So, I was really good at posting for the first two days. But things got busy - like really, really busy. We were up from 7am to midnight pretty much every day (give or take on a few people - I know many of the guys were up later, but most of us girls got a decent amount of sleep... most of the time).
So, first I'll give you a picture spam, followed by a word spam.
I'm fantastically good at both, so prepare yourselves.
There are some artsy photos in here. This is one of them. Deal. This is one of my poems from the workshop, the one I actually read on the night I got to read. It's part of the "image explosion" prompt where we had to take a line from the poem "Don't Write History as Poetry" by Mahmoud Darwish, and use it as the first line of our poem. So those poems were taped on the board originating from the poem itself.
They're kind of out of order because I'm too lazy to reorganize them. Sorry! This was from the last day. We had sidewalk chalk and got to write messages on the wall outside our dorm. So many inside jokes, so this probably means nothing to you, but that's okay.
This was Pierce Dining Hall, where we ate three times a day. Breakfast was fro 7:30-8:30, lunch 12-1, dinner 5-6. You had to be there. Or you died.
One of the RA activities one afternoon was working with the inkpress they have at the Kenyon Review office. It's super cool - if you ever get a chance to use one, they're super cool. But super messy! This is one of my best friend's hands after using the press.
Another of the walls in our classroom. These are our "found poems," where we cut out phrases from magazines and created them into a poem. That was one of my favorite prompts. CRAFTY STUFF.
This was a sign on the third floor of the girl's side of the dorm. Who knows why.
THE DASTARDLY HILL. To get to the athletic center, you have to go down this HUGE hill. Whoever built the center obviously did not think about placement too much. Because after you work out, to get back to the dorm, you have to climb all the way back up the hill after you're all nice and tired, and just showered... so annoying. It's a huge hill, especially for us flat midwestern folks who don't even have lumps in the road.
This is Middle Path, the main artery of Kenyon College. It's actually really cool, because the whole campus is centered around the path. It's gravel all the way up and down, and at this section, these twinkle lights light up every night. We had to walk this way back to the dorm every night. So beautiful.
Another artsy photo - this time from the inkpress day. This is the ink you use for the press. Yup.
This is in the great hall in Pierce, where we ate at every meal. The stained glass is really cool - the whole hall literally looks like the Hogwarts Great Hall. NO. JOKE.
Another photo of Middle Path.
Oh, there's a graveyard on campus, for whatever random reason. One of the first nights, two of my friends and I went and wrote in the graveyard for about forty-five minutes. It was pretty cool!
Artsy ice photo. Deal.
This is Ascension, where everyone had classes every day. I miss it so much.
All right, now you've got some fun photos (*cough stop bugging me mom cough*).
It was the best two weeks I've ever had in my life, and I can't explain to you how hard it is to come back to a normal life with two jobs that you really don't like every day. It's such a shock - to have been doing something you love every day, to be with people you love every day, to come back and realize you may never see those people again, and you're stuck doing all of this stuff you really don't want to do after you've seen how fantastic life can be.
It sucks.
The people are a whole post in themselves. They're the most fantastic people I've ever met (no offense to my friends here) but it's totally different to be surrounded only by people who are exactly the same as you are - who like the same things, who love the same things, who understand your quirks and accept you. I've never felt more accepted in my life; and I'm not really in an environment normally where I'm not "accepted," so I can't even imagine what it's like for the people who go to school and really don't feel like they fit in.
It was an amazing experience. I've finally found friends who understand me and most of my life - they've seen me, and it's such a confidence-booster to see that they like me for who I am and not for who I pretend to be around them.
The problem is, they're all across the country, and in some instances, the globe. That sucks too.
Everything about it was perfect, and I know everyone wants to just go back and stay there forever, writing and writing with the same people, living in an environment where all you have to do is do what you love.
Man, just writing about it is making me emotional. The last day was the saddest day of my life. I don't cry in public very easily, and I didn't think I was going to cry that day, but all of a sudden as one of the shuttles was leaving, the floodgates opened. I've never cried like that in front of other people in my life. But everyone was crying, so it's okay. But it's hard, because part of me definitely understood that I may never see those same people again - and almost for sure we'd never all be like that together again.
But thank God for technology. If this had been ten years ago, even, it wouldn't have been as easy to stay in contact. We have Skype, cell phones, facebook, blogs, email... the list goes on. I've gained at least 50 new friends on facebook, and many contacts in my phone. Reunions are already being planned. I'm seeing two of my friends from the workshop at Christmastime because we discovered we're all going to be in Vermont at the same time. Technology is fantastic.
Well, in short, it was amazing, it's hard adjusting back to home life, I miss everyone and everything.
The end.
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