Hello, everyone! It’s hard to believe I’ve already been back in America for almost an entire month now. I’ve really enjoyed my return thus far, visiting with family and old friends while staying with my former computer-repairing colleague Ty at his excellent house, and of course – the snow.

Even though I did (briefly) get to interact with snow in Tajikistan’s mountains, and it’s only been a year since I was in America to see it, I think that the general lack of precipitation in Jordan tends to make you realize what you were missing out on. Last week, most of America and especially the Midwest were blanketed with a thick layer of everyone’s favorite frozen white stuff – about 60 centimeters of it or more! My alma mater, the University of Wisconsin – Madison, even canceled school on Wednesday the 9th – the first time in 30 years or so! These lucky undergrads don’t know how good they’ve got it.

In celebration of their day off, the partiers of the “Southeast dorms” (of of which I was a part my freshman and sophomore years) and the fancy, classy inhabitants of the “Lakeshore dorms” (in which I resided my junior year) faced off for the second annual snowball fight on Bascom Hill, one of our campus’s landmarks, a beautiful green (or white) stretch of grass (or snow) that runs a quarter kilometer down towards one of our main libraries. I wanted to take part in it with my friend Christine, but apparently we missed the epic snowfest of thousands of people raining white death on each other. By the time we arrived, there was just people sledding down the hill and what suspiciously looked like some red stains near some trees.

From what I read later on, Lakeshore ended up taking home the metaphorical trophy, and a commenter on the Badger Herald’s website pointed out that “the only reason lakeshore one [sic] is because they were at home strategizing instead of out drinking like us southeast people.” From what I remember from living in the Southeast dorms, I figure that’s more than likely.

The next day, however, thanks to the Badger Herald’s film crew, we latecomers got a better idea of what we had missed out on. Check out the video below, which can only be described as “epic”:

Battle For Bascom 2009 from The Badger Herald.

On second thought, I think I’m not too disappointed that I missed out on losing my teeth. However, I’m proud to be an alumnus who can safely watch this video from the comfort of my couch! On, Wisconsin!