140 Wednesday Oct 20

Wednesday Oct 20 Day 140

What a day. I was to meet my fellow 1960 classmates down in the main school building. I got there and was informed the tour had been changed and I needed to be at Ridgewood in 5 minutes. I made it down the hill in 8 minutes and we toured Ridgewood (boys grades 5 thru 9), Alter Ridge (girls grades 5 thru 9) and the Midlands (girls grades 10 thru 12). Compared to what we lived in the places are palatial. The buildings a still the same size but the facilities greatly improved. There are no long dorm rooms with rows of beds. But individual rooms containing from 3 to six students with the 4 person room the norm. The rooms themselves are large and there is even heat in the various common rooms during the cold months. We then returned up the hill to the school for lunch.

After lunch we met with a staff member about the Outdoor program (which is in trouble) and at 4 pm 4 of us went for a hike down to Dhobi Ghat. A dhobi is a man who washes clothes. Ghat is a village where they all gather to wash clothes because of the continuous flow of water. It is at the bottom of the hill. The resident hall is 300 vertical feet from the school and Dhobi Ghat is another 300 vertical feet lower. At this point one of them said we should climb to the top of Witches Hill. It is so named because of the almost continuous lightning strikes during storms in the monsoon. The top of the hill is bare because of the fires caused by the strikes. The top of this hill is about 800 vertical feet above Dhobi Ghat. We made it back to the school by 5:45 (just in time for supper).During the day (not counting the downhill walks) I climbed 2,200 vertical feet. This most probably covered 10 miles of walking. I hope I am dead before I ever climb to the top of Witches Hill again.