Day 2 of WJI 2019 - The Tulip Festival

May 18th proved to be an exciting day here at WJI! Today, the gang of 23 students took a day-trip to Orange City, Iowa for their 79th annual Tulip Festival. The festival is a three-day street fair and parade, held every May, to celebrate the town's Dutch heritage and traditions; and hear me when I say, Orange City certainly knows how to celebrate!

Unfortunately, us students could not spend all our time enjoying the parade. We were there to hunt down story beats. Each student was assigned their own beat for the day, tasked to find a person to interview in regards to the Tulip Festival, and many of us took cameras so we could get colorful photos to pair with our stories. When the mission was completed, by about 4:00pm, we headed back to campus for dinner, then quickly got to work in front of our laptops. We now had a new mission: to finish writing our stories by 9:00 pm.

We flocked to the common rooms and plugged in those noise-cancelling headphones. And so, what began as an exciting day, ended up looking like a typical studious night in the life of a college student.