Are you ....

-exhausted from skiing all day?
-excited that you finally found a friend who responds appropriately to the quote "Feed me, Seymour!" ? (For the record, the answer is "Feed me all night long," from Little Shop of Horrors.)
-hoping your skiing exhaustion won't affect your performance in the long-awaited FIRST IM INNER TUBE WATER POLO MATCH OF THE SEASON?!
-still annoyed that you didn't immediately guess the "childhood pop star who has recently made a comeback" whose last name starts with "S" ? (Britney Spears -- such a lowball!)

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I'm going to have to guess you are:
Me, after playing Botticelli for two hours on the bus ride home from Okemo Mountain, VT, where JE hosted its annual ski trip this year.

Okemo Mountain.

Botticelli is a fantastic game that I first learned on my FOOT (Freshman Outdoor Orientation Trip, www.yale.edu/foot) pre-orientation hike. The point of Botticelli is to guess a person whom one of your friends (let's say Sam) has selected. Sam gives you the first letter of the person's last name, and then the game begins. In order to ask "yes/no" questions about the mysterious person, which you need in order to figure out anything, you first have to break into the "inner circle." To get to this inner circle, you have to stump your friend by thinking of another person whose last name shares the same first letter as the mysterious person. If Sam can't guess who that person is, then you're into the inner circle.

For example, if the last name of Sam's person begins with an "S," I might ask, "Were you ever married to Carla Bruni?" Or "Did you duke it out with Mark McGwire to break the single-season record for number of home runs?" If Sam doesn't know that the person I'm thinking of is Nicolas Sarkozy or Sammy Sosa, well, I'm into the inner circle.




Charlotte Bronte, Nicolas Sarkozy, & Bill Belichick were just some of the names that came up in our game.

The three-hour bus ride home from VT flew by. It was hilarious to see who my friends chose and it was so indicative of the variety of interests my friends have -- we covered people from the Kennedys to Indian film actresses to British novelists to football coaches. But as much fun as Botticelli was, it was far from the highlight of my day. Because prior to Botticelli, I had spent 7 hours skiing on Okemo Mountain with 50 members of JE in a subsidized ski trip run by the college.

It was AMAZING! I've never gone before, and I can't believe that I missed out on this twice. For starters, we left JE at 4:30 am which made for a hilarious bus ride up there. 50 very sleepy JE Spiders crawled onto the bus, and either dealt with their exhaustion by being insanely awake and peppy or by falling asleep all over their neighbors. Once we got to the mountain, though, everyone woke up.

Gondola ride up the mountain!

People came who had never skiied before and they spent most of the days on the bunny slopes being coached by one of the JE sophomores. I also had a bunch of friends on the trip who have practically been skiing all over the country since age 4. I had mistakenly considered myself to be "intermediate" -- little did I know that after being convinced to come along with 4 of my friends who all fit into the second category (they make skiing look easier than walking), I would realize I still have a LOT to learn. The fact that my entire body is stiff today, including my arms (who knows how that happened?) is proof.

Ana and Ayaska on the mountain!

Beyond making it difficult for me to walk and challenging me to wrack my brain for political and pop culture trivia, the trip was fabulous because I got to spend a completely surreal day with some of my best friends in JE. I know I've said it before, but I absolutely love having the JE community as my home within my home at Yale and whether the people on my trip were my closest friends or my good acquaintances, we're all members of the JE family and I wouldn't trade my residential college for any other.

Speaking of which, the first JE IM inner tube water polo game of the season is tonight -- wish me luck in continuing JE's eternal climb toward the glory of the Tyng Cup!