All of yesterday, students were impatiently waiting for the arrival of their parents and families.  At 4:45, we finally were done with our last campus and dorm clean up, and were able to wait outside the steps of Girls’ South, to watch the cars pull in.  As the cars would pull in one by one, students looked to see whose car it was, and then one lucky student took off into a sprint towards the car to embrace their family.  I was standing on the balcony of Girls’ South, and even people whose families hadn’t arrived were crying, happy to see their friends reunited with theirs.  As families all connected again, it was so interesting to see how students interacted with their parents and families, because we have never seen that before.

After our parents arrived, we took them over to CEI to see the art show in the octagon.  The theme of our gallery was “branching out”, and we had branches and vines all over the octagon.  Inside the octagon, people were buzzing around looking at all of the students’ artwork.  Living in such a small community, it was really overwhelming to have so many more people in such a small place, because we are not used to that.  Dinner circle was crowded, with everyone crammed into the area outside the flagpole, and John welcomed all of our parents and families to the Island School before we headed in for dinner.  At dinner, I heard a lot of parents, including my own, asking about napkins. It was really weird to think about how we are so used to these daily routines, and things like no napkins at meals seem so normal to us, but from someone coming outside, they have no idea.  Dish crew was especially interesting due to the tripled number of dishes, and number of people doing dishes.  We finally completed all of them, and then parents had to leave so that we could get ready for our research presentations, which are happening this morning.  I am a little nervous for the presentation this morning because there are so many people, but I think that we have practiced a lot, and everyone will do great.