Last

This will be my last most of this semester. I have had a great adventure, but all good things must end. The emotions in Elaine house are flying and though I do feel the sadness and terror of leaving, I can't bring myself to cry or show any sign of these emotions. I am making the most of our last three days here at this wonderful school. I have the concept of missing everyone, but knowing my cold heart, I won't realize it till a week after I'm home, so please don't think any more then that when I say goodbye with crying.

In the next few days, I am doing to be finishing packing all of my things into boxes and enjoying the time I have. All my homework being done (please don't kill me because you still have homework) I hope to spend as much time with my friends, outdoors or in.

Tonight is the fancy dinner, and I can't be more excited to get dressed up for one of the last dinners here.

Tomorrow is the lock in. Spending the day cleaning our rooms and packing and getting ready, we will spend the night at the LRC till 5 am. All the students will be there and be spending most of their last nights together with a party.
This is my last post to this blog. I will have a blog for my semester in Denmark next semester.
I can't wait for the great things to come, but I will never forget the great things behind.

Hot Spot

It's been warming up again this, to everyone's distress. And since the semester is slowing coming to a close, we are all running outside as often as we can. Unfortunetly we have a ton of homework. I have a study block though and no math homework (which is the bulk for most people), so I'm better off than most. The hope for colder, snowier, better weather is strong among the community here. We want to be able to run in the snow and not the slush. To catch snow flakes on our tongues and fly down the hills and pack it tight for snowballs and snowmen.
I hope, we hope, the students of Conserve School hope, for better weather before it's too late.

Happy Returns!

Sunday was the day that every student packed up their stuff and head for Conserve School. I was one of the earlier one's to arrive, and was happy to greet people as they came to the parking lot. The day was filled with hugs and squeals and tons of snow. We were all so glad to be back home, because Conserve School is truly our home.

The snow was incredible, it covered everything with inches of white powder and steadily got more compact beneath our feet. The sledding hill was full of people, though we had no sleds. The slick sidewalls carried people from one end to the other with only a few push-offs. The snowballs were flying past us and fell apart, still in the air.

It was a great day to be back home with our friends, welcoming everyone back with glee. For me, Thanksgiving, though great and fun, was nothing like Conserve School and made me yearn to come back even more. Now we are back at school, going to classes and saying hi in the halls, like we were never gone. I don't know how any of us are going to survive leaving for good when the semester is done, we can't even fathom it.

Hope everyone else's Thanksgivings had some good highlights.

PEACE,

Kaia

Getting Ready for the Banquet

 We have a harvest fest banquet tonight. We did some folk dancing. I saw a lot of people wear dresses for the first time, like Maia, 3rd picture down. I wore Saige's dress with a belt and danced all night.
I ate my fancy dinner at a table with Bill and Rob the grad fellows and Teahelahn, George, Meghan, and Jessie. Teahelahn was very entertaining the whole night as George tried to teach us all how we be proper. It was tons of fun.
The picture at the very bottom is me, taken by Michelle. I just wanted to add a thanks to her, because this is my new favorite photo.

Halloween Weekend

I haven't had much to say recently, nothing's really been going on. There was a Halloween dance, where we danced for hours and most of us changed into our workout clothes from the locker rooms halfway through. We had chips and caramel apples. I was a wife and my friend Danielle was my husband, Kai gave me away and Genna (as a K-pop girl) wed us. The dress was beautiful, but horrid to dance in. Kasey, Genna and Jackie (from left to right) were K-pop girls. It was also Day of the Dead, so our science teacher Andy was a skeleton. It was all scary and fun all day and night.

Into Sylvania with Jeff

Yesterday, Jeff took a few of the kids out canoeing in Sylvania. The group consisted of Kate, Gwen, Samir, Maia, Mattie, Maeve, Mei-Jing, me and his dog Penny. We went through three lakes and back the same way. One was Cub Lake, and it was frozen over. So to get through Jeff and Mattie's canoe with Penny in it went through and broke the ice for us. When we got past Cub Lake we went to Deer Island and it was beautiful. It was actually a warm and sunny day and we walked along the beach and took naps and ate cookies till Jeff said we had to head back. It was fun to get to go through the ice, we felt like we were in the arctic without the bad weather.

Spirit Week Day 5

Day five of spirit week was hippie day. Everyone wore tie-dye and had a blast. Our afternoon classes were great. In Field Instruction we did geo-caching... Thanks to Stefan for the photo. We had lots of fun running around finding random objects.

Morning Hike

 We were eating breakfast when we thought we saw a forest fire in the distance. So we freaked out when we realized it was the sky. We jumped from the table and ran to the lake, luckily, with camera in hand. There were only a few of us, and we were all wearing tanktops or t-shirts, so everyone else watched up with confused expressions and we ran out the doors. But it was gorgeous, so it was worth it.

Spirit Week Day 4

Day four of spirit week was Recycle Day. Unfortunetly, not many people took the time to dress up, but Genna and I did. I made a plastic bag dress that turned out pretty good and Genna was the Party Rock Box, complete with recycled box.

Spirit Week Day 3

Day three was Halloween it's self. There were tons of awesome costumes. If you want to see more than I have on here, there might be more on facebook under Conserve School's photos.

