Original Taste...Original Recipe

The Iron Chef Winterim has mastered the art of making different kinds of foods including, eggs, seafood, roasting, hamburgers, and pasta. Now its time for them to put all of it together to make an original recipe. This afternoon they will be judged by the top taste testers: Mr. Wiggins, Mrs. Bagley, Mr. Horne , Mrs. Margraf, and Mr. Cassidy (Director of Lawrence Academy Dining Services). This will be the event of a life time. Only one team will prevail. Let the judging begin! Check out the video below to see the final crazed moments in the kitchen. Post a comment and let us know who won!

LA Chess Championship

The LA Winterim Chess Tournament took place today on the LA Campus. After a day of playing chess in Harvard Square, the LA chess players used their knowledge from the past two weeks try to beat each other out for the championship! By the end of the tournament, Min Soo and Steve were the last standing! If you have the news, let us know who won the tournament!
UPDATE: We've heard from Mr. Curran that Min Soo was the champion. Congratulations!

Returning to Campus

Winterim is winding down, and the following trips are coming back today:

The System Arriving campus 3:15 p.m. (approximate)

Ireland Arriving campus 5:00 p.m. (approximate)

France Arriving campus 8:30 p.m. (approximate)

Arizona Arriving campus 9:00 p.m. (approximate)

Mexico Arriving campus 11:00 p.m. (approximate)

Yellowstone Arriving campus 12:30 a.m. (approximate)

Panama Arriving campus 1:00 a.m. (approximate)

Make sure you welcome your friends back as their planes roll in this evening (or tomorrow morning!)

Going for Stripe Number 2

The Martial Arts Winterim have been training for 2 weeks. The owner Mike Luth said that it takes about 4 months to achieve 2 stripes on a white belt. However, these students have worked hard to achieve this milestone in 2 weeks. Check out our Picasa web album to see 50 new pictures.

Reflections of Head Start Volunteers

As stated on the Head Start website: "Created in 1965, Head Start is the most successful, longest-running, national school readiness program in the United States. It provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. Nearly 25 million pre-school aged children have benefited from Head Start."

Here is a video with Jake, Will, and Mitch talking about what they love about this organization.



Please comment on my video! Thanks.

The Total Experience at Total Mountain Experience

Monday, Wednesday and Friday we arrived to the mountain at 9:00 am. We skied/snowboarded from 9:00 am to 11:30 am. At 12:00 noon we came in for lunch and then from 1-3 we worked with the Wachusett work members. The jobs were all different. We did a different job every day. Some jobs consisted of working in the park where you fixed jumps and racked the snow, working in the cafeteria serving food, working in tech fixing snowboards and skis, working in the store, working at rentals, standing at the lifts checking tickets, and ride in the snow cat and groomed the mountain. It was a great experience for us because we got to experience working by doing many different jobs and learning about how a mountain is run. On Tuesday and Thursday we stayed at the mountain until 8:00 pm and went night skiing. We arrived to the mountain at 12:30 and then worked from 1-3 the same as Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Total Mountain experience was a great winterim because we got to experience two things: Working and Skiing/Snowboarding. Many of the students skied/snowboarded before and some have not. The ones who skied/snowboarded before improved by landing difficult tricks off the jumps and some who never skied/snowboarded before improved by going down the black diamonds. Many people worked before but never experienced working at a mountain so this was a great experience for us.

Pre-Game Report

The Sports Journalism group will be going to the Bruins game tonight. They will be playing the Pittsburgh Penguins. These two teams have some recent problems with each other after one of the Penguins players, Matt Cooke, took out the Bruins point leader, Marc Savard on March 7th. Conor Helfrich wrote about the upcoming meeting tonight, and the possible reactions to the cheap shot. Check out his complete article here. A video of the hit, if you missed it, is below.

The Final Struggle for Perfected Glass Art

The artwork is finally coming to a close. The art is looking beautiful and the students can almost take a breath of fresh air. The group is spending their time grinding the glass down so there are no sharp edges and polishing it to shine like a diamond. The Final Struggle is here. Tomorrow we will see the finished art work.

The Luck of the Irish doesn't Help Everyone During Casino Night!

Thursday night, St. Patrick's Day, students crammed into the Student Lounge for a night of Poker, Roulette, Craps, and various other casino games. Chips could be traded in for tickets, which would be drawn for a raffle. Winners could win various prizes, such as Red Sox fan packages, and the like. Two lucky winners received iPod Shuffles. Kids who decided not to gamble sat and watched TV, played pool, or played Rock Band.

Week 2 in Costa Rica

(Photo found at: http://travelcostaricanow.com/index.php/Central_Valley_of_San_Jose)

Report continued from Kathryn Babin and Scott Johnson:

On Monday morning we awoke early to tackle the even more challenging water of the lower half of the river and then once more met our faithful bus driver for a 3 hour drive to La Fortuna, our second to last destination. Here we will go on a safari paddle, swim in natural pools and hike the base of the volcano. This will be a real contrast to both the Caribbean sea coast of Tortugero National Park and the mountain gorge of the Pacuare River. Our trip will end with a final day in San Jose and the next morning, we will leave for home. While some may look forward to the comforts of warm showers and spider-free bedrooms, we will all be sad to say goodbye to Guapo and our experiences in Costa Rica.

Pura Vida!

Yoga on a Field Trip

Today, yoga is on a field trip to the Kripalu Yoga Center to do some new styles of yoga including heat yoga. The Kripalu Yoga Center is a well known health center where people come from all over the northeast to take classes. They will be taking part in some hardcore yoga and learning about to lifestyle of a yogi.

Internet Cafe with no wall plugs.

Today the RUaDN group took a trip to Jitterbeans Internet Cafe in Marlboro, NH. There, we worked on our upcoming slideshow for the school assembly on Friday. We added pictures from each Winterim, as well as a couple of pictures of the afternoon activities that boarders participated in after the day was over. our group needed to find some music for the slideshow, as well as non-copyrighted version that would be posted on the blog. We had a great chance to spend the day outside of the classroom, and it was a beautiful day. We all needed that!

LAzer Tag

On-campus Winterims loaded 3 buses and traveled to Lazerzone in Marlborough, MA. Split into three groups - Blue, Orange, and Green - each student played a game of laser tag, ate pizza and played arcade games for tickets. We think Joe (and his "crew") had the most tickets coming away with an ugly purple blow up alien for 5,000 tickets. Ty and Connor had a blast squirting invisible ink over unsuspecting students. Several students found themselves "trapped" in the floor to ceiling playground. After a long night of lazer tag, students are looking forward to large winnings at Casino Night tonight.

Going Green in the French Alps

Today, the 17th, Going Green in the French Alps is going to be taking part in a variety of activities. In the morning, they will be all constructing an "organic shelter", which I assume is something like a tree-fort. In the afternoon, they are taking a 3 hour walk to a farm tavern. At the tavern, the owners make their own goat and sheep cheese. They will take a scenic tour of the farm, and then dine at the tavern with solely organic foods. It sounds like they're eating very healthily and having a great time thus far.

(tripadvisor.com)

Tragedies Strike in Digital Photography!

Who would think that taking photos would be so dramatic? Here, straight from the hotel rooms, we have some footage of the toilet and bug crises at hand. Wish everybody in the hotel luck.