Hot Chocolate for All!

Yeah, it’s cold. It’s been cold for a while now. That’s the hard thing. The first snow is beautiful. You have romantic thoughts, like: I didn’t know street lamps could be so beautiful and all the buildings look like iced gingerbread castles. As a first year, I was entranced by the first snow of winter. I tugged on my huge boots and traipsed up and down Hillhouse, avenue wandering into what I thought was Yale-owned green space, but were actually private backyards. (I am so sorry, President Salovey.) But then it keeps snowing. And you feel a little defeated. And soon you’ve lost your third pair of gloves and your nose is always running and you think, Can it be sunny? Would that be so hard? (If you want a more comprehensive analysis of this feeling, check out my fellow Californian Cassandra’s post.)

But then something magical happens. And that thing is this: everyone wants you to have hot chocolate. Everyone. On Friday, I stumbled half-asleep into the Silliman dining hall fully prepared to eat my typical breakfast of potatoes and salsa (I know, I know) and was shocked to find a large sign reading: SNOW DAY HOT CHOCOLATE. While this sign was somewhat cruel because it briefly made me wonder if classes had been cancelled (they had not), it was mostly GREAT. Because there was hot chocolate! And marshmallows! And it was just a regular Friday! And it was barely even snowing!

Yale Dining, and specifically Silliman College, has been pushing decadent hot chocolate on me for as long as I can remember. The Silliman Classic Hot ChocolateTM is extremely rich and is basically like drinking warm delicious pudding. I can only have a few sips before I feel completely full, but my friend Tommy will sometimes drink six cups a day, so…different strokes for different folks!


Yeah, it’s cold. But we can handle it!

Silliman does not warn us when there is going to be hot chocolate, which supports my great series of conspiracy theories that a) Yale is trying to get us to drink hot chocolate instead of coffee because b) hot chocolate does everything coffee does but tastes better and c) all of New Haven is also involved. This last part is definitely true because all the coffee places also have very very good hot chocolate offerings. None is as good as Silliman, but some come close. For example, Willoughby’s Mexican Spice Hot Chocolate. Does drinking it feel like getting punched in the face by sugar? Yes. Is it delicious? Yes. Do I sometimes need to be punched in the face by sugar in order to make it through my third hour of reading about leaf cuticles? Irrelevant.

Tl;dr: Weather=bad. Hot chocolate=good. Bad weather + hot chocolate= conclusion that Yale really loves me and cares about my well-being. Nice!