Since my last post a great deal has happened here in lovely Washington, CT. Friday was fairly jam packed with practice twice a day, advisor lunch, and mini classes. After practice in the morning where I taught my six freshmen novices to erg I had a pretty crammed 45 minutes in which I showered, dressed nice for advisor lunch, fought with the Xerox machine, copied math bingo, and made it to the dining hall with about 30 seconds to spare. Advisor lunch was interesting, my lunch table was my four advisees in addition to Ed Small the chair of the math department and his five advisees. Unfortunately Ed was at a memorial service, so I was alone at the table with all of the advisees. This was an interesting experience as Ed has four female and one male advisees, and I have four female advisees so the poor freshman boy was alone with all of the ladies at the table. It went very well, a great deal of small talk but two of my advisees have now become the best of friends. Which has been really great as one of the two's mother emailed me worried about her, which is only to expect as she a fourteen year old many hours from home, buts she has been absolutely fantastic as I told her mother, has joined the crew team, and was just tonight handing out neon clothes to the other girls for the dance.
Mini classes were an exciting adventure, from the 15 minutes that I had for each of them I can already tell that both of my algebra 2 classes are going to be great handfuls, a lot of big personalities who know each other very well. In each of my four classes we played math bingo with a prize of starbursts. The students in general seemed to enjoy this though I had not anticipated the cultural barrier, many of the international students that I had in class were unsure of how exactly to play bingo. After a brief explanation things went pretty well and we made it through without a hitch in any of my four classes. I am finishing getting ready for the start of real classes on Monday.
So this weekend my team is on duty which means that each of us has one or two jobs that we sign up for and I was assigned to evening rounds 1. This was probably the most eventful/terrifying experience that I have had since I arrived here. Terrifying because I was walking around in the dark alone unsure of what was around every corner. On evening rounds you are basically supposed to go around the entire campus looking in the nooks and crannies for students in locations they should not be in or engaging in unsafe or unsavory activities. In my travels I looked in dark gardens, empty classrooms, and even in the bushes, I found several pairs of students off for "evening strolls" holding hands, and "talking." I did not find any students engaging in any unacceptable behaviors but I did make several couples of students feel quite uncomfortable by talking to them during their "alone time" together. Though the highlight of the whole day other than my freshmen boys finally getting on the water and rowing was the events that unfolded in the student center.
Within the outer room of the student center I found a group of asian international students on the couches and chairs around the coffee table where they were arm wrestling. After talking to them for a few minutes I found out that they were having an arm wrestling tournament. I decided to take a stab at it before I left and challenged them to an arm wrestle. One of the smaller boys said he was "scared to do it" so I had him sit down and take me on. Needless to say I won to great whooping and yelling from the group of boys. I left immediately following but I could still here them going at it a half hour later when I walked past again. The only other interesting thing that I found in my travels was a freshman boy shining his desk lamp like a spotlight through the second story window at his friends on the lawn.
Well its now late and I am exhausted, one more morning practice of preseason tomorrow morning. Girls just got 90$ worth of chinese delivered to the dorm so they will be up for a while. Week one is done and I am still going strong, can't wait for classes to start and things to settle down into a rhythm. Bring on Week two!
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