One of the best things about Middlebury, particularly in the summer, is the plethora of outdoor activities within reasonable distance.  The weather here has been beautiful lately, and all of us have been taking every opportunity to check out the surrounding mountains, swimming holes, waterfalls, and hikes.

The first glimpse from the Mt. Marcy summit.

On Saturday, Zak and I, along with some various summer student employees (who are doing awesome research and other on-campus summer activities), made the 2 hour drive to Keene, New York, to climb Mount Marcy.  Mount Marcy is actually the highest Adirondack mountain, with an elevation of 5,343 feet.  The climb itself was a 15-mile roundtrip hike…not too intense of a climb but definitely grueling for a day-hike.  After fueling ourselves with a breakfast of banana-walnut pancakes, the group of us climbed for the morning hours, reaching the summit around 2 pm.  The views from the top were breathtaking.  I can’t say I’m too good with maps and directions, but the other students pointed out Canada, Lake Placid, and some of the famous “high peak” mountains within the region.  The feeling of reaching the top of a mountain is always overwhelmingly incredible, and we all soaked in the scenery for a good hour.  The climb down was more brutal – stepping down steep rocks is rough on the knees!  However, we finally reached our van at around 7:15 pm, exhausted but elated from our adventure.

Gorgeous, panoramic views!

When I came to Middlebury as an incoming freshman, I wasn’t really the “outdoorsy” type.  Yet after a few years at Midd, I’ve come to love the nature that surrounds our campus.  Of course, the summer has provided warm sun and plentiful greenery, but all four seasons offer unique expeditions and adventures.  The Middlebury Mountain club, Midd’s largest student organization, is a great way to become involved in outdoor exploration here.  They organize group hikes, overnight hikes, and other activities such as canoeing and snowshoeing.  Check out their website here.  Students are constantly organizing other events on their own, whether that means ice climbing in the winter or finding the best fall foliage in October.  I like to tell my tours that “if you aren’t outdoorsy when you get here, prepare to become outdoorsy asap!” It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but ultimately true.  How can you not fall in love with the great outdoors when you’re surrounded by the Green Mountains, Adirondacks, Lake Champlain, and countless other hidden gems of mother nature?

Zak and I, your adventuresome interns!

Although the town of Middlebury offers lots of summer entertainment (shout out to our new frozen yogurt shop!), it’s always great to break beyond the bubble and explore the “real world.”  After a few weeks of hard work at the admissions office, where the size of our tours has steadily been growing, a few of us interns decided to take a mini-vacation to the big city.  Nope, not NYC…Montreal!

Exploring the streets of Montreal!

Montreal is actually one of the closest big cities to Middlebury, which many people are surprised to hear.  It’s a mere 2.5 hour drive north, and Zak was kind enough to volunteer as chauffeur.  After stumbling into the car in the early morning and fueling ourselves with coffee, we arrived in Montreal with tons of time to explore.  It’s pretty cool that we have the option to be in a different country within a matter of hours…and Montreal, with all of its French-speaking citizens, certainly feels like a different world.

Our first stop was the “Green Panther” restaurant, known for its vegan deliciousness, and fitting because of the ever-present panther imagery.  We devoured some amazing falafel and they hiked the brief yet stair-ladden trails of Mont Royal to take in the panoramic scenery.  While I had been to Montreal one other time, in the dead of winter, the beautiful, summery views of the city and surrounding waters didn’t fail to take my breath away (or perhaps that was because I was huffing and puffing after all the stairs…).  It’s actually a bit of a shock to see so many buildings and shops after spending months at Midd, where the tallest building is our 6-story Bicentennial Hall, and the surrounding views are of mountains and greenery.  I’d say both hold beauty, but in very different ways.  We also visited the Biodome, an interesting indoor zoo/ecosystem center, where we were amused by sloths, beavers, and a “maple forest.”

The view at the top of Mont Royal.

Of course, a trip to the city wouldn’t be complete without a hostel stay.  As college students, we were happy to pay only about $30 each to stay in a dorm-style hostel.  Hey, after living in co-ed campus dorms for years, our clean and welcoming hostel immediately felt like home.  A nice dinner plus a visit to the amazing “Juliette et Chocolate” creperie, as well as a longer-than-planned visit to a cool, narrow bookstore during a downpour provided us with some great memories.  As we each tucked into our bunk beds after watching Zak perform some interesting card tricks in the hostel lounge, it was a matter of minutes before we fell asleep.

