Got together with the Events committee and we put together all of our movie suggestions. We had like 25 in total but we narrowed it down to four. We decided to tell the rest of the Shads at Assembly what the movie choices were and to take a vote. Tonight we're going to tell them about the rest of our plans: popcorn (complete with the old-fashioned cart thingy) and sleeping bags (everyone's going to bring their sleeping bags and pillows down to the Cameron Room and we'll lie down and watch the movie like that).

Then we finished up our seminar on conflict from a few days before, and a guest speaker (Jenny Beckler) came in to talk to us about Project Management. I knew some of what she was saying because of my dad's work and teaching. She also talked to us about critical thinking and gave us some tips for working on our house projects.

A guest speaker, Robin Muller, came in and talked to us about different materials, fabrics, and fibres. People were asking her a lot of questions because we've all been working on how to develop our products with natural fibres. Out in the hall she had 2 tables full of different fabrics (including one that had copper in it so you could scrunch up the piece of fabric and it would stay like that - very cool!) and materials (wool, cotton, alpaca, silk (amazing. so soft), etc.).

We had ShadSpeak then. We learned about Henry VIII from Christine, Mack's love of snowboarding, Wendy's playing of the pipa (Chinese instrument) and love of digital animation, Intekhab's track and field experience in Hershey, PA, and Tait's love of music (he had a really cool presentation; he played his band's music off YouTube while speaking and in the end threw out demo copies of their cd into the audience!).

We moved on to House time. The ten of us and Kathleen, our PA, crammed into our House office and presented our research. We discussed our 3 problems and decided to do feminine hygiene products! The boys in our group are pretty brave to be delving into this territory. You can tell they're smart though; they know that this is our best idea and has a good market. I think we're going to be focusing on reducing waste because so many billions of products are in landfills and such each year; we also want to make our product as eco-friendly as possible too. As Shad says about us, "We take the best - and make them better!" and that's what I guess we'll be doing with our idea. Today we're going to meet from noon to 12:30 and 5-6:30 because our 2-page Idea Proposal is due on Sunday.

Snack was leftover Canada Day cake. Avi and I got to bed BEFORE midnight for the first time since we arrived in Halifax, so we were pretty pleased with that. We're back in the DalPlex for rec, and I think I'm going to do Cathy's yoga session :) Tonight we have a Special Event that we're supposed to be in comfortable clothes to move around in, and I'm thinking it might be highland dancing because it was hinted at on the first day.

Danielle Biss
Shad Valley Dalhousie
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario