Coming Home (Massive photo-post)

Today I got up, had brunch, and then the sun set. I am home! Or, I am in the other home! The one that has freedom and eighteen hours of darkness, not the one with the blazing sun and cuddle puddles.

About that breather I hoped for in the end of September? It didn't come until December. The fall trimester was painfully hectic. I think I might have academic scars from that for a while. Now that's over and done with, though, and even if I have about eight major assignments to complete during Christmas, I still have the free time to do that. and that is enough. I should be doing that right now, but I haven't posted anything on the blog in about three months. That's more procrastination on the blog than on my homework, and thus the blog comes first.

I thought I could post some photos that I shoulda coulda woulda posted this fall if I hadn't been so completely stressed out.

There are a great many things that I would love to write about, but I should really get on with my homework so you can read the captions on the photos instead, yes?

THIS IS A MASSIVE PHOTO POST. IT HAS VERY MANY PICTURES.

Off the porch. I live upstairs now. 

Going to the creek! 

The one time we could see the floor of my room. 

One time there was a bird in our courtyard. It let me get about a foot away from it.  

This is my bae. You can't see her face cuz her hair is too glorious. And privacy, that too. 

It was so green and flowery for a while! 

We hiked up Monkeyface one sunset. Straight ahead you can see Napoleon, campus to the right. 

IT WAS SO GREEN AND BEAUTIFUL

I painted my first-ever oil-painting! It's the one on the left, the rest is by two very talented painting students that were having fun with me that Friday night. 

View from our porch. Right under the moon is Seven Warriors. 

Sometimes we have bonfires. It's quite lovely. 

The day before school started I DJ'ed for Awesomeness Day. (That was four months ago!) 

A hike on Bell Rock another sunset. 

 We've also had several performances during the fall, one of which was the big Parents' Weekend bonanza. The Intro to Theatre kids performed "Not-so Grimm Fairy tales", the student-led dancers performed modern and hip hop choreographies (one of which was created by the student leader), and the Rock Bands performed several songs. 

Granny Being carried away by the Big Bad Wolf. 

The Evil Queen. Small so you won't see the crappy quality.  

Dancers.

You can't really see their faces when it's blurry. 

Dancers. 

Blurry Rock Band! 

It's really difficult when you can't get their faces.

I feel like this post is getting too long. Let me get another. 

Love,

Ingrid

Underwater

You know what is really, really difficult?

The IB.

You know what takes up almost all of my time right now?

The IB.

You know what you should only go into if you're entirely sure it's what you want to do?

The IB.

I realized there are three things that make me feel okay about life:
1. Being outside
2. Exercising
3. Being social

These are all things that the IB tries to keep you from, and that VVS tries desperately to make you do anyway. Exhaustion and desperation are the general emotions permeating campus right now, the seniors being in the middle of the IB marathon, the juniors having just been thrown into the deep end of the pool. The next week is a big deadline week for us, and after that, maybe we will have time to breathe. The teachers are telling us college will be amazing after the IB. I think that's a valid assumption.

Other than academically, things are pretty great. I love my new sports (Archery and Physical Improvisation), people are trying to support each other, there is a lot of sharing of food, cuddles and laughter. Today we found out that we're doing Hamlet as our fall production in Theatre. I never realized that I am a Shakespeare geek.

Love and semi-delirious hugs,
Ingrid

Reverse Culture Shock

That's what they call it when you've gotten so used to the culture in your host country that the customs in your native country strike you as foreign or unnatural. I've been back in Norway for almost a month, and it's been pretty good. People don't really say "hi" or "how are you" to everyone here, which is weird. I'm trying to bring a little bit bit of the warmth I received at VVS back here.

