Kittens!

It seems I was always doing something at High Sierra. Earlier this May, flying back to Wisconsin, I thought I would finally be able to rest. Boy was I wrong! Because I do foster care for the humane society, I called them two days after I got back to let them know I was home in case they needed help. Later that day they called me to let me know that they had four little kittens in need of foster care! So right now there are four little kittens cuddled up in my room who need to be bottle-fed every eight hours. I’m working on weaning them (it’s a slow process), and they’re just beginning to use the litter box (Thank God!). Although because of them I’m getting less sleep than I was at college, they’re so worth it.
I just...i love kittens. Like, so much.
Sorry all the pictures are a bit blurry. Kittens and flashes don't go well together, because their retinas are still so sensitive.

Musings

I've learned a lot in the past year. One of the most influential things I've learned was from Lisa, Alex, and Stacey: Live spontaneously. If you see a good climbing tree, climb it! If that water looks great for swimming in, by all means, go for a swim! If you have an inkling to just run and lay in that meadow...run and lay in the meadow!

Today after getting a book at the library, I decided I needed to be more spontaneous. The swing-set in the playground looked so inviting--so I went swinging! Reminded me a lot of someone ( you know who you are ;) ). Swinging, I thought, "I need to be more spontaneous. Screw what other people think, do what I want." Not in the sense that, hey, I want that car, let's go hijack it, or stealing, or saying whatever is on my mind at the moment. Instead, I want to embrace my childish impulses to explore and adventure.

Sooo....we'll see where that takes me this summer =)

Oh High Sierra...

Soo...I've been pretty awol lately. After getting back from spring break things have been going at high speed here--tons and tons of papers and studying! I've only got 4 more papers to write, phew.

First off, today was amazing.
This morning we all got up at 8:30. In our pjs we dragged pillows and blankets into the meetinghall and ate breakfast there while watching cartoons. =)

Then, after tanning for a little bit on Star Rock, I biked out of camp with Alex, Kel, Kylynn, and James. We planned on biking to a nearby restaurant, the Forks, and just chilling at the coffee shop there and doing homework. However, things didn't go exactly as planned.

First stop, we passed a crafts market so of course we had to stop and see what they had. While Alex, Kylynn, and Kel were listening to bluegrass, James and I biked ahead; we stopped at a dam and got out and explored. It was pretty cool, we found this stream made out of rusty tin cans, we stood on the edge of a rushing river, and we slid down a hill.

Then we resumed biking to the Forks. However, our professor DJ's house is on the way to the Forks. So of course we had to stop by and say "hello." He and his wife were doing some spring cleaning, but they invited us inside and offered us some delicious chocolate-chip pumpkin bread (this was at 2 pm). We had such a great time and we were all talking and laughing and watching silly youtube videos. Then we decided to just stay there and do homework, instead of going to the Forks. Pretty soon, it was 5:30. Instead of biking back to camp, DJ suggested we all get pizza--so we got pizza with him and his wife, Annette. Then, we did some more homework...until someone suggested ice cream and Toy Story 3. Of course, who could say no to that? So we all had ice cream then made video of us all dancing to a silly song.

After our stunt as actors/actresses/dancers, we all curled up in the living room and watched Toy Story 3. It was pretty cute. The movie ended at 11, and DJ piled all our bikes into the back of his truck and drove us home.

Wow. I love my professors, here. So much.

P.S. Here's a link to the Elk's article: http://www.elks.org/enf/news.cfm?StoryID=68381

I'm going to miss it here SO much, but I am excited to see Wisconsin in five days!  
P.S.S. Due to time constraints this is not a proof-read post. Don't judge. 

Midnight Sledding

So much has been going on lately--I don't know what I should focus on!

Friday we put on a talent show at a local nursing home: lots of people sang, played instruments, and some even read poems. I just came and sat and talked with the people there...I think/hope they enjoyed it. But going to nursing homes always makes me so sad =(. I always feel so sorry for everyone there...

