Sunday is my favourite day of the week at Shad Valley Dalhousie! We don’t have anything scheduled until 1:30 PM; we are presented with glorious free time. Many Shads take a trip to downtown Halifax, or head to the Dalplex for some exercise. Personally I use this time for SLEEPING IN!! With the hectic pace of Shad Valley, a few extra hours of sleep is what allows me to continue functioning throughout the awesome and intense activities.
Many of us were especially tired because on Friday and Saturday we were on a camping trip to PEI, which featured a dairy farm, baby piglets, campfire songs, s’mores, a beautiful beach and a fantastic lobster dinner! It was an awesome experience I won’t soon forget.
After sleeping until 10:30, my project group had a quick meeting. I then ate lunch, and prepared for the engineering challenge. We were assigned the task of making a Rube Goldberg machine. If you don’t know what that is (as I didn’t beforehand), a quick YouTube search should help explain. After 90 minutes of hard work, we tested out our machine – it was a bit rough in a few places, requiring a few pushes to keep it going, but in the end it finished with a spectacular unfurling of the Shad Valley banner, amid 50 cheering Shads.
As I sat writing this blog post, I couldn't help observe how the activity mirrored the Shad Valley experience; it started out with chaos as we struggled to organize the machine, and we hit some rough patches in the middle, but ultimately it finished as a resounding success and awesome experience!
Ryan Dowling, Shad Valley Dalhousie 2012