Hostel life…convenient and comfortable!

We headed back to Middlebury on Sunday, completing our entire trip in just over 24 hours.  International travel does have its hardships though, and we spent a few minutes at the border crossing being investigated by some grumpy US officers.  But, we made it through and returned to the homeland.  While the transition from Midd to Montreal certainly is drastic, and enthralling in that we are exposed to actual city life, it was nice to return to our rustic, rural home.  I spent the rest of Sunday sleeping and skimming through pictures of our weekend, grateful to have had the chance to fit in a quick weekend getaway with good friends.

A rewarding end to a Saturday night.

Montreal must-do’s:

1) Walk down St. Laurent Boulevard…shops, restaurants, and culture galore!

2) Visit Mont Royal…perfect for jogging, walking, and awesome views!

3) Juliette et Chocolate…come for the crepes, try the brownies…ok, just try everything.

In case you can’t make it to campus, or you forget things about the tour you did go on, here is a brief summary of a typical tour during the summer. We hope you enjoy this mini-tour, and hopefully you’ll have time to make it here for a live tour with one of our smiling tour guides! Here’s a link to our campus map in case you want to situate yourself on campus as you read about buildings.

We start here in the Admissions office, of course. We introduce ourselves and find out a little about you, but then we start our backwards walking and begin the tour.

Our first stop is the Mahaney Center for the Arts (MCA). This is our arts building for dance, music, and theater. Visual arts are in a different section of campus. Inside this building, we have many facilities that are open to all students regardless of their major. Some of the facilities include the Seeler Studio Theater, one of our three theaters on campus for faculty-directed shows, the Dance Studio with sprung floors for dance classes and performances, the Museum of Art, and the Concert Hall, a magnificently acoustic room, for visiting and student performances. We have several theater productions throughout the year, a few faculty-directed and several student-directed shows. We also have the Middlebury College Musical Players (MCMP) which is a student-run group that performs musicals, and one faculty-directed musical during J-term. Our musical groups include the Chamber Music Ensemble, the College Orchestra, the Jazz Ensemble, and the College Choir. There are many opportunities for dance as well, from classes for credit to the Dance Company of Middlebury to Midd Masti, OnTap, and Riddim, our student-run groups.

After the CFA, on our way to the next building, we pass the athletic center.  Again, all the facilities are open to anyone, even if you are not an athlete. We have an Olympic-sized swimming pool, basketball courts, a hockey rink, tennis courts, a rock climbing wall, and, a brand new field house set to open in the Fall of 2014!  There are about 600 Varsity athletes at Midd, and we are a Division 3 school. Aside from Varsity sports, we have some Junior Varsity, club, and intramural sports. Intramurals are a lot of fun, as they are lighthearted games between friends to win the coveted Intramural Championship t-shirts.

We also pass by the Biomass plant before entering the next building. Middlebury has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2016, and the Biomass plant helps out the initiative by using wood chips instead of oil to fuel a lot of our campus. In fact, it reduces our carbon footprint by 50%. In addition to the Biomass plant, we have recently added a solar farm behind our science center to help us on our path to carbon neutrality.

Our second stop on the tour is the McCullough Student Center. This is where the CCAL (Center for Campus Activities and Leadership) and MCAB (Middlebury College Activities Board) offices are held. CCAL oversees the 140+ student organizations and the many student activities that happen throughout the year. MCAB is made up of a group of student committees who facilitate activities on campus. Some examples are guest speakers (including the Dalai Lama in 2012!),  Homecoming weekend, Free Friday Films, and our big end of term concerts (including Kid Cudi, Wale, Guster, and Matt and Kim). Inside McCullough is the Social Space, where a lot of these activities happen. Some more specific events we’ve had in the Social Space are hypnotists, comedians, ‘80s dance parties, and swing dances. Across from the Social Space is the Grille and Crossroads Café downstairs. These are social areas with delicious food (not included in the meal plan) and are great places to hang out.

Proctor Dining Hall comes next. One of our three dining halls, Proctor serves up many delicious choices.  There is always salad, sandwiches, soup, hot entrées, and fruit, so there’s a multitude of items to decide between. If none of those entice you, there are also Panini makers for the more creative souls. In Ross, another dining hall, the Panini makers are replaced with different pizzas.  Atwater has pizza as well, and all of our dining halls are staffed by different chefs who choose what to create for us every week. We do not have a meal plan at Middlebury, which is fantastic. Meals are included in the comprehensive fee, and so you never have to worry about how many meals you have eaten in a certain week. You can eat whenever, wherever, and however much you would like. It’s brilliant.

