the return of fall break and emergency drill superheroes

So as promised, I am going to start today’s blog with some more fall break things…

We took my friend Jie to house on the rock, and it was weird. There are all these amazing sculptures and things, paired with really odd exhibits. This picture is of a mechanical music box thing that actually plays the song “Octopuses Garden” and is huge.

On our way back from the House on the Rock, my mother pulled over at this pumpkin patch and we ended up buying this huge pumpkin!


Now, moving on to more recent events….
Yesterday we had an emergency drill which involved a bunch of state agencies including the bomb squad, homeland security, the police, the hospital, and a bunch of other people. I heard that the Governor was there, but did not see gov’ner Doyle myself.

There was a roped off area so that students could observe the goingons. This club on campus called Theater of Confusion dressed up like superheroes for the day and carried signs, my favorite one was “imaginary crimes call for imaginary heroes!” and also the one that said “Heroes hate doors too! (The SWAT team got to blow up a door).

The drill involved evacuating everyone from Bushnell (a dorm) at 8:00 in the morning. Many people were mad that they didn’t get to sleep in, but I didn’t care. I had to be in class at 8 anyway, though Paul let us out an hour early to see the drill. There were a bunch of fires lit, and some Beloit students had been enlisted to play “the victims”. All in all, it was an interesting experience.

Break

Hello everyone! I am back from break feeling relaxed, refreshed, and ready to go….sort of. My friend Jie, also a sophomore here, came home with me (a week is not quite enough time to go back to China), and my mom had lots of fun taking her to House on the Rock (a weird Wisconsin tourist trap consisting of an assortment of odd collections and a house built into a the face of what we Wisconsinites define as a cliff). We also went to this family owned Chinese restaurant and Jie had tons of fun ordering and talking to the owners in Chinese, they even joined us for part of the meal.


We rented a lot of movies and vegged out on the couch for most of the week. My favorite movie we rented was called “Keeping Mum” and stared Rowan Atkinson and Maggie Smith. It was hilarious, and if you like British comedies you should definitely see this one. I don’t want to give away the not so subtle twist, but the basic plot consist of a homicidal crazy woman who just wants to do what is best for the people she loves. It is absolutely insanely good!

I have not had time to take my photos off of my camera (I took 322), so I can not yet accurately depict the huge pumpkin my mother bought at a farm off of the highway, the dorm sized jack-O-Lantern Jie carved at a party my Madison friends threw, or the oddities displayed at House on the Rock. These stories will all have to wait for my next post.