The adventure begins

Yesterday morning I woke up much-too-early and began my three-airport odyssey to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I was exhausted by the time I and the other Shads on my plane arrived, but due to the wonders of time zones, it wasn't even noon yet.  Thus began the second part of a long, long day, and despite the fact that all I really wanted to do was collapse in bed and become Rip Van Winkle, it was an amazing time.  First off, we had a photo scavenger hunt around the USask campus.  By the end I could add sore feet to my exhaustion, but I think I have a good feel for the campus thanks to that 3-hour hike.  My team ended up finding all the things on the list; here are some of our photos:

I'm taking this one... what a cool elevator.

We have a rocket in the Shad Cave.

Shads are strong as a raging fire.

Sitting on top of the Engineering E for Excellence

Rocking out in the Shad Pad.

U of S in front of flowers that say U of S.

Right when I'd arrived we'd had lunch, and after the scavenger hunt a group of us watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.  After that, it was dinner, and the food here is amazing.

Yum.

Our next activity was this design project.  Everyone was divided into eleven groups, and each group was tasked to make a 25cm by 25cm by 16cm box with a hole in the top and in the centre of the bottom of one of the sides, with the goal being to delay the passage of a marble from the top hole to the bottom by as much time as possible.  However, one could only use a single sheet of bristol board, a sharpie, a role of masking tape, and work with scissors and a ruler.  We made our box by cutting two slightly larger than 50 by 16 pieces, folding them in half, and then taping them into the sides of a box by folding the excess as tabs.  On the inside, a track ran along the sides of the box, forcing the marble to follow down along the perimeter before coming out through the hole in the bottom.  We then made a lid that slanted downwards towards the upper hole, to assure that wherever the marble was placed on the lid, it would end up entering the box.  Afterwards, all eleven boxes were set up on eleven consecutive steps on a staircase, with the bottom hole of each one leading out to the top of the next box.  Out of all the boxes, only two worked without requiring any outside intervention, and ours was one!

My team's is the top one with the squiggle.

After that, we wrote letters to our future selves, and lit candles and made introductions to the group.  I'll admit, by that point I was pretty dead due to it feeling like it was past midnight to me, and so by the time we went back to the Shad Pad to meet with our houses (House 6, represent), I was fairly out of it.  Then this morning I woke up at the tender time of 5:50, because my jetlagged internal clock told me it was almost nine.  Add to that the fact that at 5:50 here it is just as bright outside as it is at home at 9am, and you get a rough first couple of days.  Hopefully I'm not as completely worn out by the end of the day today... it's hard to enjoy the evening activities when you're just hoping they'd end so you can collapse into bed!

All in all, though, today was a blast!  I've met some really cool people so far, and I can't wait to get to know everyone better over the course of the month.  I think this July is going to be one to remember.