Do you want to build a snowman?

“Severe Weather Warning” flashed the headlines on Duke Today, this Wednesday. Winter is coming. It was a tad dramatic given all we were to receive was a few inches of snow, but the South is just not equipped to deal with any form of snowstorm.

And south did the snow go, with the snow hitting us here in North Carolina, but also Atlanta and even New Orleans dropped below freezing.

We waited anxiously all afternoon, hoping that it would deliver as promised. But at 7pm when I went to rehearsals there wasn’t anything of note. I felt a little cheated to be honest. Never fear! Emerging out of rehearsals at 10pm Duke had literally turned into a Winter Wonderland! Snow swirled around the air, the ground was coated in brilliantly white snow, and Duke chapel looked ethereal in the storm.

Plans of jumping on a bus out of the cold vanished immediately. My friend Jessica and I took cheesy photos in the snow, (she’s from Florida so was equally excited). I take full credit for starting the snowball fight. After our fingers were blue, and we were so coated in snow we might has well have been polar bears we shivered our way to East campus. What did we find on the main quad? A freshman snowball fight!

As it turns out, my snowballing skills are minimal.

The rest of the evening East campus echoed with the sounds of procrastinating college students getting creative with the snow. Plastic bag sledding, snow angels, snowball fights, powdery snowmen – every thing and anything. Some extremely intelligent decided to run around, and even roll around in the snow shirtless. Obviously we girls couldn’t be beat, so with swimming tops on we followed suit. I would like to provide a shout out for the guy who threw a startlingly well aimed snowball at my bare back. Apparently you’re a football player, if so kudos, I understand why we had such a good season.

But the absolute best part was having a hot shower, watching “Frozen” in the common room and then going to sleep with the blissful knowledge that my 8:45am class had been cancelled. Scratch that, waking up to a message determining that ALL classes had been cancelled was nothing short of brilliant.

My very first snow day ever, snowballs, tea, “Frozen” and cancelled classes.

Thank you North Carolina!