I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but last Saturday, much of the Eastern Seaboard got absolutely BOMBARDED by snow. New Haven was not spared! While I was tempted to stay inside drinking hot chocolate and watching back-to-back period dramas, I thought that this might be my last chance to participate in the Yale tradition of what used to be called “tray sledding.” Since the dining halls no longer provide trays (who needs ‘em!), Yale students make their sleds out of whatever is flat, nearby, and relatively sturdy. My group happened to have actual sleds, though I’m not sure where they came from. We dragged ourselves (literally) off the cozy couch and way up past Science Hill to the Divinity School.
Charlie gets dragged.
Now, Science Hill is actually a hill, but it’s an extremely long hill–it spans a couple blocks, and to sled down it would mean risking bowling over ten PhD students on the way to their labs. The hill at the Divinity School, however, is literally just one very steep, street-less hill. And when I say steep, I mean super steep–as you can tell from my hair in the picture below, I face-planted almost instantly into the ground. We went so fast that I wasn’t entirely sold on the safety of the whole operation–but parents were there with their kids, so it must have been fine??
I really did eat it so hard.
Lots of other students were gathered at the top of the hill, taking turns sliding down on sleds, pieces of cardboard, and stolen street signs from the walk over (shh). Everyone was acting like five-year-olds, and because it was so cold and treacherous, almost no one was on their phone. I can’t remember a more wholesomely joyful day in all my four years.
Char + Zo = real-life snow angels
But, really, once is enough. It was super cold. If it snows like that again, I’m sticking to the period dramas.
