The beginning of this week found us having our last bioregionalism class.  After going into town, we returned to meet the students from the Audubon Field Expedition, a program similar to ours only with a different way to approach what they are learning.  Each semester they travel around a specific region and take time to study the natural aspects and culture of that place.  They stopped in for the evening to see Arcadia and share a meal with us.  As soon as they departed we continued to cram for Wil's midterm, coming up the next day.  We spent all of Friday identifying species and writing on subjects like forest succession and glacial geology.

Following this our parent's weekend/mid-semester beak began and people dispersed for the night.  The next day we came back together for parent's weekend dinner with family and friends - prepared by the ADK semester alums.

The next three days were mid-semester break which most people found exciting but a little overwhelming.  We were glad to return to the easy pace of Arcadia on Tuesday night.

We spent Wednesday's class with Mary workshopping our papers.  These papers were styled after some of the journal entries in Rick Bass's book Winter.

Thursday found most of us diligently working on our canoe paddles, trying to catch up from where we had left off the Golweek before.  On Friday we were out with Wil to walk through a floating bog.  This required intense balance as to not fall down into the floating mat.  For the weekend, half of us went to the High Peaks to hike and the others stayed here and hiked Ampersand Mountain.  The summits of Phelps and Tabletop had a few inches of snow on the ground and we got a little taste of what's to come in the next month or so.  The cold weather followed us here and we had freezing temperatures for the next few nights.  Most of us spent Sunday writing a paper for Glenn and this trend continued for the rest of the week.  We have all spent a good portion of the week in the classroom writing papers for Glenn, Baylor, Steve, Marianne, and Wil.  Fortunately we had a few good moments this week outside of the classroom including a field trip with Glenn and a visit from a Norwegian friend with nature.  Mary's class was an especially good study break and we got a chance to design and construct Andy Goldsworthy inspired art pieces.  After a busy week of work, we are all looking forward to the weekend.