HSLP 2010: Day 9, Sunday, July 18

High School Leaders Program Class of 2010
Day 9-Sunday, July 18
Recorded by: Maxwell Potter, Charlottesville

As a bright and glorious Sunday Sun rose on Bice House, I was roused from my slumber. Ahhh I thought to my self, it is Sunday, it is omelet day. After a journey to the lavatory to freshen up after my magnificent sleep, I was almost ready to begin my day. To complete my morning ritual, I threw on my iPod and the customary morning track, "Things Done Changed" by Biggie Smalls, began to pump through my headphones. I was ready to face the day.

Fifteen minutes later, my roommate, Jacob, was also up and we were ready to cook some omelets. Some other pals were quick to join the eggy, cheesy fun and before we knew it, we had ourselves a bonified bomblette party. After a glorious breakfast, sans my badly badly burned bagels, it was off to policy group.
Policy group has been exceedingly stressful as of late. At the final hour, it was discovered that our proposed legislation, a bill that would subsidize farmers using environmentally friendly methods, is already in the Virginia Code. It has been an all out sprint to come up with new ideas and create a new proposal ever
since. We have settled on a tax on plastic bags, in the model of similar legislation in effect in Washington D.C. The law would protect countless animals in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and be a great boon to the commonwealth's environment.

After toiling for a few hours and enjoying a delicious ham bagel from the world famous Charlottesville eatery, Bodo’s Bagels, it was off to the lawn for an activity. As Sorenson quidditch kicked off on UVA’s lawn, it was clear that just as in the Harry Potter novels, the Gilbradore and the other Potter boy would reign supreme. We were outpaced by a slim margin in throwing-a-ball-through-a-hoop-while-blindfoldeding by the house of Van Der Claw but we came roaring back in the Virginia history competition. We could not answer a question wrong if our lives depended on it. It was an epic performance by many members of Gilbradore. As we entered into the third and final challenge, it was clear just how much we were going to dominate.

The third challenge was an all out sprint to find as many lemons as we could which had been hidden by the YPC’s around the lawn. Gilbradore, being the most intelligent of the houses as evidenced by our domination of the Virginia history challenge, employed a brilliant strategy. We employed the young family’s sitting around the lawn to help us search. After all, what child does not excel at egg hunts. This proved to be a brilliant decision as child after child approached us with lemons which they had found. We returned to Bice Hall victorious as the “Rocky” theme song played in our hearts. As the brutally hot day combined with sprinting for lemons had heated us so, Jacob, Catherine, Nicole and I decided to cool off with a refreshing journey to Fry’s Spring Beach Club. We luxuriated under the giant oak trees and in the cool water as we
enjoyed a game of pool shoot ( a.k.a. pool basketball, there are massive debates on what the appropriate title is.)

After returning to Bice we were attacked by a copious amount of reading courtesy of Dr. Bragaw. As I have been mired in the scholarly texts since, I am fully drained and ready for sleep. It shall be another glorious day tomorrow I’m sure, just so long as I have my boy Biggie with me to start things off.

High School Leaders Program Class of 2010
Day 9-Sunday, July 18
Recorded by: Ashleigh Lanza, Woodbridge

After getting use to waking up at 7am every morning, I was sweetly surprised when I woke up at 10am and realized that I did not have to be ready for activities until 1pm. After falling asleep for a couple of hours, I woke up and was ready for a new tradition of Sorensen’s, THE SORENSEN CUP! Our class assembled in the lobby of Bice at 1pm, and then headed to “the lawn” for secret activities that were planned for the day.

When we arrived, we were split up into our respective groups: Gilberdore, Heatherin, Van Der Claw, and Howardpuff. That is when we learned that we were playing not only for pride of our houses, but for Sorensen points! The first activity we played in was a simulated quidditch game. In this game, the objective was to shoot a quaffle through our respected goal posts. However, playing in Sorensen honor, we used large, bouncy balls and threw them through our hula hoops. However, games played at Sorensen are never that easy. In this
game, the person throwing the ball, as well as the person holding the hula hoop, were both blind-folded. The other “wizards” in the group were in charge of directing the two blind-folded players, as well as running to get the ball when it inevitably flew in all directions besides the hoop. The final outcome of the game was Van Der Claw: 20, Gilberdore: 15, Howardpuff:10, Heatherin:5

Next, we played in an academic showdown as the houses competed to answer the most amount of questions in the round correctly. In this game, I was surprised to learn how much I did not know about Virginia history and politics. However, I was very relieved at the fact that my other teammates were very informed of even the most detailed facts. All in all, the best question was, “What Virginia college had the most enrolled undergraduate students?” Of course, the answer was Virginia Tech, go hokies! After the game, the houses were ranked: Gilberdore:121, Van Der Claw:105, Heatherin:101, Howardpuff:80

The final stage of the Sorensen Cup was the chase to find the most golden snitches, or in our case, lemons! Lauren, aka Gilberdore herself, hid “lemon” snitches around “the lawn”, where at the sound of “GO!”, or maybe a little before, our teams ran around looking for the 24 lemons that were placed in fairly obvious places the morning before. In about five minutes, all 24 were found and we all headed back to Bice to find out who had won the cup. After counting, Gilberdore and Van Der Claw both found 8 snitches, Heatherin found 5, and Howardpuff found 3. In the end, Gilberdore might have won the cup, but we all still had fun!