can't even express how much I want to go. Apparently about 60 people apply to go every year though, so it's a competitive application pool. Here's the website for Project Preservation!

• My Little Sister (through Big Brother Big Sister) came over today and we painted nails and made popcorn and played Go Fish. And ran around A LOT. As in up and down this five-story building many times. She's asthmatic though so we had to stop when she started wheezing a little bit. Next time she's going to bring her inhaler with her. We had a lot of fun though, and every time I see her she comes out of her shell a little more. Today she told me that her dad is in jail right now (I think this is a recent development), which makes me realize even more the disparities between the life of privilege most of us at Dartmouth are living and the lives of people in the surrounding communities. It makes all the mentoring programs (and there are a lot - BBBS, DREAM, etc.) at Dartmouth seem even more important.

• I'm going to lunch with my dean next week. Doesn't that seem cool? I think it's amazing that he goes to lunch with students. I have questions about study abroad and my D-Plan (aka my plan for when I'm going to be on-campus and such for the next three and a half years) so his invitation came at just the right time.

• My room is cold. I thought the heating was fixed but I think just the common room heating is working properly right now.
  

Wow I have a lot of random thoughts. I'm sure I'll have more to share soon. I have a lot of work to do but I've been procrastinating. I hate chemistry.

Strangers like me

I love that other Dartmouth students care about things like where they sit in class or at music events. I have Chem 5 (an intro chem class) at 10AM across campus and my friend a floor below me has decided we need to leave at 9:38 every morning to get there so we can sit near the friend. And it's great. In high school I was always the one hustling my friends out the door so we could sit right in the middle of the movie theater (embarrassingly enough, I went through a phase where I would count the rows and number of seats in each row and sit in the exact middle).

I'm sure there are people at Dartmouth who don't care about these types of things as much (i.e. those kids that come into every class 15 minutes late and plop in the back), but it's easier to find the conscientious ones here than it it was at home.

P.S. "Strangers Like Me" is a wonderful song from Tarzan. Check it out yo.

Off-campus programs

I know I said I would post things I don't like about Dartmouth but there's something else I want to do instead so I'll do that later. Applications for Foreign Study Programs and Language Study Abroad trips are due February 1 so I have to figure out if I want to do one next year and if so where I want to go. Here are ones that sound interesting to me:

• Anthropology/Linguistics FSP in Auckland, New Zealand
• Spanish LSA in Barcelona, Spain
• Geography FSP in Prague, Czech Republic
• Religion FSP in Edinburgh, UK
• Asian and Middle Eastern Studies/Women and Gender Studies FSP in Hyderabad, India

Ideally I would do an off-campus program during the winter so I could avoid the cold and such, but apparently they are very competitive. Upperclassmen have told me it's a good idea to apply to a lot that interest me to up my chances of getting one of them. Technically I'm exempt from the language requirement because of all the Latin I've taken, but I still want to take a spoken language at Dartmouth which is why the Spanish LSA appeals to me. But honestly that all sound good. I don't know how I'll choose!

If you'd like, you can peruse Dartmouth's off-campus programs yourself.