Pictures from the Halloween Dance!

Happy Birthday, Sarah HF!

Yesterday was Sarah's birthday and we celebrated with apples and caramel and pita chips and hummus. And the birthday song, of course. =)

Kudos!

The Barn has a tradition called Kudos, started by students two years ago. Throughout the week, whenever we want to applaud one of our dormmates, we write a little note for them and slip it in the kudos box, to be read aloud at the next dorm meeting. Here's a sample Kudos reading from last night's meeting...

Mod 1 Art Show

We have some pretty talented Barnies, and I tried to capture at least one work of art from each of them....ENJOY!!

Sarah S.'s portrait

Ellery's jewelry-making class

Kirin's surreal collage

Lia's portrait

Niko's self portrait

Beechna's self portrait

Yujia's photography

Briana's photo of Niko making her self portrait!

Yujia in One-on-One Dance Performance

The One-on-One dances are like a big-sister dance, where an older/more experienced dance student choreographs a dance for a younger/less experienced dance student. Yujia participated this year and was awesome!

Congratulations, Riz!

Riz was elected by her class to serve on the student Activities Committee! YAY!

Lost in Translation...

Last night's dorm meeting was long, but fruitful! After a fun weekend of activities that included Blue Man Group and Alice vs. Wonderland, we all gathered together to learn phrases in all of the native languages of the dorm, which include Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Danish, Italian, and Spanish. We started with greetings, so we learned how to say hi and bye! In case you want to learn along with us, here's our phonetic guide:

Extra kudos go to Rowan S. and Rowan H. who have been peppering their roommates with questions in an effort to learn Chinese on their own. =)

Then, we voted on the designs for our 2010-2011 dorm sweatshirt! We had really great entries this year, and we're proud of everyone who submitted. It kind of made us wish we were designing more than one sweatshirt. But we offer warm congratulations to TILLY, whose designs were selected for both the front and the back of the sweatshirt! Here are the winning designs:

This will be the chest logo on the front of the sweatshirt

This design will be the big design on the back of the sweatshirt

Next week, we'll figure out which style and color of sweatshirt we want! Then, we went on to celebrate our new ROKU, which is a new gadget we've gotten for our dorm that allows us to stream netflix movies as often as we want. We definitely tested it out this weekend, and it was very exciting.

Finally, we celebrated Felicia's birthday with brownies, ice cream, and a very enthusiastic birthday song:

Ciao for now!

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR STUDENT LEADERS

We have two big leadership opportunities in our dorm (other than dorm leaders, of course).  First, we have our Boarding Life Committee (you might remember that Cheyenne from our dorm was recently elected to be the Head of our Boarding Life Committee.) Boarding Life Committee consists of the head, two elected representatives from each dorm, and the Dean of Residential Life. The meet each week to discuss our residential life program, and they solicit and address concerns or ideas brought up by the boarding community. Those ideas become warrants, are discussed in a town meeting, and then are put to a vote. And that's how changes get made in our residential life program! This year, SARAH S. and AMY were elected to serve in this meaningful role. Thank you to everyone who ran and CONGRATULATIONS to Sarah and Amy!

Next, we have our Dorm Board. This is the dorm's judicial board, which is brought together to hear minor dorm infractions. Consisting of 3 elected members (and 2 alternates), Dorm Board will listen to the infractions, ask questions, and determine an appropriate consequence. This is a role that requires a great deal of trust, fairness, and thoughtfulness. This year we had a record ELEVEN people run, and it was a VERY close race. We offer congratulations to our alternates (Tilly and Niko) and our Dorm Board for the 2010-2011 school year.....

Sarah H-F, Lia, and Julia!!!

Happy Birthday, Cynthia and KyoungHee

Cynthia and KyoungHee both turned 17 this week...on the same day! We celebrated with ice cream sundaes, frozen blueberries and the birthday song! 

Apples to Apples

We love playing Apples to Apples. We played for a couple hours and people just rotated in and out as needed. (Melisa won.) =)

Congrats to Cheyenne and Happy Birthday, Flo!

Sunday was a big night in our dorm. First, we had our second family style dinner:

And then the students running for Head of Boarding Life and Town Meeting Moderator gave speeches...including Cheyenne, who did an awesome job:

(spoiler alert: she won! YAYYY Cheyenne!)

Then, we went back to the dorm for dorm meeting, super clean, and FLO'S BIRTHDAY! YAYYY FLO.
We celebrated with strawberry shortcake and the birthday song:

It was super fun.

CSW Boarding Students and the Very Busy, Super Long Weekend

Whoa. This weekend was so full, that I think we're all just a little exhausted from all the fun and bonding. Saturday night, we went to Kimball Farms, where we had our fun with bumper boats, tug-o-war, and mini golf (among other things.)