Spirit Week Day 2

Day two of spirit week is dress like a teacher day. I dressed up as Nancy the art teacher, Genna dresses up as Dylan the grad fellow, and tons of other people dressed up too. I even sprayed my hair white this morning and when people saw me at breakfast, it took them a second to recognize me.

Spirit Week Day 1

Day one of spirit week comes to a close. It was Black and White day, and mostly everyone dressed up. There are only ever a few people who didn't go black and white. Kate and Olivia went all out and painted their faces black. The whole of Bobcat wing just drew with black and white eyeliners on their faces. It was a fun day.

V for Vendetta

The power of unity is a great and powerful thing. Watching this movie reminded me of this to the extent of missing it. The power of protest is one of the greatest powers of the world.
On Monday, February 14th 2011, something started in Madison, WI. I was lucky enough to be there with all my friends, family and everyone else in the city. Watching this movie reminded me of these thrilling times.
In case you aren't aware of the happenings in Madison during this time, I'll catch you up. Wisconsin's Governor, Scott Walker, was trying to illegally pass the "Wisconsin budget repair bill." This bill was cutting funding for education, teachers, union workers and more. Walker was basically shitting on the heart of Madison, our education system. The Madison Metropolitan School District is, in my opinion, one of the best school districts in the state. Our campus in just on the end of the center of the capital.
Anyway, he was trying to pass this bill that would lower income and retirement funds for almost all the parents of my friends and most of the people living in Madison.
The protests started and people began to unite. There were tons of school walkouts from middle school to high school to people bringing there toddlers to the protests. Everyone had creative and/or meaningful signs and we circled the capital. Then we got inside and occupied the capital square for the next almost year and a half. We started in February 2011 and pushed through the winter after that and through that next summer.

We made history!
We are on Wikipedia! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_protests
My friends and I were in the heart of it, helping it!
People from around the world... from India and Germany and France, etc.... sent money to Ian's Pizza so the protesters would have food to get through a full day!

For photos of these great times vistit http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-best-protest-signs-at-the-wisconsin-capitol. (Jenny my piano teacher is number 65.)

this scene in the movie is a fair representative of what happened. Some people even had V masks. I wish we had done exactly this, it would have been a great statement.

Costumes

I think I may be a little too excited for Halloween. I never before thought this was possible, but here I am. Dressed in my Autumn Fairy costume, sitting in the house meeting, I am pulling up my new arm warmers (made by me from torn of pieces of the original costume). You would think everyone else would be looking at me weird, and some are, but there are also about 4 other people who are dressed up and more who were before the meeting. There are two huge princess dresses that the two Meg(h)ans are wearing, Brooke as Pebbles, Ella as the evil mother from Tangled and me as a fairy.
So this is where it may be too much, I have 2 different full costumes and 6 total. The whole week is like a Homecoming week, but a Halloween week and I have thought through costumes for each day as well as a group costume for the contest on Saturday. This will be the best Halloween ever, besides the fact that there's no trick-or-treating. For a truly great Halloween/ half birthday, tons of candy would be great.
So gather up all the extra candy you don't want from tric-or-treating and send it up
PEACE,
Kaia

How much I love Jackie

how much I love Jackie
poem by Kaia Rubin

I love Jackie
like bees love those turquoise flowers
like an elementary school kids like good food
I love Jackie
like the trees like the feel of wind against there bark
like Cheese likes Mac and Mac likes Blue
I love Jackie
more than old people like fake teeth
more than silent films like organs
but most of all
I love Jackie like I like writing on my legs and arms with sharpie
actually I really like writing on my legs and arms with sharpie a lot
but it's pretty close

that a poem for you Jackie,
thanks for the idea of what to do on my blog.

English Class

Yesterday was the day my English class became better than any English class at East. We came in and heard the beautiful songs of Jack Johnson. Then Jeff, our teacher, tells us we have to write a paper on a Eddie Vedder song. We all shouted Yeah! and threw our papers in the air as celebration. No that didn't happen, but our assignment was to write about how Eddie Vedder's music relates to Into the Wild. :)

New Kicks

Yesterday, I realized that these sneakers I had since freshman year, weren't dirty yet. You would normally expect a pair of shoes to get dirty in a month or two, but not these. These have stayed neon white and glow in the dark green for over a year. I'm the type of person that doesn't really like white shoes, especially when you can see only your feet when you walk around in the dark. So to fix this problem, I decided to paint them. I sat in the student apartment during the debate last night and painted my shoes with acrylics. At first the designs were all over the place and no one part of the shoe matched another, so I kept painting, and this is what I ended with so far.

If you know anyone who would like to purchase these fine kicks, they are a US size 8.5 and EUR size 40.
Around 50 or 60 dollars is a good min, but I'm up for bargaining.

Going to Denmark

So, as you know, I am going to Denmark next semester, but tuition is expensive. To here more about this amazing experience vistit my fundraising website.
Thanks,
Kaia

http://www.giveforward.com/studyabroadtodenmark?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fb_share_send&utm_campaign=dashboard_supporters&og_action=hug&t=3&fb_ref=389448&fb_source=message

Solos Site

 I was on a beautiful site for solos. The night and day alone was a nice experience filled with reading and sleeping and taking pictures. Though we couldn't wander far, where I could go was wonderful.