Family Weekend is just around the corner and everyone is very excited to see their families for the first time in over two and a half months. Families will be coming from all over the country and even the world. We will be having families fly in from Australia, California, Massachusetts, England and many other places. We will have over 200 people on campus this weekend. Since over Family Weekend our family will attend all of our classes, we have been preparing special things for them in each subject. We have also created a special drone welcome video to help welcome our parents to our new home. This is exciting for us to have our parents come to a place that has just been ours for the past few months, and for them to experience how much we love it and have learned here. HMI has turned into a little family and now our real families get to come and see it. Some other special events we have planned are a coffee house for all of the families, where each cabin will perform along with many other acts.
On Wednesday October 19th, over 3.5 million students took the PSAT or National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, and 47 of those students were from HMI. While standardized testing is never a popular activity, the positivity of our test proctors and the banana bread Stephen made for us during the breaks really helped keep us all in a positive mood.
After a long day of classes, town-time and chopping wood on Saturday, we all settled down for a medeival banquet of lasagna. The round tables were pushed together to form two long banquet tables and we were all offered the chance to eat like we were from that time period: without cutlery! Some brave souls took up the offer and attacked the meal with their hands like true knights, while others resorted to the traditional means of eating. Afterwards, we were all treated to a Fair to celebrate one of our last few nights before we headed out to the “battlefield” on Monday. Activities included face painting, indoor climbing in the climbing hall, cookie decoration, banner and throne decoration, and a donut eating competition.
On Monday in our activity period we had a medieval style “battle.” We spent last week’s activity making our elaborate cardboard armor and swords. After lunch everyone dressed up with their armor, turning Who’s Hall into what looked like a medieval gathering. Then we marched out in our separate teams, chants ringing through the air. Rules were discussed and debated and then King Noah and Queen Meena went to their respective thrones with their cavalry. Then it was time to battle! People rushed at each other, the sound of cardboard swords hitting cardboard shields rung through the air. Out of nowhere Noah and his loyal knights surrounded Meena and defeated the noble queen. After the game was over, 44 out-of-breath kids went around the battlefield picking up the cardboard strewn all over the place. What a day! What a battle!