Blackout Monday

            There are very few things that will get me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning.  In fact, there is only one thing I can think of at the moment, and it is what got me up at that time yesterday: Greek Week Capture the Flag.  For three years running, I—the queen of sleeping in—have hauled myself out of bed, gotten Sam moving (this year she had to do it for me), and traipsed in the dark to an ASA upperclassman’s house for our morning strategizing session over bagels.

            ASA takes Greek Week seriously.  We’re talking wearing all black and war paint on capture the flag day kind of seriously.  Greek Week is one of my favorite events on campus.  It is a week of competitions including capture the flag, Greek Olympics, skits, banner painting, canstruction, chalk drawing, and dollar wars.  I love competition, I love ASA, and I love when the Rockhurst campus mobilizes and does something out of the ordinary—Greek Week is all of these things.

            Back to capture the flag.  After our morning bagel and planning session, we stormed the campus at 6:00 am and began to systematically tear it apart (don’t worry, we put it back together).  And I do mean tear it apart.  Last year I disassembled a drinking fountain and managed to crawl into it, and a sight like that is not at all out of the ordinary on capture the flag day.  All day long you can see ASAs in their “blackout” attire combing the campus for flags—pulling up bricks, emptying trash cans, even climbing into recycling dumpsters (yes, my feat for this year). 

            Today I accidentally walked to my UMKC class with my war paint on—I decided to not even bother with the all-black outfit, but I had planned on at least washing off the paint.  The strangest thing was that no one even commented on it.  I don’t know if that means I just ooze Alpha competitive spirit on a daily basis, so war paint wasn’t out of the ordinary, or I if looked too sleep deprived and manic to mess with. 

            By the end of the day my hair was frizzy, my war paint was smudged, and I had small cuts everywhere from pulling apart bushes, but victory was ours!  We found one flag and no one found ours, which gave us more points than any other organization (take that ADG!).  I am exhausted and ready to collapse into bed, but I can also say I bonded with Katie Lavelle over taking apart a barbeque pit, Brigid Verhoff after looking under ever bench in Sedgewick, and Kayla Polette after staking out the ADGs while they searched a closet.  And all that is worth every second of lost sleep. 

Las year's Greek Olympics!

Zummmba!

            I’ll give you three guesses as to what my new hobby at Rockhurst is.  That’s right, I—the girl with two left feet—have officially been converted to loving Zumba.  For weeks I had walked by the Party Barn (I think its official name is the Student Activities Hall) and heard the music, but was too afraid to actually go in.  But thanks to a friend who swore to me that her hands were always going to the left when everyone else’s were going to the write and she still had not been kicked out, I decided to give it a try.  And I loved it!

            This semester Rockhurst started offering Zumba twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays at 4:00.  The sessions usually last about an hour, and you pay either $5 a session or you can get passes for different amounts of time.  I bought a $5 pass just to try it out and immediately the next day went and bought a longer pass.  Even though I was a terrible dancer (it gets easier once you learn the songs), it was actually a good work out—everyone is sweating by the end and I was actually sore the next day.  Getting a good workout was something I was concerned about after a few freshman year forays into Taibo that really didn’t do anything, no matter how much my roommate and I assured each other that they really did. 

            But this was a good workout, a stress reliever, and a fun group of people (most of whom are just as bad at it as I am, so we just hang in the back).  I even convinced my roommate Sam to skip a nap to come with me, and even though she danced the first half of the session with a bored and ticked off look on her face (seeing someone try to shake their hips and look bored at the same time is a sight worth paying $5 for), she warmed up and was leaping and waving her arms around by the end of the session like I knew she would be.  So my advice for all you exercise fiends out there: try some Zumba—even if your hands never seem to go in the right direction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPv8ZGrb78Y – a 10,000 times more legitimate version of the Shakira Waka Waka song that we do, which is my favorite.