It snowed all day Friday and into Saturday--so Saturday night we went midnight sledding! We went off Hurricane Hill, a large hill we have behind camp. It's tricky, because it curves a lot, so going down I usually wiped out before I got to the bottom. But once or twice, I actually made it to the bottom where we built a ramp. You got SO MUCH distance on that ramp, even though it was comparatively small. Going off it, you could fly forward in the air for like six or seven feet--crazy!

Gettin' crazy speed

Group Picture

After sledding, I made a snowangel!

Then last night we all swingdanced! It was so much fun—I love swing dancing, if only I was better at it, haha. I think this summer I’m going to see if they offer any swing dancing in Wisconsin. And next semester I’m totally joining the underground swingclub at APU.

On another note, yesterday I bought my tickets to Seattle to go visit Stac and Dave. I’m SO excited to see them, agh! I’m really bummed I couldn’t afford to make it to Hawaii, but hopefully I’ll be able to visit there before I/Josh graduate.

Now to go find someone on staff to replace the battery in our smoke alarm...it's been beeping non-stop since 5:30 this morning >_<

Dress up

I've mentioned it before, but we often dress up here. Because High Sierra also functions as a summer camp, there is a whole room dedicated to dressing up. It is appropriately called “The Dress-Up Room.” Today during lunch we spontaneously decided to dress up as our celebrity look-alikes for dinner. I had no idea who my celebrity look-alike was. I'd like to think Kiera Knightly or Megan Fox, but...I think we have slightly different chin structures =P. Then I had an epiphany: everyone asks me if I'm Native American as it is, I'll just go as Pocahontas! That one never gets old, lol

There were some amazing costumes. One girl, after applying heavy eyeliner, looked JUST LIKE Avril Lavigne. Two guys dressed up as Jacob and Edward from Twilight, and someone even dressed up like Lady Gaga. 

Roommate Picture!J

The dog I'm holding is actually my raccoon, Meeko. Because I couldn't find a Native American costume in the closet (I was surprised--I mean, really? That place is packed full of stuff and they don't have a single "Indian" outfit? Whaaaat?!) So I improvised with Lisa's skirt and by draping a fur cloak over my shoulders. Probably more Native American that way anyway. 

You can probably tell, but Alex is Ms. Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus, and Lisa is the girl in Jurassic Park.

Trek 2

Soo…Trek 2 was , in one word, amazing.

The first day we got to Yosemite we set up camp then had our solo time—five hours of prayer, reflection, reading, and writing on the Rostrom. It was so beautiful.





Part of my view from solo: From where I was sitting, I could see 4 waterfalls.

 

Then that evening we attempted a night hike to the Devil’s Bathtub. Unfortunately, because of the six feet of snow Yosemite received over the past few weeks all melting, the path was turned into a waterfall—not only was it dangerous to climb up to the Devil’s Bathtub, it was almost practically impossible to do so without slipping or getting soaking wet. Soo…we didn’t.

Day 2:

The Second day we did an all-day (9 mile) hike to Preston Falls, a beautiful waterfall not many know about. When we got to Preston Falls, DJ dove in! Although it was overcast out, it was warm so we all went for a swim! How many college students can say they went for a swim in a waterfall with their professor!?



Preston Falls




Swimming in the freezing-cold water!



The water was so cold (colder than or equal to Lake Michigan), that after standing in it for five minutes I couldn't feel my toes!

That evening we played mafia—it was so much fun. We also did affirmations. The first trek we had each told our life story, so this trek we took turns affirming each member of the team.

Day 3:

The third day was by far my favorite. Initially, we were going to go caving, but then Nols, the director of operations at High Sierra (and a total beast), set up a swing for us in an alcove of El Capitan, the largest single piece of granite in the world. We hiked to this alcove in the morning and spent the whole part of the day swinging from it. It was amazing—the view was beautiful, and swinging from El Cap, although it was scary, it was definitely one of the most exciting moments of my entire life! What was really cool is that few people know about the swing, and even fewer get to swing on it.  

