Winding down and Rolling over

So, This past weekend and week have been pretty packed full of work and activities for me. Last Friday Third Eye Blind came to campus and put on an amazing performance! I went with my friends Casey and we had fun singing loudly to songs we knew and pretending we knew the words to other songs that we didn't know. ( For the record I am a terrible singer except when I'm in the shower!). I can't remember how old I was when I first started listening to them, but it was a long time ago so seeing them now was pretty awesome.


Saturday proceeded to be overcast with sprinkles of rain so the girls and I watched a movie in Purtil and enjoyed our Saturday afternoon together. My busyness picked up Sunday afternoon after sleeping in to 12:30! I went to check out the earth fest in the gym and painted a pot and planted some Basil in it and devoured some delicious local fruit and veggies. Earth fest was awesome they had a band that was being powered by solar energy and had a lot of their food donated. They sold green up eco friendly water bottles and had tie dying. It was a lot of fun and a great way to support my roommate and friends on Green Up. After some free music, food, and fun I went to a kayak rolling pool session offered to Wilderness Leaders.

The Wilderness Program at Saint Mike's offers trips through out the Fall and Winter to students. These trips include hiking, snow shoeing, kayaking, rock climbing, skiing, ice climbing, and more. They also offer trips over long weekends and in the summer along with some freshmen orientation trips. These trips are led by students who get certified in Wilderness First Aid and leading specific trips. I had never gone hiking or camping much until I did a Wilderness Orientation Weekend (WOW) the summer before freshmen year. I loved it and wanted to challenge myself and get to experience the great outdoors. So I was chosen and began my training. The thing that most students don't know about is all the training and prep WP leaders do. If you want to specialize in certain areas you need to practice and work on a variety of skills and pass exams in order to be the main leader or have the specialization. So for Kayakers, leaders work on rolling a kayak. What this entails is staying in your boat and having a spray skirt attached so when you flip over under water your still held in. To roll you go through a variety of steps to be able to roll yourself back up by using your paddle and hips. This sounds very complicated and is until you can retrain your brain not to panic under water and flip yourself back up.

After pool rolling I ran to the Fall 2010 study abroad meeting for all students studying abroad next semester. It was amazing to see how many students are going abroad and that 60% of us going will be in Europe and a lot more will be gone for a full semester. I will be going to Florence, Italy for the fall! After going to this meeting it makes it just as real and so much closer, I can't believe it. I still have so much to do and get as the summer nears and August 30th draws closer! I am excited that I will be home this summer and can have my Mom help me get everything together. Last summer I stayed on campus and worked for the Wilderness Program. So hopefully I find a job soon and can return home ready to work my butt off so I can have money abroad. I'm excited that I will get to return to campus one last time before I go when I come up for POW 2! I was asked to give on of the Belonging talks on POW and cannot wait. Throughout the semester POW 2 has been meeting and preparing our talks for the weekend in July.

A lot of you are probably going whats POW? Well POW is a freshmen orientation trip you can sign up to go on before you come to SMC. You get to hear a bunch of talks from current students on topics such as belonging, relationships, academics and more. During the weekend you stay at a retreat center and play games, go on a little hike, and get to really know some awesome people. This will be my first POW because when I came to school I did a WOW which was a wilderness oriented trip. On WOW you can choose which outdoor activity you want to do for three days like kayaking, rock climbing, hiking, or a combination. I went sea kayaking and met one of my good friends Mike on it. I loved getting to try kayaking for the first time and experience camping for the first time. Since WOW I became a wilderness leader and have camped and kayaked so much along with other activities. I will put up a slideshow of my WOW pictures and post about Pday this week so keep an eye out for those. Well thats all for now.

xo beth