I went to Pride. I haven't really done any homework yet, and since I'm going back to VVS in 40 days, I'm starting to stress out about it a little bit. In fact, I should be doing homework right now, but here are my reasons not to: Making my quest to finish my homework during Summer Break public might make it more likely, this is somewhat productive procrastination, and I felt I needed to post at least one blog post over the summer. In your face, responsibility. In fact, the amount of homework I have strikes me as so daunting that I find it less scary to look at colleges and universities. To me, deciding my future is really terrifying when it's not compared to IB coursework. As it is, the future shall be decided upon presently. I think I might have found a few schools I'm interested in going to, which I consider as a victory. Now that I've done that, I don't have much productive procrastination in the way of starting my papers.

For some reason, research papers have always terrified me. Give me a test and I'll handle it just fine. A DBQ? Okay. An oral presentation in my second or third language? No problem. But asking me to write a paper is an entirely different story, this inspires in me paralyzing fear of failure. I try telling myself it will be okay, but I'm always afraid of starting and so I never start before the end. Now I'm going to change this. Away from the time- and energy-consuming campus of VVS, with no distractions, I will overcome my fear of research papers and just do it. At least that's what I'm telling myself. This is also where we pretend that I don't have to work almost every day until I return to school. Thankfully I'm working night shifts.

Will I finish my homework? Over the summer I'm supposed to finish my Research Investigation (which I never really started at school), do my Extended Essay (because I know I'd rather prioritize other things, such as having incredible conversations, once I'm back on campus), and at the very least do the research for my Anthropology Internal Assessment, because I'm planning on conducting it in Norway. That is all. Here is a list I made with reasons for me to do my homework over the summer:

• Sense of Completion 
• Fear of failure is just that - a fear, it's valid but not real
• I'll have more time to spend on good things later
• I told people I would (now this one is even more real)
• It will be a burden off my shoulders
• I get to exercise my brain and work my English 

There it is, in public. Now I really have to do it. Meanwhile, have photos. 

Work

Plains yes! 

Occasionally very pretty here

How I like to spend my free time

OSLO

Bubble Tea Yes

Pre-storm selfie

During/post storm

PRIDE

3 am

Went back to my middle school and took a selfie. Look at me now, middle school.

Summer love,

Ingrid

Wildfire

There's a pretty huge wildfire happening in Oak Creek Canyon, about 40-50 kilometers away from school. We're in no danger, but still it is a reminder of how precious life is here. Also, it reminds us that drought sucks. Although at the moment it is only 0-5% contained, I have no doubt that they will be able to put it out sometime during the next few weeks. And then the fire will have made room for new things to grow.

At first it was windy and all the smoke went north, but now the wind isn't as strong and so, the smoke spreads everywhere. It smells like fire. When I went "hiking" to take these photos, the air was very different from what it's usually like, and it got almost hard to breathe after a while. It's all safe, but it's very humbling to see the awesome power of nature. (The fire was started by humans).

How it normally looks...

...How it looked today

Love,
Ingrid

Faceless

Look at these beautiful people.

Brady 

Seniors

Last Senior Basketball Bonanza

King Snake

Down

Child

Bittersweet

Life is weird. You think that the IB has hit you hard, that you can't get any more stressed, and then it hits you even harder. You think you can't appreciate the people around you any more than you already do, and then they do something that makes you love them more. As graduation for the seniors is approaching, now with only 43 days to go, the bittersweet is hitting me harder and harder. The school is starting to prepare us to be seniors next year by dropping a ton of work on us all at once, and I'm so ready for May 26, when our exam period starts. Here, let me give you a sample of what we have to do before that:

• SAT
• World Lit Paper (1500 words) 
• Research Investigation (1500 words on an aspect of theatre we're unfamiliar with) 
• TOK presentation (Which matters for about 40% of our final grade, I think) 
• Biology Internal Assessment (Self-Designed Lab) 

On top of that, there's the other schoolwork, and for me there's also work with the yearbook next week, as well as our production of "Annie Get Your Gun" this weekend. It's a comedic musical about the sharpshooter Annie Oakley (who was a real person) and the tempestuous romance between her and Frank Butler. I play Charlie Davenport, a fairly sassy character, and I'm also prop mistress. It's really, really stressful, but it's also pretty great. Even though we've had a few hiccups (leading to minor freak-outs from our director) I think we're gonna put on a couple of amazing shows. Here's a photo of the stage, yay. 