Hopefully this video will give you a glimpse at how amazing it was:

As explained in the video, to get the swing started you had to run off the cliff--agh! That was the scarriest part. You can also see the view from the top: beautiful!



Swinging off El Cap'



After we had all gone off the swing a few times we hiked down and went rockclimbing. It was hard, but so, so fun. I really need to practice rockclimbing more: I’m so bad at it, haha! But I did get to the top of this really hard one, even though it took me forever:

Climbing the tricky one!




This one was a bit easier...



That evening we played silent football (a REALLY fun game I’ve never played before, but definitely plan on playing again), and we did more team affirmations.

Day 4:

Today we packed up camp—it was really muddy, so everything was pretty dirty. We had set up all our tents in one area; it was like a tent village, haha.



Yeah...it's pretty muddy.

After packing up, we finished affirmations then went to Rostrom to meet with all the other teams. There we had a short chapel then our leaders took us off one by one to pray for us. After that, we headed back to High Sierra

I’m so glad I got to experience parts of Yosemite most visitors don’t get a chance to see. Preston Falls, the El Cap Swing…it was such a beautiful experience. I guess that was the point of second trek: At High Sierra we’re so close to Yosemite, Rob Simpson (the camp director) figured it would be a shame for us to leave High Sierra without having adventured there.

Kayaking

Today I went kayaking! The water in Bass Lake was finally a decent depth from all the snow that melted from our recent blizzard, so we decided to take adventage of it and go kayaking.  It was a gorgeous day today—the high was probably 75 or 80—but walking to go kayaking we had to walk through snow. It was so weird, haha.

Walking through the snow to get to Bass Lake

Kenny and I gettin' our kayak on!

Tomorrow we’re heading off for Trek 2! But I have REALLY good news! I guess it’s this huge camp secret, but Trek 2 we actually don’t do much backpacking: we go into Yosemite and go camping. So we set up camp, we have running water and a toilet (praise the Lord!), and we don’t have to carry all our stuff with us everywhere we go. Then, the four days we’re there we go rockclimbing, caving/spelunking, and hiking. I’m so excited! This is going to be SO much more fun than Trek 1, lol.

Last Day in San Francisco

Our last day in San Fran we visited the De Young Museum.

Here are a few of my favorite pieces from the De Young:

George Washington made out of George Washingtons

This piece was really cool. It was called "Anti-mass," and is composed of hundreds of pieces of burnt wood hanging from the ceiling. The charred wood is actually wood from a black church that was burnt down by the KKK. The suspension of the wood symbolized the church being taken up into heaven, regardless of the color of the church members.

The De Young was a really interesting museum, but I feel like I didn’t have enough time to really look at everything. After the De Young, we left to go back to Bass Lake, but we made one important stop on the way:

The Golden Gate Bridge!

Instead of going to the top of the bridge with everyone else, Alex, Skylar, and I went through an underground tunnel, down a windy road, and to the foot of the bridge. Then Alex climbed on some rocks and got soaked. Oh Alex…

Underground Tunnel

When we started heading back, it began to rain, so we had to run all the way back in the rain. Almost the whole car ride back we were soaked..but it was so worth it =).

Thankfully, I did not end up in prison on the San Francisco Trip. At the bottom of the itinerary which Katie and Rob (the director and RD) gave us was a little disclaimer:

“It is not the policy to bail out students from jail if they get into trouble, but we will come and hold your hand through the bars and sing praise songs with you for comfort while your parents travel to SF to pick you up.”

Saturday in San Francisco

This is a belated post from about..wow, two weeks ago now.

Saturday morning we caught a cable car to Grace Cathedral. Grace Cathedral was beautiful--probably the most magnificent of all the churches we visited.

