Orientation...Steppin' Up

Yesterday was Day Two of PASSPORT III here at Calvin. Three summer orientations down, one to go! It is so much fun, but it is tons of work. Each summer session is two and a half days long and has about five to six hundred new students and parents.

It takes lots of planning and revamping. This summer, the O-Board (that stands for Orientation Board - who is me and the seven other students that I work with) added some new sessions to the program. It is really easy to use what past Boards have used, but it is way more fun to revamp or even story new sessions up.

Well, enough about that. We do still have one more session to go, and we will rock it, but we are starting to plan for our fall passport - QUEST. Yup, four summer programs and a fall program. Right now, Sam and Cassie, two of my fellow interns, are sitting in our livingroom and watching last year's video of the step-up dramas. These are dramas that we do during QUEST to bring emotional tension to the foreground. We want to start a safe dialogue about the stuff new students might face at college.

Dreams in Wonderland

I think that I thought of it first. It was always my idea...for the past month. It is the best thing in the world. I'm talking about Tim Burton's newest movie, "Alice in Wonderland."

O.K. so the idea wasn't originally my own. It started with Lewis Carroll, then was passed through British culture across the seas to countries all over the world. (There are even translations done by Nobakov in Russian.) And making a movie about this beloved children's book has been done as well, by Disney, way back when in the 50s. But, BUT...It was my idea to have Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in this amazing adaptation.

Let me explain - A couple of weeks ago, I was enjoying, for the hundredth time, Alice in Wonderland, being read outloud. I then decided that the reading would be so much better if it was done in a British accent. In fact! "In fact," I thought, "if Helena Bonham Carter was reading this, it would be that much better." Wait, why hasn't anyone made an Alice in Wonderland movie with H.B.Carter in it, with Johnny Depp? I mean the pair is amazing and practically inseperable.

The next day, I had a heart attack while surfing through the Internet Movie DataBase (imdb). "Holy Jabberwocky! Not only is the movie that I dreamt up being made, it is directed by Tim Burton - the master of disaster -and has Alan Rickman, Anne Hathaway, and Mia Wasikowska. I was giggling and light-headed for about an hour.

I am so excited. This truly is a dream come true.