Christmas in the Cove

On Sunday, December 5, several of the professors opened up their homes to the students in what could be called a neighborhood-wide Open House.  Many of the professors and faculty members at Williams live in a neighborhood right behind the college, which has been dubbed Campus Cove (hence, the name of the outing).  It struck many of us as we were preparing to go out -- at how many other colleges do students have the opportunity to visit the professors in their own homes?  I love the small college atmosphere.   :-)

All the upperclassmen were excited about it, having been to Christmas in the Cove in previous years, and their excitement spilled over to the freshmen.  I was excited, because I was looking forward to spending time with friends and also visiting with the professors.

It took us awhile to get bundled up.  The temperature was quite cold outside, and there was a biting wind, but we were all grateful that it wasn't raining!

This was at Dr. Foster's house, which he had named "Latte Moon."  :-)  He had coffee and all the fixings.   His house smelled really good, from the French Vanilla coffee!

The next stop we made was at the Chocolate House.  What a spread of chocolate goodies they had!

Finally we came to one where there was real food: Chili, Cream of Potato Soup, and White Chili.  We sat in the house for awhile to warm up our cold extremities.

One of the professors and his family prepared Indian food, with the slogan "Happy Taj Mahal-idays!"  :-)  I'm not sure about this, but I think I heard someone say that they decided to do Indian food because that's what the wife craved during her last pregnancy.  :-)

She even had a pot of Chai tea!

After the first few houses I stopped taking so many pictures.  :-}  I had to get a picture of this, though.  I don't remember whose house it was, but that's an amazing quantity of Nutcrackers.

Dr. Swaim, Williams' president, has a tradition of roasting hot dogs outside one of the professor's houses (Dr. Swaim's house is far on the other end of the campus, at the entrance, so he couldn't do it at his own house).  It felt good to stand by the fire and warm up.  Although we got hot when we were inside, it was so cold outside that all our warmth quickly evaporated shortly after we stepped out of the door.

The festivities were supposed to run from 7:30 to 9.  When we had about 4 houses left to go, we realized that it was 8:45 and that we needed to speed up our rate a little bit.  ;-)

At the last house there was another fire, although it was smaller.  This fire only needed to be strong enough to roast marshmallows for s'mores.  Most of our party was too full by that time to even consider eating a s'more, but some of us did. 

Cuddling up to stay warm!

I ended up having as much of a good time as I had been expecting -- and I'm looking forward to being able to do it again next year!