(props to Christina for an awesome title!)

Greetings, from one very exhausted Jessie… but let me tell you, the experience that I had this weekend makes it is worthwhile!

It all started on Friday, at 3:05 PM, in my Storytelling & Culture class, when I had to give a presentation about a story from an underrepresented culture in the United States of America. Initially, I decided that I wanted to research a Latin American tale, because with my Spanish major, my appreciation for Latin American culture is continuously growing. I found an adorable and humorous story entitled “Juan Bobo,” which was a lot of fun to present. I enjoyed the entire experience, from choosing a story, to researching how Puerto Rican culture explains aspects of the story, to actually presenting it in front of my class. The audience seemed interested, and they were quite supportive, so I was in a great mood when my class ended at 4:20. At this time I practically RAN to the RHSA office, changed into an RHSA shirt, put on my recycled- material accessories, and headed to Hasbrouck Dining Hall by 4:30 for the SPIRIT WEEKEND KICK-OFF BBQ!

The BBQ was nice- residents came out sporting their awesome recycled fashion pieces, and eager to pick up their scavenger hunt lists! Check out some mighty fine looking New Paltz students rocking their newspaper decor:

Then, I headed back to my hall to finish preparing some things for the rest of the weekend. Bright and early on Saturday morning, I met with the RHSA executive board to finalize some more things, and then we dispersed throughout the community for the scavenger hunt. Check out some super spirited halls, hustling around town to find clues:

At 2:00 PM, we headed to Old Main Quad for the burning of a mock residence hall room. Old Main Quad was full community members, and it was really nice to see administrators, offices from around campus, and even children from the community supporting a great cause. I went inside the Fire Safety house, where I was surrounded by smoke and forced to crawl through it. It was frightening, but definitely an eye opening experience. Finally, at 2:00 PM, the actual burning occurred. There was a speaker who constantly updated us with what was going on (the fire department has just been contacted, firefighters have just got to the fire house, firefighters are arriving on campus). I do not have any words to describe what it was like to see the room burning, and hearing “the firefighters are just putting on their equipment,” as I continued to watch the flames grow bigger and bigger. It was great that so many people came to watch the demonstration, because it was really important to see. It taught me a lot. I am thankful that our campus having such a strong Department of Fire, Health, and Saftey, because it encourages students to take responsibility and understand the unfortunate yet realistic aspects of life- and there is no better form of prevention, than education.

As soon as the demonstration was over, we headed back to the RHSA office to count over $400 worth of pennies. It was SO tedious, but we are so proud of the halls for raising so much money, which will be donated to Green Peace and the NEACURH Focus Project. After, we spent several more hours going through pictures from the scavenger hunt, and pretty soon, we looked like this!!!

Sunday morning was started the right way, thanks to Val! She brought us PUMPKIN CREAM CHEESE for our bagels! Then we went to Old Main Quad for the field events. Check out this video to see the excitement that went on:

After a day outside, we ended the weekend with our infamous lip sync contest and viewing of the banners:

Before I conclude, I want to give a shout-out to DEYO HALL!! YOU GUYS ROCK AND I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!! Each hall puts in a tremendous amount of work preparing for Spirit Weekend, so here is a sneak quick behind the scenes view of what Deyo Hall did for Spirit Day:

Thursday Night they had a kick-off and invited all the residents in the building:

From Friday to Saturday, they were hard at work, finding all of the items on the Scavenger Hunt list:

Then, they were up all Saturday night working on the banner:

Field Events took up Sunday afternoon:

And finally, lip sync!

I hope that all who participated (whether it was challenging yourself on the field or learning a new fact about New Paltz history) feel like this weekend brought many different aspects of New Paltz together. I hope that you had fun, enjoyed yourself, and feel like you have grown as an individual, as a hall, and as a community. Until next time, enjoy! -Jessie

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.