My Life As An Action Figurine

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I'm trying to decide whether it's been an Insane Dancer Barbie or a Battery-Operated Super Mountaineer G.I. Joe sort of a week. For all the potential A.C. students coming for interviews this past week (affectionately labeled 'zero-years' by us wise, worldly, beyond-sophisticated first years who are, yes indeed, a WHOLE YEAR older than them), the impression was more that of a chubby purple-haired wind-up plastic troll careening rhythmically around the dance floor at Sosh. The 'initiators' of the interview week (past graduates of UWCs looking important with nametags) actually thanked my friends and I for our illustrious 'sosh induction' techniques, possibly because we looked so ridiculous that we made everyone feel less awkward! We feel that we gave them a truly realistic impression of AC at its best, Mardi Gras beads and stripes of white facepaint and bright blue striped jumpsuits and all. It's hard to tell when I acted as the complete antithesis to fashion more: at sosh with the zero years, or on the CAVRA camping trip this past Saturday. The buses left at eight in the morning, so my thought process was literally "Look. It's 7:30. Shower. Caffeine. Hiking boots. Wooly jumpers." But I have to say, walking up the steep side of the third-highest mountain in the Brecon Beacons right off the bat certainly woke me up. After literally half an hour of climbing straight up with 10 kilos of waterproof trousers and food on my back, I looked behind me and felt quite despondent about facing another six and a half hours of all that. Then, miraculously, I looked in front of me, and around me, and everywhere, because according to one of the staff (who had been leading the same CAVRA first weekend of April hiking trip for longer than most of us had been alive), it was the clearest day he had seen in eighteen years. This is where language gets frustrating, at least the English language. Maybe in Norwegian or in Malay they have got words to describe how surreally perfect it was for that entire gloriously exhausting day, but I know I haven't. For 35 kilometers, I felt as if I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right people, and there are just so many people who have never had that exhilarating feeling. The ice-cold pasta, sleeping on top of a gnarly root all night, and frozen milk in the morning all made me mysteriously happy. Honestly, I don't even want to try to figure out why. If you pulled the string on my back my electronic voice box would just say "I love this. I love this. I love this" over and over again. May my batteries never run out.

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