Tradition

It's a sunny Saturday morning around 8am. The air is crisp, the sun is shining brightly and the thermometer reads 5 degrees. Someone is unraveling a stiff garden hose, making his way to a big, empty tank. He turns on the water and begins filling the it, then gets this great idea to shovel 5 or 6 scoops of snow into the tank. The fire in the wood stove has been going for hours, making the warm house almost unbearable. Preparations are underway....

It's now 11am and the temperature has steadily risen to a balmy 10 degrees. A crowd has gathered around the water tank, which is still being continuously fed with scoops of snow. The crowd is getting anxious...and then....finally, the announcement is made and one by one, people begin to emerge from the warm house wearing everything from bathing suits to full costumes...the crowd goes wild.



That's right, today is the annual "Polar Bear Plunge", where students *willingly* jump into a freezing tank of water in the dead of winter. Most learned from their blunder and only did it once, for some it took another try before the cold sank in, and a few even dared to take the plunge three times in a row!



Most of them didn't have to say anything, their facial expressions said it all!



We even had a few brave representatives from the US!



And then...there are the faces:

Discoveries

Hi everybody, it's Kaitlyn! Guess what?! I'm learning so many new things and discovering so much of my surroundings. Mommy said that since I can somewhat sit up on my own, I get my own chair at the dinner table, that's exciting! I always like dinner time because that means I get to play for a little while. Mommy and daddy give me a bunch of plastic things that are all connected together; some of them even make funny noises when I push them in a certain spot. I've never heard a lot of these noises before so they're kind of strange to me.



I'm also starting to discover what mommy and daddy keep calling my hands. They're pretty interesting, and really useful for lots of things...like chewing on and holding my toys. I'm also learning what it means to be "cold." Every time we go outside mommy and daddy say that it's cold. All I know is that my new-found fingers feel like they're going to fall off and it gets hard to breathe.



One thing me and daddy have in common is that we get kinda cranky when we're sleepy, so when we get on mommy's nerves, we just take little mini naps together.



Well, that's all for now! Thanks for listening!