Old and New Traditions

BFA is a school that changes a lot every year; but ironically, BFA is also a school with a lot of traditions that have been passed down for years. One of these traditions is the annual trip to Herbstmesse.

Essentially, Herbstmesse is a Fall carnival held in Basel, Switzerland. Every year at the end of October, we load all the dorm students (approx. 150 students) into charter buses and then turn them loose to enjoy carnival food, rides and games.

The bumper cars are always a big hit! In the middle of the picture is Rachel and Kara (in the white hat) in hot pursuit of Krista and Luke! (left corner)

Giant ferris wheel.

In the spirit of being a carnival, Herbstmesse has some weird booths and decorations! Above you see Mrs. Mais, ready to serve you a hot corn on the cob!


At this booth you can find "mega coole preise."

This is the overhead display at a food booth. It's hard to see, but Batman has a sausage for a thumb (a very effective thumbs up), and to the right of that is the hand of the Statue of Liberty holding a sausage...I don't know how to interpret that.

1st Annual 3-3 Basketball Tournament

The day after Herbstmesse (a Friday) is always a day off of school and this year there was a 3-on-3 basketball tournament! There was a pretty good turn out, 9 teams, comprised of students and staff. I hope this becomes a new tradition because it was really fun! My team, the Jetz, played hard for 2 games but then, sadly, we had to sit the bench...it was double elimination.


This is me trying to find an open teammate.


Here I am again, squaring up for a 3-pointer to tie the game...ha ha ha, yeah right!

This is a picture of Rachel just after shooting the ball.


This is Joy, sitting poised and ready to sub-in.

I am proud to say that the star of the winning team was Jessica! (pictured above) Her team was the only undefeated team and she averaged about 12 points per game. She scored over 20 against my team...but I let her because a good RA doesn't make her students look bad on the court, right?!?!?

Palmgarten/Maugenhard Open House

Everyone in the community has been asking for tours of the new building (with Maugenhard dorm being added on top) and so we decided to have a joint open house. The seniors of both dorms came up with the theme and planned the snack menu; all we did was buy and help prepare the food! It was great! Throughout the evening all of the BFA community traipsed through our two dorms and made themselves at home.

The theme was evolution of music and each floor of the building represented a genre of music. The basement floor was Classical, the first floor was Jazz, the third floor was Rock and the fourth floor was Electronica. The cool sign pictured above was made by Anna.

These are the dorm parents of Maugenhard with their two daughters. They were dressed up as Rock and Electronica.


These are the dorm parents of Palmgarten! They dressed up as Sonny and Cher.

Rachel, Jessica, Bonnie and Steph sporting their creative costumes.

Here are some Palmgarten girls dressed up as flappers--I'm still not really sure where they got the fake guns from...I should probably check on that, I think it's against the rules.

Here's me, Sanna and Krista. We had so much fun!