Barn Yarns

Monday, September 12, 2011

Happy All Boarders Weekend!

Wow. There's so much to tell you, it's hard to know where to begin. On Wednesday, we had our first assembly of the year and also said good-bye (for now) to Briana and Riz, who are off on an adventure in China, performing Peking Opera. How cool is that? Two of their classmates are keeping blogs, if you want to follow along on the adventure: http://cswgoestochina.tumblr.com/ and http://theconfuciusproject.tumblr.com/.

Wednesday night, a bunch of us gathered for some snacks and homework and tv in the common room. It sounded like everybody had a pretty good first day of school.

Thursday at assembly, Victoria Z. made an announcement that she'll be teaching a D block class on Tai Chi! We love that at CSW students can teach classes, and we're thinking maybe we can get her to teach us a bit at a dorm meeting one night. This is a picture of her making an announcement at assembly:

Friday night was the first night of all-boarders weekend. We had a BBQ on the quad to kick it off:

Then, there was this awesome trivia challenge game show thingie. Rowan and Kandice rocked the music questions, Niko rocked the candy questions, and Abby went up for like four different categories and rocked all of them. Victoria F. was AWESOME at hula hooping (see the video on the CSW facebook page!) Denisha scored some points for the Barn as well. Honestly, I can't even remember everyone that won points but it was really fun and very funny. Then, we finished off with an ice cream social. Here are a couple of pictures from the event (you can see a little video or two on facebook).

Afterward, everyone headed back to the dorm. A bunch of girls started watching a movie and then as people got tired, they drifted off until it was only Victoria F. and Anastatia in the common room, looking so cozy that I had to snap a little picture.

On Saturday morning, the returning boarders went off to a local lake to do some kayaking and canoeing. (We're still waiting for those pictures to come in.) The new students (including day students) went to Hale Reservation, where they did ropes courses and team building challenges.

After everyone got back to campus, they had a mere hour or so of free time before dinner and then we all went to Kimball Farm, where we got wristbands that let us play volleyball, mini-golf, bumper boats, batting cages, driving range, etc etc. Oh--and there was also an ice cream sundae bar. (Are you getting the sense that we're big on ice cream here!?) =)

Milo was awake for a few minutes...

but mostly he slept through the fun.

Then, we got back to campus around 10:00 and the girls met to go over the fractured fairy tale plan. A longstanding tradition, this is a competition between the dorms. Each dorm puts on a skit of a fairytale that meets certain guidelines given by the dorm parents. This year, these were the rules:

everyone in the dorm must be in it
it must contain references to each dorm parent in the dorm
it must contain dancing (group or solo)
it must contain singing
it must contain a harry potter character
it must contain a representation of Aaron or Jane Moulding
it must contain the phrase "there's an app for that"

Here's the final skit, as performed for the boarding community.

I'm sorry to report that we didn't win, but Sarah did win for the best Jane Moulding impression. (Jane approved!) See the CSW facebook page for a video of Aaron explaining the tradition, and the giving of awards at the end of the performances.

We had about an hour for homework before a short dorm meeting. Ronghao's birthday was Saturday, so we had fun singing the birthday song to her during our meeting tonight!

Then we had some delicious s'mores over a bonfire before heading back to homework, and finally (!) bed, sweet, bed.

we used extra large marshmallows!

mmmmmm

And, now that we're all hopped up on sugar, we're going to crash. Tomorrow is the start of a new week, and we need our energy!

Sweet dreams!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Happy First Day of School

Today was the first day of school! Despite the rainy weather, our Barnies seemed to be in good spirits after returning from their first day, which included an opening assembly and time with their advisors. At in-dorm time at 10:00, many of the girls gathered around snacks in the common room to chat. I think we're all pretty exhausted from the last couple of days of orientation and long dorm meetings, so the dorm fell quiet soon after our 11:00 in room time.

We're starting to get excited for our all-boarder's weekend, and you can expect a nice long blog update with lots of pictures in the days following. Meanwhile, here's a quick photo from tonight to tide you over...

Sending love from the Ban!

Monday, September 5, 2011

Welcome to the 2011-2012 School Year!

It's a new school year, and we're welcoming 9 new students to our dorm this year. Our 28 students represent 6 states and 6 countries!

Yesterday, the dorm leaders worked hard to make welcome gifts and door tags...

and our super clean chore wheel!

Milo got very excited for everyone to arrive. (notice the excited arms!)

Today, our new students arrived and got to know each other through ice breakers on the quad. You can see those pictures by going to our CSW facebook page. In fact, you might as well go there now and "like" the page so you get regular updates and pictures from CSW.

Tonight we had our first dorm meeting, which covered basics like fire safety, how to do laundry, and how to know which dorm parent(s) is on duty. We learned about the stories behind everyone's name (three of us actually had our names CHANGED early on in our lives before settling on our current names!) Then, we played Pictionary. All of our new students took a turn drawing, which we thought was very brave. We tried not to get too competitive, but in case you were wondering--Team Abby won! There was lots of laughter at both the drawings and the guesses. Here are some pictures, so the parents of our new students can see that their daughters were having fun:

Tomorrow will be an early, busy, and long day for everyone here. New students will have an all-day orientation, where they'll meet their big sisters, and their advisors, and see where their classes will meet. They'll also do more ice breakers with the new day students. All the boarders will have a BBQ, and then they'll have a TINY bit of free time before a REAAAAALLY long dorm meeting where we will go over most of the boarding policies and procedures. By the time in-room time rolls around at 11 pm, most of them will fall asleep quickly! (So don't be alarmed if you don't hear from your daughter tomorrow.) =)

Good night from the barn! Sleep well!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Introducing the newest Barn resident....

Melisa and Michael joyfully welcomed

Milo Alden

to their family on June 2, 2011 at 1:00 pm, weighing 8 lbs 2 oz.

About His Name

Not a commonly given name in America, Milo means "industrious" and has roots in our Russian, Swedish, and Danish heritage. It is a form of Emil in Scandinavia and is short-form for the Russian name Miloslav (where it means favor, grace, fame, and glory). Milo is also the adventurous main character in the fabulously quirky and witty book The Phantom Tollbooth.

Alden is the English version of the Danish name Halfdan, which literally translates to "half Dane" or "half Danish." (Which, of course, he is!) In America, Alden's meaning is "old friend and wise protector." Finally, the name Alden honors two of Melisa's grandparents who are no longer with us: you'll find the letters for the names Ed and Edna in the nameAlden.

Some pics from the first two weeks...