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 We’re currently reading Watchmen in Graphic Novels. If you’ve ever gone to school anywhere in a place where it snows at least a few times a year, you’ve probably gotten a snow day that wasn’t quite so necessary. Today, we had one such “snow” day at McDaniel. Very icy conditions left the campus closed until noon (which we had found out about last night), but at around 9:30 this morning, the administration gave us the entire day off.
It was several hours before I learned about this snow day, however, as I left my house at around the same time the announcement was made this morning to go keep an appointment I had off campus. Knowing that the noon delay had canceled my only class of the day, I then went shopping — first to Kohl’s, then to Target, and finally, to Safeway. It wasn’t until Safeway that I checked my email and discovered that school was closed for the day.
To my frustration, the library was closed today too, but it hasn’t been so bad after all. I’ve gotten a lot of reading done today, and I still have a lot more to go. I’m in the middle of reading Watchmen for my Graphic Novels class, and it’s the first book we’ve read in weeks that I hadn’t read before. It’s taken me a little while to warm up to it, but now I’m desperate to finish it — if I don’t finish, the ending will be spoiled for me in class tomorrow!
Watchmen is surprisingly dense, at least for my tastes, so I’ve been interspersing it with various other readings — short stories for my Poe class and fiction entries for Contrast‘s spring contest.
With all this time spent in my room reading today, I really don’t feel like I’ve been productive — but I have, and I need to keep that momentum going. Back to the books I go!
 Hiking. On Saturday, Outdoors Club went on another exciting trek, this time to Oregon Ridge Park and Nature Center, located about forty minutes away in Baltimore County.
We went for a maple sugar tapping tour and demonstration, which started immediately when we arrived. Our tour guide showed us how to tell a chestnut tree from a maple tree and tapped a tree in front of us, meaning she stuck a little spout into the tree attached to a bucket. From this, sap will flow through the season, and from the sap, they can make maple sugar and maple syrup. We were each able to try some fresh sap from one of the trees. As sap is generally about 96% water, it barely tasted any different from regular fresh water.
 Me, down next to the lifeguard chairs. This is a beach in the summer! After the tour, we wandered around outside where they had a few demonstrations set up. One guy had a fire stoked and was demonstrating how Native Americans would boil the sap by heating a stone and placing it directly into the sap. They also had more samples of sap and various grades of syrup. Seeing the different tastes of the syrups was fascinating–the darker syrup that came from sap collected later in the year was sweeter.
Afterwards, we went into the nature center itself. I made friends with a bird and a little boy, as well as with a bunch of turtles. There we saw a video that showed us the machinery used for large scale creation of maple syrup, narrated by two small children.
We then embarked on a two mile hike in the snow. I’ve hiked in the snow before, as Yellowstone had a ton of snow when I went up in May last year, but I’d forgotten how much slower you move when you have to drive your way through.
We followed the trail almost all of the way, but we got lost at the last minute and came across a beach. I was really excited and cautiously walked across a little bit of the water, which was completely iced over and covered in snow at least ankle-deep. There was a playground as well, but I refrained there. We had to hop a fence, but we made it back to the center successfully!
I previously had no idea that maple syrup was made in Maryland, so this was a really cool forage into some of the cultural aspects and history of the state.
 The group of us on our hike. All of these photos are from the Outdoors Club Facebook page.
 Flyer about the Competition I am super excited for March because we have a competition between different residence halls to see who will use the least amount of energy. In case I have not mentioned this before, you all should know that I am a very competitive person. Because I am an Resident Assistant in Daniel McClea Hall (DMC), I want our building to be the one that wins the challenge.
I already had meetings with the different suites telling them about the competition. Tonight I will be sending out information on how to save energy. I may even make signs reminding people to turn off the lights when they leave.
If we use less energy than the people who lived in DMC before us, we get free t-shirts! However, the most important thing will be helping the environment! Hopefully, it will be a win for DMC and a win for the environment. Go Team DMC!
 We’re almost as adorable as the children we managed to adopt! When I grew up in small town New Zealand, I had a trampoline in my back yard. Some of my best memories were on that trampoline–I’d lie there with a book; I’d jump with a hose pointed to the trampoline; I’d bring all my friends there for picnics; and most importantly, I’d jump.
About twenty minutes away from Westminster in Eldersberg is the Stratosphere Trampolining Park, one of those places that basically has a field of trampolines all attached to each other. My RA staff went there on an outing last week. I was worried that it was going to be kind of lame and that I’d grown too old to have fun on a trampoline.
I also somehow forgot the last time I was on a trampoline. I didn’t remember until we got there and I nervously walked up–I had taken trampolining classes alongside my diving classes when I was about eleven. I had been attempting a double somersault when one of my classmates made me laugh about something. Forgetting to flip in time, I landed awkwardly on my neck and had to be rushed to the emergency room. I was millimeters away from breaking my neck and suffering a permanent injury. As is, I missed the rest of my trampolining classes as two months later we moved to the US.
 A photo of what the field of trampolines looked like from Stratosphere’s website. Because of this, I was a bit more hesitant than I might otherwise have been. There was one area that was for practicing flips that had big cushions of air, so one could get a good bouncing start on the little runway, gain momentum, and try a flip into a really safe area. I did a few somersaults there, but that was as far as I was going to push myself acrobatically.
We had a lot of fun playing dodgeball and especially playing tag. Since it was technically against the rules, we had to find creative ways to bounce across the mats without looking as though we were running. My RA staff is full of super competitive people–I myself am a seriously sore loser–so it was hilarious to be a part of and to observe. They’ve become like a family to me and I’m so grateful for every chance I get to spend more time with them!
 The logic video game This semester I am taking a philosophy class called Elementary Logic. It is based on symbolic logic which is just a mathematical way of looking at connectives of propositions (statements) like “and” and “or”. Because it has a lot of mathematical reasoning, it counts for the Quantitative Reasoning requirement of the McDaniel Plan which is a nice alternative for people who did not want to take upper level mathematics courses.
Our professors, knowing that many people are taking this course because they do not particularly care for mathematics, made the class into a video game. He is trying to connect mathematics to images and emotions which I think is so awesome! He is curious about why some people like math and others do not, so this video game is one of his ways of exploring that.
At first, I was a little frustrated with the class because I loved logic already, so it felt confusing to me given my mathematics background. Now, I absolutely love it. I have gotten really good at playing the games. It has been a fun experience! I think my favorite part has been having people ask me what I am doing and seeing their reactions when I say I am playing a video game for class. It is pretty cool!
Coming to McDaniel was a great decision because I get the chance to interact with creative professors, and where else could I have taken a class that involves playing a video game? Only at McDaniel.
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