The nice thing about living with nine girls is that I didn't have to go far to find people to play leap frog with me. We live in an old house, so it actually has a name, Victoria Station, hence the title of the blog. I decided to ask everyone to play on a Sunday, when the weekend was over and everyone was starting to dread the week ahead. I thought it would be a nice way for everyone to take their mind off the fact that Monday was fast approaching. We were also about to have a meeting about some serious issues that we needed to work out in the house, so I hoped that this would lighten the mood and keep spirits high during the meeting.

Unfortunately, some people were a little too burned out from the weekend, and they decided to be spectators instead of participants. Still, I managed to convince four other girls to play with me, but my roommate Jen dropped out at the last minute. It was funny because the last time my friends had all played leap frog was as children many years ago. For some reason, they thought they would just be able to remember the rules, but it didn't turn out to be quite so simple. Luckily the rules are fairly simple so people picked up on it quickly. I'm not sure if we did it quite right, because we were really close together and we didn't squat down low enough, which made it difficult to leap. Still, it turned out to be fun, and it accomplished what I had hoped. Everyone was in a better mood, and our meeting turned out to be really relaxed.

I would definitely say that my experience with leap frog brought people together. Even those who were just watching were entertained, and it was a fun activity we’ve never done together before. Aside from feeling closer to my housemates, we also were connected on a deeper level, because my classmates were also doing the activity. I turned my game of leap frog into a way to ease tension in my house. My classmates may have chosen to play just for fun. Maybe they played with many more people, or less people, and I know they played in a different setting. By participating in this activity, it connects us as a class, and through the experience, everyone that we played leap frog with is also connected, even though they may never have met. We create a community by the simple act of playing a game that we loved as children.

-Sam Paoletti