Grace Cathedral

 From Grace Cathedral, we walked to the Museum of Modern Art. on our way there, we stopped and listened to this street performer, Robert, who was an amazing opera singer. I guess it's tradition for our art professor to bring students to listen to him every semester when they visit San Francisco

Robert singing opera

The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), had a lot of interesting pieces in it. At the entrance, there was a spotlight which people on the upper floor could control. When we were waiting to leave, a little boy was chasing the spotlight around with his sister--it was the most adorable thing. Kel got a really great picture of it:

SO cute

After the MOMA, Alex, Kylynn, James, Kel, Mads, Abby, and I joined a protest! We hadn't known about it beforehand, but what I gleaned from talking with the protestors was that it was an anti-war protest which was specifically protesting against Hindley in front of a hotel he was speaking at and the war on Libya.

Kel kept trying to chant "Hell no, we won't go!" We had to keep correcting him and telling him that that was no longer applicable lol.

I’m not 100% sure if I agree with the protest’s view of the war on Libya, but I really don’t think I have an educated enough basis to make an opinion either way. Whatever the matter, I’m glad we got to experience a classic part of San Francisco: Protesting.

After protesting, we worked our way over to Haight and Ashbury, an area of San Francisco notorious for its bohemian ambience. Although there were a lot of hippie shops, everything was very expensive and tuned to tourism. It was nice to explore, though.

We walked around the city (in the rain =( ) for a while after leaving Haight and Ashbury, then decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel. 

However (!), on our way back to the hotel Kylynn, Kel, and I decided to stop at the Marriott and check out their pool. That hotel is SO fancy!  The pool was on the fourth floor, and it was so big you could swim laps in it! It was late at night, so not many people were there, so we decided to...go swimming!! With all our clothes on. It was so great! haha.

Opera. Art. Protests. Haight and Ashbury. Swimming. It was a successful day in San Francisco.

San Fran Friday Nightlife

Posing by the statue at the entrance to China Town

After visiting the Mission Dolores Basilica, Grace Cathedral, and the Legion of Honor on Friday then getting arranged in our rooms, I went with a group of people to China Town.

After exploring China Town, we walked to a small Indian restaurant for dinner. We all ordered something, then split everything buffet style: it was pretty cool (except I could only have two dishes since all the rest had meat in them...)

After this, Lisa and Kylynn and I split off from the main group to do some window shopping in a huge downtown mall. At one point, I left Kylynn and Lisa to go to the bathroom, got hit on by a black man who was trying to convince me to have a one-night stand with him, and then got lost. (Don't worry mom, I'm fine, and I remained close to Lisa and Kylynn after that. Plus I had my pepper spray in my purse =) )

It was delicious.

After the mall closed, Lisa, Kylynn, and I got Coldstones. Oh Coldstones, how I love thee.

When heading back to the hotel from Coldstones, we met up with the rest of our group! So we decided to do more adventuring. Walking around, we found an ice rink! They were closing in 30 minutes, so they didn't charge us to rent skates!

The beautiful night lights

ice skating!

 Right outside the skating rink we found a park--because it had just rained, the slides were super slippery!

Alex sliding down one of the slides in the park

Then we took some silly pictures...

We also met lots of crazy people. Lots. It was a great taste of San Francisco night life...I'm glad I don't live there, though...

7 Long Days

Soo...this week's been pretty crazy. The reason I haven't blogged is because we got 36 inches (!!!) of snow, which knocked out our power for seven days. Seven days! At night we would have to go around in our headlamps, and no one has been able to do laundry in forever! As you can probably guess, we just got power back today--yay! It's so nice to have it back! Although having the power out helped us bond....you're probably thinking, "How can those students possibly bond any more than they already do!? They're with each other 24/7!" Well...I guess it's just possible, haha.

In retrospect, however, our power outage really wasn't that bad. We had a couple generators running (and the water was working because of the generators and propane tanks), so that was a huge plus. Also, after a couple days without power High Sierra rented a generator which we used at max eight hours every day in the dining hall--this allowed us internet and power during those times, so everyone would be in here doing homework and charging their laptops and phones; although the dining hall was FREEZING. It was seriously warmer to eat outside than in the dining hall. I love having the heat back on. So much.

