Llamaland!

Every year, for one day during the weekend after shopping period, the freshmen of Timothy Dwight College are rounded up, loaded onto two yellow school buses, and are taken to a mysterious location two hours south of Yale (some have guessed that it might be New York). Rumors trickle through the freshmen in the weeks leading up to the event.

"I've heard it's some sort of paradise!"

"An upperclassman told me there were llamas there!"

Surprisingly enough, these rumors are almost true. It's called Llamaland by those who have experienced it (hey, it says it on the free t-shirt, so it must be true), and it's the sprawling mansion and garden estate of a retired Yale professor of Egyptology that is good friends with TD's Master Thompson, or Master T for short. It's become a tradition and a wonderful bonding experience for almost two decades of TD freshmen.

As a Master's Aide, I got to go along for the ride (much to the jealousy of my classmates) and help set up for the event. As staff, we had a whole separate bus to ourselves, and it felt like my days in middle school again, when enough people had been dropped off at the end of the day that only the cool kids were left and we each took a seat for outselves.

Once there, we unloaded the massive charcoal grill from the back of the bus and cooked up some beef burgers while the freshmen played volleyball, waded in the pool, sunbathed, and saw how close they could get to the llamas. (The answer is actually very close--llamas are rather peaceful animals.)

But after lunch was when the training began. One of the most important missions of the Master's Aides during Llamaland is to pass on one of Yale's most hallowed traditions: razzle-dazzle football. A combination of touch football and ultimate frisbee (anyone can forward pass), razzle-dazzle is one of the key sports in Fall IM's, and with Master T's passion for the Tyng Cup, our traning necessarily starts early.

We instructed the freshmen to head onto the adjacent field, taught them the rules, and challenged them to bring out their best squad of freshmen athletes to challenge the upperclassmen. They chased hard, and dived for tackles, but to no avail: we were just too darn fast. So, to even the odds a little bit, we allowed the freshmen to field a team consisting of... the entire freshmen class. 100 eager freshmen vs. 20 of us? I've won tougher fights.

We fought with everything we had. We used every trick in the book. We even cheated. And despite our overwhelming odds against us, well, we lost. Some freshman had the bright idea of forming a protective human shield around the runningback, and crushed us with the strength of numbers.

But the day wasn't over yet. Since Master T was retiring next year, and this was his last Llamaland, there was only one way we could honor his dedication to Timothy Dwight College for over 35 years: by throwing him in the pool.



All in all, a good day was had. I napped on the bus ride home, brought huge bags of chips back to the common room, and best of all, had bragging rights to last me all of first semester.