Recreational Life
Work hard, play hard at COSMOS with recreational and evening activities!
Photo by Celina Chen
Weekend KayakingFor the students who stayed over the weekend, they got to experience their first COSMOS weekend trip: kayaking. The even clusters went on Saturday and odd clusters went on Sunday.
After a 15 minute bus ride, students arrived at a rack of colorful life jackets on the Santa Cruz pier. The majority of kayaks held two people with the exception of a few single-person kayaks. Kayaking instructors showed students how to steer the boat and synchronize their strokes.
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The fun did not stop there though. Once students returned from kayaking (if they chose to kayak at all), they had the options to relax on the beach, splash in the shallow tides, or wander the pier. People could be seen playing volleyball and spikeball, or digging immense holes in the sand. Live music drifted through the air and numerous tents were scattered throughout the beach.
For lunch, students were provided with sandwiches, salads, or wraps to go from the UCSC cafeteria. If students did not like the selection of food they were offered, they could also go grab food at the nearby pier. The pier housed various souvenir shops, clothing stores, and restaurants. One especially popular location was the shaved ice shop. Sneha Shah, from Cluster 5, said she bought shaved ice with “mango, guava, and lime” and she exclaimed that “she was really happy with her decision.”
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After a Saturday full of kayaking and beach, students wanted to relax on their Sunday off while still seeing friends and getting outside. The RAs had the perfect solution: finger painting. Armed with washable paint and paper plates, students marched down to the Social Sciences lawn to sprawl out on the grass and paint their masterpieces.
Some took their craft very seriously, painting impressive depictions of sea otters and landscapes. Others took a more abstract approach that included blobs of monsters and (maybe) cartoon characters scattered on the plates.
Some students also opted for a more permanent canvas than paper plates, choosing to finger paint on their skin. Irene Chen from Cluster 7 wrote “OOPS” on her injured leg, joking about her fall the day before playing capture the flag.
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An Evening Among the Flowers
Following our (almost) nightly Cluster meeting, COSMOS students dispersed for evening activities as usual. Those who opted for the Flower Identification Walk walked down to UCSC’s Chadwick Garden as the sun’s golden light touched the treetops. We snapped photos of grazing deer and various flowers we saw along the way.
Being in Chadwick Garden was an incredible visual and sensory experience. We were exposed to many different colors: brilliant oranges, deep purples, and soft pinks. The plants had many different textures, ranging from velvety, to rough, to smooth. Some students took to collecting the fallen apples and pears from growing trees. In addition to its whimsical nature, the walk was also very informative. We used an app called PictureThis to help us identify all of the new plants we were curious about. “I gained so much knowledge, especially with the flower identification app. You can take pictures of different plants and different flowers, and also people* — we tried that out! — and it identifies the species and tells you if it’s healthy or not, and some facts like if it’s toxic to animals and humans,” Katie von Germeten (Cluster 8) explained. Another participant, Melissa Baldwin (Cluster 8), commented that this walk brought her attention to the variety of plants on campus, including (but not limited to) the tasty apples.
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Members of Cluster 3 (Bugs and Bones) took the chance to also search for bugs. “Before the flower identifying walk, our cluster was looking at different families of bugs under microscopes,” Kira Allen (Cluster 3) said. “One of the ones we looked at was the Ten-Lined June Beetle, and during the walk we were also talking about them and how Huxley had seen a few on the first day at OPERS.” According to Allen, one of her clustermates, Huxley Smith, grabbed the June Beetle off a wall with his hand, and they captured it in a bag to share with the rest of their cluster the following day. Success!
Before returning to the dorms, we stopped by OPERS to watch the sunset fade through the clouds. Mery, one of the RAs leading the walk, blasted music through the megaphone while we all reviewed our wonderful pictures and findings from the evening. We headed back with all sorts of flowers on our minds.
*Read Indie Lee's comic about the flower walk in Macroscopic Bits!
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Origami
On Wednesday evening, students were given the option of several mandatory activities, one of which being origami. Those who decided on origami as their activity of choice for the evening were led outside to the Social Sciences lawn, where the RAs placed down many sheets of varying colored origami paper for our use. Most students found a place to sit, either on the seats carved out of logs, on the lawn itself, or even on the rocks surrounding the perimeter of the field, and got to folding. Due to the fact that we had to be outside, many of us had to find other flat surfaces to crease their origami paper on, with some common objects used as makeshift tables including notebooks and laptops.
The RAs did not guide us on folding origami and instead told us to search up instructions online. As such, a wide variety of origami creations could be found around the lawn during this event, ranging from elegant cranes to bouncing frogs to lovely roses.
“It was very chill, which was quite nice,” Jessica Liu, a member of Cluster 11, said. “I thought that they should have had small groups where you could do different things and learn from them, but it was still nice.” Using the provided paper, she had folded several origami lilies, all from memory.
Due to the freedom students had during this event, it was very relaxing for all of us to be able to fold our worries away. A lot of people walked away with their hands filled with little origami creations, happily chatting with each other on their way back to the dorms.
By Cindy Lu
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Of course, the energy of the students could only be outshined by the energy of the RAs, who organized the event. Many of them performed alongside their clusters, with one such RA being Chance Cayetano from Cluster 7, who had a great performance as the snow queen Elsa. “I loved the event,” he said, “and it was great hyping people up. Especially the group dance at the end, where almost everyone came up to dance.”
As the second week draws to a close, I can only hope that the reminder of camp will be as amusing as this lip sync battle.
Watch the playlist of all cluster performances!
By Hennah Kim
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