Then, Sunday morning we did a TON of get-to-know you activities, including one that looked a little like speed dating (but wasn't!). Sunday, we had our first family-style dinner, and I'm sorry to say I was so engaged in our dinner conversation that I didn't take a SINGLE picture. But the dining hall was set with table cloths, and we were randomly assigned to tables. We had chicken and eggplant Parmesan, pasta, bread, salad, string beans, and yummy cake for dessert. And in between devouring all of that food, we took turns answering fun questions. Some of the questions pulled out of the box on our table included: "What was the most embarrassing thing to happen to you?" and "What job would you NEVER want to do, no matter how high the salary?"  It was a really fun way to connect with each other.  Afterward, each dorm presented their fractured fairytales. Our dorm based ours on the rock-a-bye baby nursery rhyme, and it was SO good. This year, each skit had to contain the following:

• The line "What's in YOUR wallet?"
• Jane Moulding and her two dogs, Jethro and Charlie.
• A reference to each of the dorm parents and associate in each dorm
• A dance
• Singing

Although I'm sorry to report that the Barn didn't win (and thus had to give up our trophy from last year), you can watch the video and see for yourself how good it was. We're happy to be good sports and offer our congratulations to White Farm dorm, who won with their rendition of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Then, the returning boarding students presented a giant scroll of wisdom to the new boarding students. They worked really hard to come up with all the advice they wish they had known when they started here, so that the new boarders could get a head start. =)

Then, after THAT, we had our dorm meeting and superclean, and we celebrated Ronghao's birthday with brownie cake and strawberries and whipped cream. MMMMM. And, the birthday song, of course.

All Boarders' Weekend, Part II

The new boarding students joined the new day students at Project Adventure today, for a day of ropes courses and teambuilding. We can't wait to hear how their day went! (Jordan is with them, but I don't think he has a camera. Sorry parents!

I went with our returning boarders to Lake Cochituate, where we went canoeing and kayaing. The weather was GLORIOUS. We had a great time, and then we had pizza delivered (genius!) and then all of the returning boarders sat down and thought of all the advice they could give to the new boarders, and they're going to make a huge collage for them. (awwww, how sweet, right?)

Here are pics from boating adventures...

All Boarders' Weekend, Part I

All Boarders' Weekend is a whole weekend filled with activities designed to help the boarding community unite over silly games and laughter. Tonight started with a BBQ on the quad with our day student friends, and then moved on to a Mentalist we brought to campus. Many of the girls in our dorm volunteered to be part of the show: Rowan H., Ellery, Felicia, Riz. The Mentalist was really amazing...I missed the one that Rowan was in but she assures me it was unbelievable.

Ellery had to go into the audience and find two objects and even though the Mentalist was totally blindfolded, he guessed what they were! He also had people in the audience write numbers, names, and locations on index cards and guessed them from the stage. It was incredible! You can see the part Felicia and Riz were in by watching the video...

After the Mentalist, there was an ice cream social and games like Twister and jenga and chess. In-dorm time is at 11:00 tonight because we have a busy day tomorrow! We'll split up in the morning...the new boarders will go to Project Adventure in Beverly with all of the new day students, and the returning boarders will be boating on Lake Cochituate. We'll all then proceed to nearby Kimball Farms, where we'll have another BBQ, an ice cream sundae bar, mini-golf, bumper boats, volleyball, and lots of other fun stuff. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. =)

Until tomorrow...g'night from the Barn!

Thursday=Cookies

Thursday was a day off from school to celebrate the Jewish New Year. The girls in our dorm had a leisurely brunch, followed by baking peanut butter cookies (with chocolate chips) and then watching more movies. YAY for relaxing days!

Scary Movie Marathon!

There's no school tomorrow, so the girls are getting cozy in the common room, with snacks, scary movies, and a fair bit of shrieking. =)

A New Year

As the new school year starts, we are welcoming 12 new students to our dorm family: Rowan S., Riz, Mingwei, Mijia, Ronghou, Ellery, Lili, Flo, Vicky, Victoria, LuLu, and Felicia. Our 30 residents now represent three countries, and eight states.

We had our first dorm meeting last night--a whole TWO HOURS devoted to explaining dorm policies and discussing how to create a comfortable community for all of our residents. We ended the night with a bonfire and s'mores before heading off to sleep.

Today was the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, which is very exciting, but also a little exhausting. A lot of new people to meet and things to remember. We had our first all-school assembly of the year, in which Jane started a discussion about empathy, compassion, and forgiveness. A nice way to start off the year. Our new students each met their "big sisters" who showed them how to get to all of their classes, and then everyone went off to an abbreviated first day of classes. We've JUST started our first night of Study Hours, and we'll follow it with another dorm meeting, which will involve Pictionary and a large amount of laughter, I'm sure...