After the dining hall, we pass the Janet Halstead Franklin ’72 and Churchill G. Franklin ’71 Environmental Center at Hillcrest, or Hillcrest for short. This is our environmental studies building, and it was created with environmentally friendly architecture such as solar panels, low-flow faucets, and energy efficient windows and lights, among other things. It was the first building in Vermont to receive LEED Platinum, which is the highest designation awarded for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Environmental Studies is one of our more popular as well as well-renowned majors, and is interdisciplinary in nature. If you choose to major in ES, you also must choose a focus, which could be one of many different areas, including, but not limited to, Economics, Food Studies, and Architecture.

Next stop: McCardell BiCentennial Hall. Built in 2000, it includes all of our sciences from Chemistry, Biology, and Physics, to Geology, Geography, and Psychology. BiHall has a science library, a greenhouse, an observatory, and several classrooms and labs. There are many research opportunities for us undergrads in BiHall, and there are students living on campus every summer doing research. Research can be done for pay or for credit during the school year, too.

As for general academics, we do have distribution requirements. We have 8 distribution requirements, but you only need to fulfill 7 of them. They are Deductive Reasoning, Natural Science, Social Science, Philosophy/Religion, Art, Language, Literature, and History. (Don’t worry; it’s pretty easy to get these. It’s almost as if they fall into place without much effort, although you may have to work to find one or two.) We also have cultural requirements where you have to take a class about each of three regions of the world and one comparing cultures. These requirements include EUR (Europe), NOR (North America), AAL (Africa, Asia, Latin America), and CMP (Comparative). This requirement is important so that MiddKids are aware of global issues and histories as they prepare for the future.

As we leave BiHall, ahead of us is Le Château. If you couldn’t guess by the name, this is our French department. It also houses juniors and seniors upstairs, and you do not need to be able to speak French to live there. If you do want to live in a house where people speak a language other than English, you can choose to live in a language house after your freshman year. The language houses also have different activities open to anyone who can and wants to speak that language. French, for instance, has French films and a café every week. Le Château also houses a theater in the basement for foreign language productions.

Now on to housing. Battell Hall houses 2/5 of the freshman class. 2 of the 5 Commons are associated with Battell. At Middlebury, we have a Commons system where the student body is split into 5 smaller communities. These are Atwater, Ross, Cook, Wonnacott, and Brainerd. You get randomly placed into your Commons based on what First Year Seminar you choose, and then you live with the people in your Commons for your first two years. After sophomore year, you are still affiliated with your Commons, but you do not have to live with them anymore if you so choose. You can still attend your Commons’ dinners and activities, like fondue Fridays or hikes, but you have a chance to live with some people other than those in your Commons. Commons have a great support network with Faculty Heads, the Commons’ Dean, First Year Counselors, and the Commons Residential Advisor (a recent Middlebury grad who knows the ropes since they were here for four years). It’s nice to have a Dean who knows who you are rather than one who you might never meet because they are in charge of 2449 other students. Battell Beach is the expanse in front of Battell. We use this space in all types of weather, for pick up soccer, frisbee, capture the flag, snow ball fights, and, of course, quidditch.

Next we have the Davis Family Library, our new library. There are over one million volumes here, and there are DVDs you can take out, too. The Technology HelpDesk is fantastic, and the experts there know everything there is to know about PCs and Macs. In the back of the building is the CTLR (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research). Here, we have counselors, peer tutors for specific subjects, and peer writing tutors. You can just walk-in or make an appointment for anything you might need help in. The library is open until 1am on weekdays during the year, and 11pm on weekends. During exam week, it’s open 24/7. Right outside the library is the Wilson Café, open 24/7 as a study space, and other times as a café.

Last stop on the tour is Axinn, or the Donald E. Axinn ’51, Litt. D. ’89 Center for Literary and Cultural Studies at Starr Library. What used to be our old library before the Davis Family Library was built turned into our American Studies, English, and Film and Media Culture Studies building. Inside are many different study spaces, as well as classrooms, screening rooms, a movie theater, and an indoor waterfall.

That’s just a small taste of what our tours are like.  Of course, nothing beats visiting in person, but hopefully some of the information here has been helpful.  Our website is huge and is a great place to browse around for more information, including virtual tours of student dorms, dining menus, and links to clubs and sports teams.  We certainly hope you have a chance to visit soon!