On Sunday November 5^th, a group of friends and I went to see Juniata College’s Concert Choir to support our friend who is a member. They sang eighteen songs, which is an impressive amount of songs to learn. Several of the songs were performed in a different language with the translation in the program provided at the door. We learned that the choir is going to travel to Vietnam in January to perform with another Vietnamese choir, we heard some of the songs they are working on in Vietnamese for this trip. The choir travels to another country every two years to sing abroad and experience a new culture. I don’t know anywhere else that has their choir travel like ours does. This really speaks to the liberal arts education that Juniata strives for. It gives students a more well-rounded knowledge of the world. My favorite song was called “Northern Lights”; it was a beautiful piece that showed the skill of the singers and the effort that they have put into this concert. The emotion in the voices of the choir could be felt and many of the audience members were moved by this piece. I also enjoyed listening to the different folk songs which were more upbeat and energetic.

The audience seemed to respond best to the folk songs because of the energy coming from the choir. They all looked like they were having a lot of fun up on stage singing those songs which is important during a performance. There were a few solos that were beautifully done and could easily be heard. Most of the choir’s songs were done A Capella, which is amazing because it can be very difficult to stay together without music, but during one of the folk songs three students came down off the risers to place instruments to accompany the singing. This added a fun aspect to an already entertaining piece. I have always loved going to see the concert choir’s performance. The singers all appear professional but they also show how much they enjoy singing. Their music is varied so that you don’t have to listen to the same kind of music for the entirety of the concert and it shows off the skill and work the singers have and have put into their concert. I would encourage everyone to attend more of the choir’s concerts to support them and as a chance to experience the beautiful music that these students work so hard to provide for their audience. It really is a wonderful experience to heard my fellow students doing what they love and creating something so unique.

I so often get asked how and why I ended up here at Juniata, in a tiny, little mountain town in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. I grew up in southern Louisiana for most of my life before moving to Singapore for four years, so needless to say Huntingdon is a bit of a change of pace from what I was used to. When it came time to start looking for colleges I knew one thing for sure- I wanted to be somewhere that was completely different from what I already knew, and that’s how I ended up here.

At the time that I visited Juniata I was dead set on coming here, Juniata had been on my mind since early on in my freshman year of high school, so I had been waiting a long time to finally see it. I spent most of the plane ride bouncing in my seat, overly excited and driving my mom nuts. My mom and I got to Huntingdon late in the evening on a weeknight and weren’t going to campus until the next morning, so our plan was just to grab some dinner and look around the area a bit. At first glance, Huntingdon wasn’t quite what I had expected. I had spent months fantasizing about Juniata and what it would be like here, but the town was so much smaller than I had imagined. I was honestly so scared that the place I’d spent forever dreaming about was all wrong for me. That night I lai

d in the hotel room bed panicking about what I was going to do and it wasn’t until the next morning when we finally got to campus that everything started falling into place.

Pretty much from the second we were on campus my whole mood changed. I had been told by a lot of my older friends that when you found the right college that you would just know, there’d be some magic “click” inside of you and that would be it. I never understood that until I walked onto campus here at Juniata. All of my fears from the night before were gone as soon as I stood in the middle of the quad. As cliché and cheesy as it may sound, something just felt right on campus. Despite how I’d felt before I knew that this campus was my home. Now, a year and a half into my Juniata career I know that I absolutely made the right choice in coming here. This little town that felt so scary at first is now the place where I feel safest and most at peace.

27 hours in a van. 15 students. 4 instructors. 2 incredible location. 1 experience I will not forget anytime soon.

This past week, I went on a field trip with my Forestry class of 15 students to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the Adirondacks in New York. We were on a forestry tour of New England, and it was amazing.

Starting on campus at 7am on Monday morning, we loaded up in the vans and headed to the White Mountains. When we arrived (11 hours later, I might add), we spent the night in an old farmhouse. The next day, we took a tour of Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest – one of the most famous sites of forestry research in the world. We went out in the field to see the research projects and were able to directly apply what we had been learning in the class. We also saw some moose poop! From clearcutting experiments, to calcium drops for sugar maple health, and climate change studies conducted by heating the soil, the research was beyond impressive. After the tour and lunch, we loaded in the vans again for a 5-hour drive to the Adirondack Ecological Center.

AEC, which is managed by SUNY ESF, is a beautiful site. The campus is situated on a lake with a 50-foot natural beach right across the street from Goodnow Mountain (which we did get the chance to hike!). Our next two days were filled with forestry tours, wildlife research lectures, a friend of mine pretending to be a deer, and a trip to the Wild Center – an incredible nature center in the Adirondacks. It was an experience I never would have gotten outside of class, and I’m still so in awe of everything I got to experience on the trip.

On Sunday morning, we all begrudgingly loaded into the vans to come back. The trip was over. Luckily, before it ended, we all were told about the multitude of internship opportunities at the sites we had visited, which I’m sure some of us will be applying for!

Being back on campus now, I’m not missing the hours we spent in the van. I don’t quite miss the early mornings and almost complete lack of Wi-Fi. However, I am missing the high mountains splattered with the colors of fall. I’m really missing looking for moose out the roads. I miss the egg salad that I got to pack for lunch every day. I’m missing the stars. I hope I can make it back up to those high mountains soon.

Last Monday, I went to sleep in a van behind Brumbaugh Academic Center, and woke up in Allegheny National Forest. It was quite the pleasant surprise.

This semester, I decided I wanted to put off taking Macroeconomics on campus, and take Forestry at the Raystown Field Station. I knew it was going to be a little tricky, seeing that classes at the Field Station are an all-day commitment, and Forestry was on Monday. I couldn’t simply drop all of my Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes. Luckily, after talking it through with my professors, they let me off class on Mondays and I was all set to go take a class at the Field Station.

And that’s how I ended up in Allegheny National Forest at 10 AM on a Monday. We started off the day with a lecture on the history of the forest and its current uses. Our lecturer was a part of the research division of the National Forest Service, where they test regeneration, silvicultural (growing trees as crops) practices, and any other research question they can imagine.

After our morning lecture and a quick lunch, we were off to a very famous part of the forest: the Tionesta Forest.

This forest has been untouched by the hands of humans for over 400 years. It was originally dominated by beech and hemlock trees, but many of the trees were blown down in a storm 40 years ago. Now, beech bark disease and hemlock wooly adelgid (both forest pests which kill those species), seem to be slowly changing the composition of the forest. Because of the struggles these species are facing, it is unknown if they will ever grow to such monstrous proportions again, at least in this area. It was incredibly cool to see these giants in person – my arms didn’t even reach halfway around the trunks of some of the trees.

As the day finished up, we packed back into the vans to leave. It was a busy three-hour ride back to campus with a Sheetz stop, hair braiding, and napping. There is always plenty of napping on the long van journeys.

This week, I will be setting off on another long journey with the Forestry class. We are taking a week-long tour of forests in New England, and I couldn’t be more excited. I knew classes at Juniata could take me amazing places, but this course has been even more incredible than most.