Dinner circle on Saturday night was full of energy as all of our DCMS buddies were with us for the haunted house! After eating dinner with our buddies, the pres. room was full of flour, and fake blood made out of cornstarch, food coloring and water, preparing for the haunted house. From zombies to rag dolls, we were excited to give our buddies a good scare. [slideshow] I walked through the haunted house with a group of DCMS students, lead by Lexi, Lauren C. and Connor. Shortly after arriving at the farm, Connor was dragged into a pile of leaves, and instead of proceeding to walk and be chased by zombies as intended, the DCMS kids stayed back to try to save Connor, and some of them were so scared they started to cry. The rest of the walk through the farm wasn’t too scary until we arrived to the end of the farm where we were greeted with the image of Jake eating Chris’s guts, what were really bananas. We continued to walk to the boathouse. From a glance, there was nothing that stood out as scary, until students under the dock started spraying air tanks up through the wood, causing screaming from DCMS students, and even some to run away. We were able to escape the boathouse and make it to the upper dining hall deck, where Gray was standing in the back eerily, dressed in a burlap sack, and chains. Instead of running away from Gray, the kids decided that it was a good idea to fight him. After getting the kids detached from Gray, we met back up as a big group in the dining hall, and the students continued to trick or treat at the faculty apartments. I had a great time in the haunted house, and I hope that all of our buddies did, too.
On Sunday, we started to get back into our normal routine, post kayak rotations. In our art class Sunday afternoon, we started to plan for the art show parents’ weekend. Following our art class we had community meeting, and the new Caciques for the week were chosen. This weeks Caciques are Tom, Spencer, Nora, Eunna, and Caroline. We split into dorms for a dorm activity after the community meeting. The girls were split into color groups for dorm bonding at CEI. When we got to CEI, Brady split us up into our groups to do the human knot. My group first tried with 15 people, which was fun, but not very successful. Everyone was cramped together, and we couldn’t figure out how to untangle because some people had one hand at the bottom of the pile and the other at the top. After attempting the human knot, we split up into our color groups, and chatted about how we thought we were during so far in the semester. My group talked about how we loved that everyone is getting along really well, because living with 26 other girls in such a small place is not always easy. We got back together in the big group, and a lot of people were talking about how we only have a month left together, but I like to think about it as we still have a month left together. Tatum said, “don’t count the days, make the days count”, which is something that really stood out to me, because I still want to enjoy all the time I have left here. We broke up again into our color groups for a relay race, consisting of a wheelbarrow race, a three-legged race, and leap frog, before getting back together in a big group, and doing the activity “reach out and touch somebody”. One group would sit in the middle of the circle, and another group walked around the outside, and Brady would say something like, reach out and touch somebody you think is strong, or reach out and touch somebody you want to get to know better, then you would tap people on the head that you think of when you hear the statement. That activity was great because it showed that people think of you, and really respect you in ways that you had no idea about. I was amazed at how touched people were by the activity, and was really glad that we did it. Overall, dorm bonding was really successful, and I’m looking forward to getting to know people even better over the next month!