Sunday Sledding!

This past Sunday was a Big Sib Lil’ Sib (BSLS) event day. BSLS is a side project of the Korean Student Association and it is for adopted Korean children in the area. Each child is matched up with a ‘big sibling’ Dartmouth Student. I am the co-chair of BSLS and through bi-weekly events that my co-chair and I plan, the children play and bond with their big sibs and other adopted children their age. This past Sunday, to mark the end of winter, we decided to go sledding – and it turned out to be one of the best Sundays of my winter term.

Dartmouth is known for its winter fun, but I was never really an outdoorsy person. In addition, I had apparently befriended other non-active people which further discouraged me from going out to the skiway (Dartmouth's self-owned ski mountain) or to Occum pond (a popular skating destination). However, since this was the last BSLS event of this winter term, I convinced my friends to all come. Reluctantly they did, but even as we headed out to the golf course, I could sense that some of them were thinking about the cozy blankets they had left behind in their dorms…

At the golf course, the parents of our lil’ sibs had set up a table of hot cider and hot chocolate and it was the picture-perfect Sunday afternoon. The kids had brought all sorts of high-tech sleds for the event. I remember when I was six-years-old, all I'd had was a plastic red sled. That Sunday, I spotted the traditional sleds from my childhood, but clearly the flashy new snowboard type sleds and snow tubes were the popular choice. The snow was not as thick as we would have liked and the grass was exposed in some areas, but it was good enough. When we weren't giving our lil’ sibs pushes, my friends and I grabbed the abandoned plastic sleds and screamed our way down the hill slope. We were having such a good time towards the end that our lil’ sibs got tired before we did!