snow!

This weekend kicked off with a lip-synch competition put on by the SRC (Student Representative Council) Friday night. Songs included Get Down and Bad Touch... so you know it was good. This was followed by an entire Saturday of spherical trigonometry. As I said, it's hands-down the sickest math class I've ever taken. Our tutor, Glenn, is a mathematical genius. He's actually a math historian, and knows more about ancient Arabic mathematicians than anyone I've ever met. Or anyone in the world. I don't know. It's insane. Spherical Trig hasn't been taught in 50 years, but it's the basis for astronomy and navigation, and Glen is trying to bring it back; he's writing a textbook and using our class as guinea pigs. By the beginning of the second week, most of us were seeing Menalaus figures in our sleep. Anyway, as it turns out I spent the entire day working on a problem that I'd actually solved in the first 10 minuets, and just hadn't realized it. Awesome.

However, the weekend was salvaged by a beautiful hike to Lake Lovelywater, high in the Tantalus Mountains. We started at 7am, crossed the Squamish River on a giant cable with the help of pulleys, and headed up through beautiful (if soggy) old-growth forest. There was much excitement when we saw the first little patch of snow about halfway up, and as we continued on the rain turned to snow and the snow got so deep we were practically swimming through it! Everybody looks like a little kid in the snow, in hats and gloves and snow-pants, falling over and so so so stoked! When we finally got to the lake, we stopped for some lunch, became frigid, put on ALL our layers, and ran most of the way back down to warm up, reaching the cable at dusk. We got back to the Quest cafeteria 5 minutes before closing and snarfed the most delicious yam fries I've had so far here. Sweet!