Winter Carnival 2013

 

After a long, eventful weekend, the 16s have officially experienced their first Winter Carnival. The festivities kicked off on Wednesday country style with the Florida Georgia Line concert at the Hop. Most of us are country music fanatics and the Southern music gave us a little taste of home (well not exactly home for Katie). We had an awesome time dancing and singing to covers of country and pop favorites as well as Florida Georgia Line's own hits. Paige and Alli even got to meet the leader guitarist of the band later on that night. We're now their biggest fans!


 When Carnival started, there was barely any snow around. Even the annual snow sculpture contest was cancelled because of the lack of snow! Much to our south westerners' delight, blizzard Nemo hit just in time for the weekend. The snowstorm on Friday and Saturday wasn't quite as bad as expected (or as Katie expected since she's used to blizzards in Cleveland), but there was just enough powder to still play in the snow and cover campus entirely.

On Friday, Paige, the only brave soul in the bunch, successfully completed the Polar Bear Plunge! Holly and Katie cheered her on while she swam acrossOccom Pond in freezing temperature. Holly and Katie were freezing just waiting in line and watching Paige jump in the water…can't even imagine how cold it was! Major props Paige!! (Especially given the fact that you're a Texan and not used to the cold.)

The rest of the week was spent avoiding homework, watching movies, and ice skating! The ice skating was a true test of who was from the cold climate, except for Kaira who was shockingly an amazing ice skater. We’re not really sure where Kaira’s abilities stem from but years of skating back home in Ohio were evident with Katie. Maybe Irish dancing helps? (That is until she wiped out trying to skate backwards.) All we know is that Kayden and Alli “rode the struggle bus” as we call it, but got better with time. The trouble they had was masked by Kaira’s epic fall.


Even with the blizzard, the Carnival fun continued with various themed parties and special guest DJs at the frats all weekend. The annual beach party offered us a glimpse of summer during the storm on Friday night, and we got to rock our 90s style again on Saturday night (even if we may have looked a little too 80s, well Kayden anyway). Excessive amounts of hot cocoa also kept us feeling warm throughout the weekend. Another highlight of Carnival was getting to see Scud and Rose since they came to visit for the weekend!

Exhausted from all the activities, Sunday we were back in the library all day since we of course decided not to do work all weekend. It was great for us to get to take part in the old traditions of Carnival, especially since we were traveling the weekend of Homecoming in the fall. This Winter Carnival was definitely one for the books!

-Katie and Alli

Check out more Winter Carnival photos here

Hello From NYC Y’all!

Elisa Scudder '14 at a Knicks game

The Dartmouth D-Plan, which lets us do everything from study abroads in France to volunteering in Africa, has one sneakly little term that will shock your system. It’s called the Junior Winter Off-Term Internship. Or as I like to call it, OMG It’s The Real World. Many of the things I’ve taken for granted at Dartmouth - like hot water that always works and fully cooked meals prepared for me with no clean-up necessary - suddenly don’t exist. It’s quite a different living experience being alone in NYC, but I’m loving it so far.
 

I’m currently working as a marketing intern with Animoto - a Dartmouth founded online video-creation company. Three out of the four founders were Dartmouth grads, and I recently found out that one is married to a Dartmouth Volleyball Alum! Working with some amazing grads and the four other Dartmouth interns I’m with has been an amazing experience. Working a 9-5 is so much different than the constant hustle of class-gym-class-gym that I’m used it, and man is it exhausting. But the experience of working at an office (a pretty cool one in fact) is teaching me so much about what I want for my future - which is the whole point of the off term, to learn.

While I’m enjoying working in the city, the real fun part is living here. I’m living near the NYU campus, so I’m always seeing college aged kids and live in a really cool area. There are also about 25 other Dartmouth ‘14s up here as well, so its fun to get dinners in the city and explore around. Last weekend I was able to go see the new 9-11 Memorial which was beautiful, and I’ve also been exploring around Central Park.

It’s crazy to think it’s already week 5 and I’ve only got a short time left to live it up in NYC. I’m looking forward to really experiencing everything I can in these last few weeks, and then reuniting with everyone in Hanover. And believe me, after living in the real world, I’m ready to go back to being a college student, even if its just for a little longer.

-Scudder ‘14

Texans in the snow

Being a Texan, I have never experienced a true winter, yet alone lived in one. The times I’ve been around snow in the past were from the occasional family ski trips I have been on. I was nervous to head back to Hanover after our long winter break because I have been told how brutal the winter is here, but it really hasn’t been bad. Despite the one dreadful week with a high of 3 degrees, the winter has been quite nice to me. I have been making it a goal of mine to do outdoorsy activities despite the cold weather to help persuade myself that winter is not evil and can actually be fun. So far, Kayden, Holly and I have gone skiing a few times at Mount Killington in Vermont. It was a blast! I also went ice-skating at Occom pond, which is just a few minutes walk from my freshman dorm cluster. The night of the first major snowfall in Hanover, a large student population met up on the green at midnight and had a giant snowball fight. The whole freshman volleyball clan went and ran around like crazy. Because it was dark, I didn’t know who it was that I was pegging with snowballs, but that was the best part. Pretty much all the freshman teamed up against Kaira and ended up tackling her every time we saw her. 

Both Holly and I have celebrated our birthdays this winter, which has been a great excuse to go out to eat and get away from Foco. Both of our birthday festivities were really fun!

On a side note, the freshman volleyball players all performed in the Athlete Talent Show at the end of January. Personally, I think we were robbed because we totally deserved to win it. We sang and danced to the song “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls and changed up the lyrics some. Alli stole the show with her mad singing skills and I rapped a small portion of it. I was so nervous before we got on stage but now it seems silly because the whole show was meant to be laidback and fun. 

Check out our performance video on the DP2 Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=4507943536864

Winter volleyball training has been going really well. I can already see improvement in my strength and feel as though the individual training sessions are really improving my hitting technique and overall performance. I can’t wait for spring practices!

Winter Carnival is this weekend and I am determined to do the “polar bear plunge.” Hopefully I won’t chicken out.

Paige Caridi ‘16