BEARS ON THE ROAD

I was dropped off at the airport quite early in order to catch my 8 AM flight to Boston. As I stood in line at the Starbucks, hoping to find some breakfast, I noticed a magazine depicting the star of my favorite musical. I fought the temptation to purchase the magazine- and the temptation won. I waited at the sign that had my gate number for about an hour and a half before realizing that the door for my gate was actually on the other side of the terminal. Luckily, I managed to score a seat. I slept and awoke in Boston. A confusing set of subway rides later, I arrived at Harvard Square, and made my way to Currier House. After checking in, I had a slight issue opening the door to my room. Eventually I figured out that you had to pull the door in a little bit while turning the key. I was relieved to see that I didn’t have a roommate. After setting up my room, I went down for dinner and met my lab group. We had some practice debates in which I advocated for Androids and waffles. The...

I was assigned a partner, and after a lecture about utilitarianism and deontology, our lab met up to do some practice solo debates comparing the two philosophies. I won the first round but then lost to one of the state champions in my group. After the practice debates, we met with our partners to divvy up cases and evidence. I chose to write the con case. Hours later, I was well-versed in the 1 st Amendment, Tinker vs. Des Moines, the chilling effect, and the slippery slope, as well as the various connotations of the word “regulate”. Once I had a draft with framework and three contentions that I was pretty proud of, I worked on compiling evidence for our group file. The next day was when our lab would do practice debates in our partnerships, in order to develop our cases. Unfortunately, my partner had fallen ill without finishing the pro case, so in the 30 minutes preceding my round, I threw together a pretty decent pro case, considering the circumstances. Maverick debating is...

I rolled up to Sanibel Sea School for the first time as a CIT. I've been going there as a camper for as long as I can remember, but this was entirely different. First, I received my coveted red STAFF shirt and met my fellow CITS and the counselors. We then waited for the kids to show up. The morning was for the most part quiet, since no one really knew each other. We joined for circle time and then split into our groups to go to the beach and look for trash to clean up. However, since the tide was all the way to the dunes, we didn’t find very much, and most of my time was spent getting to know the campers. We went back to the camp to have lunch, and then took the surfboards out to the beach. I managed to score a deal to drive to sea school every morning rather than bike 6 miles there and 6 miles back, which was only really an improvement because no physical exertion was required, but at least I wasn’t subjected to the burning heat every morning and evening. We took the campers...

We got to Edinburgh late, so the first night, we went straight to the hotel.             In the morning, I was shocked to learn that we were not even going to Loch Ness, we were instead traveling around Edinburgh. However, I decided to let it go. We began by walking to Edinburgh Castle, perched on top of a steep cliff. Luckily, this is not the way up. We dodged a military event and wandered around the fortress-like structure. Several monuments were blocked by a huge arrangement of bleachers, presumably for an event that night. We saw multiple large cannons, St. Margaret’s Chapel, and the Cemetery for Soldier’s Dogs. We also viewed the Crown Jewels of Scotland, featuring a large scepter, and a sword that was easily as tall, if not taller, than me, with a hilt as wide as a usual doorway. Among the Crown Jewels was the Rock of Destiny. At the gift shop, we got some tablet, traditional Scottish candy that turned out to be sugar and c...

We arrived in York, and after ditching our bags, headed for the Jorvik Viking Centre.             When you walk in to the Centre, you immediately find yourself on a thick glass floor that looks down at an archaeological site that shows the foundations of two Viking houses. Around the room were videos about Viking conquests, and artifacts that had been found on the site below.             From there, we went on the Disney-like ride, a slow moving car that drove around a model Viking town with life sized figures that spoke in another language (I presume it was some form of Nordic) as our audio headset helpfully translated, as well as giving insightful information on everyday Viking life.             After this, we went through the rest of the exhibits, which featured several skeletons, one of which had a hologram-like d...

We arrived in Hexham, a small, quaint town whose main feature is the large abbey. We could not go in, sadly, because of a wedding featuring some really spectacular hats, but we were able to wander the grounds of the impressive abbey anyway.             We boarded our bus to Hadrian’s Wall, which took us to several places along the wall that have particularly interesting features. My parents had originally intended for us to hike the entire wall, but (luckily) that wasn’t going to happen, so instead we went to some key sites. The first of these was Vindolanda, a series of low walls that were once a Roman auxiliary fort. There is little left of the original stone used, and many of the charming little cottages we passed appeared to in fact be made of ancient Roman stone. Waste not, want not, I suppose.             Part of Vindolanda is an active archaeologic dig site, but we w...

We returned to London and began, per usual, at the hotel to drop our bags .             From there, we walked to the City of London Museum, near a part of the old Roman walls . The exhibit showed the hundreds of items that had been excavated, which pointed to how much history London is sitting on top of . There were flint arrowheads, pieces of pottery, and skulls, human and animal alike . There are so many ancient societies resting under the current metropolis- it is truly astounding! It's a clock. The cannons fire at the hour. Next, we went to the British Museum, possibly so any void of my soul NOT yet filled with history could be jam packed with priceless ancient artifacts. We began with the oldest part of history, viewing many statues and the gigantic arm of a pharaoh (held out so that, if not for the sign that said ‘Do not touch’, I would have been tempted to fist bump it) before coming to probably the most recogniza...