What I wrote at architecture camp

I am writing this post from St. John’s University, the locale of the architecture faculty retreat. I’ve mentioned St. John’s before in another blog post. It’s gorgeous here. I'm looking out of my dorm room window and I can see trees. Then a road. Then more trees. The grounds are expansive and green. Lots of fields, a lake, a forest or two worth of trees and the most luscious grass you’ve ever seen. The 1^st year grad students are here to bond as a class, as well as learn about environmental stewardship and working with elements found in nature. The faculty and families like us... well, we’re just here to get a little time away from regular life and sit by a gorgeous lake, soaking up the sun.

St. John's is a university campus and a monastery too. Monks travel the campus in and amongst the football players and computer geeks, their own little clique in the community of SJU. The monks attend to the whole campus themselves – they work on the engineering, the architecture; they tend to the gardens and grounds. It’s a special place, and Ozayr and I come here a couple times a year to visit the pottery studio and just walk around its beautiful grounds. This time, of course, the whole faculty is here, along with 40 architecture graduate students. We are staying in the monk’s dormitories. They look like huge green and red barns. The insides are sparse (as you probably imagined) but clean and spacious enough.

This is where the students stayed. Looks like a grassy hill from the back, doesn’t it?

Here’s the side.

And the front.

Please don't ask me why these dorms are partially underground. The university is very focused on the natural environment and using sustainable resources and environmental stewardship. So I don't doubt that there's a good reason that these people have grass growing on their roof. Insulation perhaps! Because I personally lack a real scientific explanation I'll just say "NEAT-O!" and we can move on...

Maymuna has become enamored with another young girl who’s here this weekend, Maeve. Maeve is 7 old years and though Maymuna is practically half her age, she is doing her very best to keep up. I suppose she has lots of experience with that, considering how much she likes to play with her older cousins in Ottawa. Maymuna has done, in some degree, everything Maeve has done. Here are the two them yesterday playing in the fields of Saint John’s.

Just as Maeve has a little shadow, Maymuna has one too. Hafsa is desperate to do whatever the older girls are doing. She can often be seen pointing and shouting “too! too!” That means she wants to walk where they are walking, drink what they are drinking, go wherever they are. It’s very sweet, and I can see that Hafsa seems to be growing up much faster than Maymuna did, because Hafsa’s drive to do what her big sister does is stronger than even her self-preservation instincts.

Here is Maymuna in a tree:

Here is Hafsa in a tree (the same tree):

Both delighted of course.

But she's not a big girl quite yet, so as Maymuna ran off with all her new friends, Hafsa and I strolled along the path together, hand in hand. It was a beautiful day.