 

I'm already feeling somewhat melancholy about this year, and already sort of missing the seniors. We had our first Community Meeting without them today, and the chapel was very empty. Still, even though I don't want them to leave, I am excited to meet the new people that are coming next year. But the seniors being gone means we're going to be seniors! That's a scary thought. Among the seniors are some of my best friends and biggest support people. It's amazing how much care exists here. I am so grateful for everything these people have taught me and I'm not sure how what's going to happen when I don't get to laugh, love and learn with them every day. I have a feeling next year is going to be equally great and challenging, just very different. As I'm sure you can tell, I really don't know how to feel about this. 

But hey, the future is uncertain and not even real yet, so let's not talk about that, aight? The present is real, and to a certain extent so is the past, so let's talk about that. I kind of disappeared for four months and although a lot of that can be attributed to the IB some great things also happened. We slept on top of Cowpie for the eclipse that happened. There have been some photo shoots. A senior and I went to my best friend's house for Spring Break, and then we went to Las Vegas. That was really neat. We had Junior Senior, which is just like prom. We've gone to swim in the creek, and we've run through the sprinklers a lot. A small group of students and faculty went up to Hopi for a Work Weekend, which was absolutely fantastic. Fire Run (the entire school running half-naked around a huge bonfire, hollering our hearts out, and the juniors getting their senior rings) happened. Bonding and cuddling on the Quad in front of the dining hall has been a frequent occurrence. Senior Wills were hung up in the Dining Hall, and they were both touching and hilarious. Basically, spring happened. Here, have some photos. Oh, no! Looks like this is one of the "Blog Post With Thousand Photos" happening, sorry about that. 

B and her horse. 

Bae's and my room! I moved rooms! That happened! 

Spring Break 

Flagstaff

Buffalo Park

DOG *heart*

I met this guy in Vegas (might make a post about that, if I find time) 

Hopi Work Weekend! It really was amazing.

HORSE *heart*

So this one time, my Coke was frozen, but I really wanted it. 

Senior Chapel Time. 

Selfie Time. Bae cut my hair. We might cut it again soon.

Cactus Flowers! DEM PURDY

Senior Wills. Smileyface. 

So, yeah, daz it. Sorry about the lack of blog posts, and the scatterbrainedness of this one. Let's end with Hafiz, yes? 

And 

For every every reason in existence

I begin to eternally, 

To eternally laugh and love! 

Eternal love,

Ingrid (or Onion as Baby (a Faculty kid) refers to me as) 

Our home

Sometimes I'm surprised by the lack of reverence and respect my some of my peers at school have. I've heard people talking shit about other students, about the teachers, the administration, the rules. I get it, we're teenagers, we're supposed to act out, to rebel, but why at our school, and why in such a way? I've heard students say things such as "This is a boarding school for people in their late teens, how can they expect us not to drink or sleep with people?" or "I hate that teacher, don't you? I think we should make a club for those of us that hate that teacher". Most recently, I noticed a post on Facebook saying something along the lines of "I don't want to come back to VVS but my stuff is there so I guess I have to". It appears like some people are taking VVS and its amazing opportunities for granted. This saddens me, because I worked my butt off just to get there, and I keep doing it. I am challenged in multiple ways every single day and there is nothing that has taught and changed me so much as my stay at Verde Valley School. People, this isn't just some random institution you're prattling on about, this is my home. Our home. We're living in a place that allows for us to become some sort of a family. We're also living in such a tiny community that everything you say or do, in some way or the other, affects almost everyone else. This is a place where everyone, if they want to, can truly be themselves. This is the place where a silly "orchestra" from the outside can make everyone sing and laugh in a way I never thought I'd see at a high school. This is a place where people aren't usually judged based on where they come from or how they look. I don't want to get all "sunshine and rainbows", but as I guess you've already assumed, I love this place, this second home, second family of mine. Please, please, start treating our home better.

Yes, this magical place.