An Evening of Belly Dancing

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Annie Brown

With so much work on my plate right now, I almost didn’t go to tonight’s “Dances for Dogs” belly dancing performance, but I’m glad I did! I truly enjoyed watching tonight’s performances and learning just how talented McDaniel women are! (I also wish I had brought my camera!)

Tonight’s performance was put on to benefit Canine Companions for Independence, better known around campus as the Puppy Club. Part of the proceeds are also going toward Hurricane Sandy relief.

The show featured both group and individual performances by members past and present of McDaniel’s Belly Dancing Club. Some of the solo performances were even improvised, which I thought was super neat! In between performances, the audience got to learn some neat facts about belly dancing from the emcee. There was even a participatory element to the show: audience members were told to “yip” at any point during the performances to show their satisfaction, a belly dancing custom. People were also invited onto the stage after the show to learn some belly dancing moves from the dancers.

Tonight’s dances were outstanding. I’m curious to see what a typical meeting of Belly Dancing Club is like, and when I’m not so busy next semester, I might go to see what I can learn!

Dial-A-Pancake

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Amber Slater

The few days before Thanksgiving break can be draining. While the term papers and tests increase, we yearn for home, family, and turkey. For the past few days, I’ve dragged my feet on the way to every class and had a hard time staying focused, even though it’s such a vital part of the semester.

Tonight I got the perfect chance to take a break for a good pause. The Resident Assistants in Blanche, the dorm where some of my friends live, created an event called Dial-A-Pancake. For 50 cents each, you could have pancakes delivered right to your dorm room. We were excited when we called to order and found out that butter and various flavored syrups were available!

While munching on our pancakes, we watched the Restore the Shore telethon on MTV, which was fitting because the profits from Dial-A-Pancake went to Hurricane Sandy restoration. Seeing the devastation of the Jersey Shore was humbling and reminded me how lucky we’ve been here in Maryland and how many students will not have a home to return to for Thanksgiving break.

Even when we’re all stressed out over finals or classes, it’s important to remember how blessed we are and how much we need to help the people who have lost their homes and livelihoods. If you’re interested in helping through MTV’s Restore the Shore, click here.

Strange Days Indeed

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Annie Brown

The last four days have not been entirely typical of my experience at McDaniel College, but they’ll certainly be memorable.

After an evening of fun that involved watching McDaniel’s improv troupe Danger Sauce put on their annual Halloween show and going to Westminster Station for coffee late Friday night to support Advocacy Team’s “Music for Micro” event, I woke up bright and early Saturday morning to attend the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire with my friends Zach and Walter. The Office of Student Engagement sponsored the trip as one of their Weekend Blitz Trips, which was awesome since it only cost $10 to attend–much less than the typical cost of admission to the Ren Faire. The guys and I had a great time eating the food and watching the shows and we were fortunate that the weather held out on us, as it was quite cloudy throughout the day.

But my Saturday wasn’t over yet! When I got back to campus in the evening, I got busy preparing for my annual trip to the Rocky Horror Picture Show held at the Carroll Arts Center in Westminster. This involved making sure my prop bag (which I ended up forgetting) was in order, putting on my costume (I decided to go dressed as Janet), and finding other people to go with. In the end, I managed to go with a pretty large sized crowd who also went in costume, and we had a really fun time! I can’t wait until next year!

I guess I had too much fun on Saturday though, for on Sunday, I woke up with a garden variety cold which I’ve been dealing with for the past three days now. (I’ll spare you the details.) Conveniently for me though, Hurricane Sandy rolled into town beginning Sunday night and class was canceled yesterday and today as a result. Thus, while other people have been spending all their time getting stuff done and having fun, I’ve been spending a lot of that time trying to sleep my sickness away.

I do want to say though that I’m extremely impressed with how the College and our Department of Campus Safety have handled the situation with the weather over the past several days. As early as Friday, the student body received emails letting everyone know that the College was monitoring the storm and preparing for the worst. As the storm made its way to Westminster and McDaniel, Campus Safety sent out countless emails, Facebook posts, and tweets letting everyone know the status of the storm and how it would be affecting us here on campus. The Office of Residence Life also sent out detailed daily emails about the storm and possible situations that could have come from it.

Even though I still have some homework to tackle (thanks, cold), I’ll be glad to get back to reality tomorrow (provided my cold goes away). Two days with canceled classes and the College being closed are quite enough, and I know that people are starting to get cabin fever. Special thanks to Campus Safety, Res Life, and those who worked in the dining hall over the past few days for helping all of us here at McDaniel weather the storm!

Surviving Sandy

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Whitney Walker

Sandy has arrived with the nickname “Frankenstorm”. Three years ago campus was hit with Snowmageden, now we are being hit with a huge hurricane that has hit almost every piece of the east coast. I don’t think anyone realized how huge this storm really was until it hit land and ran into the winter storm coming from the north. Classes for today were cancelled last night. Yay! This resulted in movie marathons and fun apartment and floor bonding all over campus. Everyone found a fun way to entertain themselves as Sandy approached. Campus is very cold. I refuse to go outside. The wind sounds more like train whistles hitting the windows and the rain is coming down in a constant stream.

