Living in a College Community

This week the girls have really been able to take advantage of the facilities at Dartmouth. Helen has begun crew. They are spending every day rowing in the Dartmouth crew tanks. This tiny picture is the only one I could find online of the tanks.

As soon as the water warms up....maybe July?....they will be out on the beautiful Connecticut River. Believe it or not the high school team has its own boats and is building a boathouse. One aspect of Waldorf education that Helen has really missed is the daily morning workout before classes. She has missed being outside in the fresh air before settling down to academic work. Crew, with its 5:15 a.m. start, should help!

Here's the college boathouse. They can use it in the summer in a special camp if they want.

This week Helen's school has been in "March Intensive" where kids get to take lots of mini-courses. Yesterday her class went to special collections at the Dartmouth library to look at old documents. She was thrilled to get to hold a letter written by George Washington. The library is interesting--they built a glass box inside the old building to hold the temperature and humidity sensitive materials.

Liz went with her class to this beautiful chapel at Dartmouth which is "a house of prayer for all nations." They attended a muslim prayer service as part of their study of Islam.

This year Helen has also taken a class at the college art museum, sketched in the library, and become thoroughly familiar with their theater department. When Liz and Helen are seniors, they will have the opportunity to take classes at Dartmouth if the high school can't provide for them something they might want. We are indeed fortunate to live here (even if we are mired in March mud and snow).