Bella and I

On Saturday, because we were all getting mild cases of cabin fever, we as a camp spent the day in Fresno, the biggest city closest to where we are. After driving the hour to get to Fresno, we went shopping: my favorite place we went in Fresno was a small ASPCA office we stopped at where we spent almost an hour holding and petting the puppies and cats. I can't wait to see Didget again! If I actually lived in CA, there's no way I would have left that place empty-handed.

The most adorable puppy ever.

Last night (or should I say, this morning?) I was awakened at 3 a.m. because our smoke detectors were going off. I guess the generator was somehow releasing exhaust and carbon monoxide into the girls' dorm, so we had to relocate. All the girls dragged their sleeping bags and pillows into the meeting hall and we had a huge slumber party in there. It was weird...I've never had a smoke detector actually do its job. Whenever I hear one go off, it's either because the battery is low or because I burnt something in the oven. I really do have a whole new respect for them now, though.

Tonight, as celebration for the power being on, all of us went to DJ's house for a movie night and pizza party. We watched Les Miserables. Oh. My. Goodness. It was SO good! Like, so, so good. Definitely on my list of favorite movies. I am so reading the book this summer, even if it is bigger than the Bible.

Les Miserables

P.S. Soo..San Francisco updates are coming. Slowly but surely.

Can you believe we leave for trek again this friday? Agh!

Friday in San Fran

The picture's a bit blurry, but this is inside the mission.

Still bleary eyed and carrying my pillow, I made it to the vans at 5:30 Friday morning. From there, we headed to San Francisco. Our first stop was at the oldest church in San Francisco, Mission Dolores Basilica. The mission and adjoining basilica were beautiful! The ceiling pattern of the mission was really cool--it hurt your eyes if you looked at it too long:

 After the mission and basilica, we went to the most contemporary church in San Francisco--the new St. Mary's. This church was not at all what I expected! 

St. Mary's

Two Thinkers.

After mass at Saint Mary’s we went to the Legion of Honor Art Museum. I really liked this museum. Do you know the famous sculpture of “The Thinker” by Rodin? It stands outside of this museum. 

Inside the Legion of Honor we saw The Russian Bride's Attire by Makovsky, which is a huge painting our art professor said would just wow us. It was huge, and to look closely at it and see everything that was going on in this painting was quite “wow”-ing. In my picture Bo’s looking at it. He was my “museum buddy,” lol. I saw a bunch of neat works in the Legion of Honor, including things by Van Gogh, Picasso, Daumier, and Rodin.

Bo in front of Makovsky's "The Russian Bride's Attire."

A man sketching a sculpture

 One thing which I thought was really neat about this museum was all the people doing art in there. I saw over four people who just came into the museum with a chair and either paints or pencils or pastels and used the artwork they saw as inspiration. Some would be sitting in front of a sculpture, capturing the shading. Others would be painting a painting or a conglomerate of paintings in one. It was neat to watch them work, and it really made me want to join them.

 

The special exhibition going on at the Legion of Honor was Pulp Fashion by Isabelle de Borchgrave. Isabelle designed all these dresses completely out of paper! It was crazy good! I wish I had a better picture than this one, but I guess we aren’t allowed to take pictures of the special exhibitions. (I found this out the hard way). But even this simple dress I have a picture of is amazing: it’s 100% out of paper! Isn’t that crazy!? She even designed some of the dresses from the painting in The Russian Bride’s Attire 100% out of paper! 

Here's a better picture I found online (these are life-size, by the way)

After the Legion of Honor, we went to our hotel, The Mosser. This old-fashioned hotel was quaint and pretty, but unlike any hotel I’ve ever been to before. The rooms were small—a sink in the corner, a closet, and a big bed, but they were cute. There was a community shower/bathtub on each floor, as well as one bathroom for women and one for men on each floor…kinda like the dorms! Haha

We did more adventuring later that night, but that will be in tomorrow's post =).