It was fun to hear all the people running between buildings in North Village today. I personally think they are crazy for going outside in this weather, but they seemed to enjoy themselves. There were a few people who were doing what they called, “Hurricane Runs”. They had crazy outfits on and just ran between the buildings in North Village. It was very entertaining to watch from my warm, dry apartment. There were even a few brave people playing catch in the quad with all the wind and rain. My apartment treated it like a snow day. We watched movies and played old-school video games all day. It was a fun relaxing day. They have already called off school for tomorrow as well so I’ll use tomorrow to be productive and get lots of homework finished and many papers written.

Our dining services and grounds keepers have been staying on campus throughout the storm to make sure everything on campus runs smoothly throughout the storm. Glar was open today for those students that don’t have kitchens. I’m glad I have a kitchen and did not need to go out to eat. We have been receiving e-mails from McDaniel Alert, Campus Safety, and Residence Life keeping us up to date on the storm and precautions the school is taking. I feel extremely safe here during a storm like this. It is really great that I have an awesome apartment too. We are all keeping each other entertained and trying to keep our minds off the storm as much as possible. So far we haven’t lost power and I’m hoping it stays that way. Fingers crossed!

Prep for Sandy’s Arrival

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Whitney Walker

Instead of freaking out about this storm, my apartment kept calm and prepared as best we could. Since we live with an RA we didn’t have to worry about having enough toilet paper or trash bags which was nice. We made sure to stock our pantry and refrigerator. We have flashlights and lanterns at the ready just in case the power goes out. We are prepared for anything. The Weather Channel is on almost constantly in the living room with updates running across the screen very frequently. I made sure that anything I needed to do around campus before next Wednesday was finished today.

As much as I am not looking forward to the large storm headed towards us, I don’t think Westminster will be hit too badly. The way the storm is headed now, it looks like it will barely hit our campus. Hopefully everything goes well this weekend with the storm fast approaching. I even made sure to cook a decent amount of food tonight just in case I am unable to cook in the next few days. Tonight, we are having a few friends over for dinner so that we see just a few more people other than our apartment before we all get isolated in our apartments. Usually I get scared during storms and freak out, hopefully because of the preparations I’ve made, that won’t happen.

As of right now, the storm is supposed to hit Sunday night in Maryland. No school Monday? That would be wonderful. At least this storm is a good excuse to sit down and catch up on some things and get a little ahead in school work. It’ll make the next few weeks a lot easier if I can just take a few hours stuck in my apartment to work on stuff for school that I have been avoiding because the due date is still a few weeks away. Our fingers are crossed that this storm is not “the storm of the century” that every news station is telling us to expect.

Hurricane Sandy

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Jess Hague

As everyone knows, the East Coast was severely affected by Hurricane Sandy. Places not that far from my hometown of Voorhees, New Jersey were completely destroyed–houses all up and down Atlantic City were flooded and completely destroyed. Part of the boardwalk, near the inlet, floated away due to the storm. Parts of New York City were flooded out, including the subways! However, at McDaniel College, we got pretty lucky. Yes, we had heavy wind and rain for two days, but we managed to pull through and still have power the entire time! Classes were cancelled on Monday and Tuesday, which gave a lot of students a chance to relax and catch up on sleep and homework. However, things in our apartment went a little differently. As a Resident Assistant, some of the responsibility of keeping students safe falls on me. On Monday, we had a meeting about what to do during the emergency, and what to do if the college lost power. We were supplied with flashlights and sent off with instructions to check in with our residents for things like refrigerated medications. This way, if we did lose power, we could find a way to keep those medications cold. I went around to each of my apartments to ask them about this and also ask them to not push their trash outside for now, so it wouldn’t fly around in the wind. I also made sure that one person from every apartment had my cell phone number, so if they needed me, they could reach me. All RAs were also on standby, because if we lost power, we would have to go on Fire Watch in order to make sure residents stayed safe.

Once my responsibilities as an RA were over, I was resolved to have fun, after being somewhat productive. One of my apartmentmates and I had to watch Frankenstein for a class, so we paired Frankenstein with Frankenstorm. We decided to keep the lights on while we watched the movie, since watching a scary movie during a storm like last night’s would have been really scary! Trust me, the movie was creepy enough with the lights on! After watching the movie, we decided to play video games. We went old school and played Super Monkey Ball on the Play Station 2 that sits in our living room. It was so much fun to take turns playing the different stages of the game. Even though it was a competition, we still had a lot of fun cheering each other on and encouraging each other with tips on how to pass the levels. We resolved to play some more video games tonight while we were stuck inside, once we no longer felt like being productive and doing work.

This afternoon, once we all woke up, two of my apartmentmates made breakfast for us: a big breakfast of Mickey shaped chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon! It was fun to eat brunch and just sit around and talk with each other after we were done eating. Even though the devastation of Hurricane Sandy up and down the East Coast is terrible, it was nice to have a few days off to relax and catch up on homework and sleep! I hope that everyone is okay after the Hurricane!

Stories from the Hill

Tag Archives: Hurricane Sandy