BLA & Gingerbread!

This past Sunday, I found myself in the Student Center for a BLA meeting. BLA standing for Black Latinx Alliance. The Alliance gathers every few weeks to connect, chat, and strengthen our community presence on campus. This week, in the Christmas spirit, we gathered to build gingerbread houses and eat pizza!

My group consisted of Dayana '27, Michael '28, Nataly '29, and Kaysan '26. To be honest, there was a lot more eating of the toppings than decorating but the conversations we had made it worth it. We began our construction the generic way, 4 walls and a floor. Our first mistake occurred almost immediately. Unlike every other group, we found ourselves using frosting instead of white chocolate as a sealant for our structure. Despite this glaring disadvantage, we continued on.

We decided to take a more unique approach with our gingerbread house, opting for a more modernized architecture over the traditional triangle topped home. Our gingerbread house closely resembled a square, and little more. After this observation, we decided further decoration was the best course of action. Obviously, the best way to do this was adding some life to our gingerbread house, in the form of a face.

As the countdown ticked closer and closer, we rushed to add the finishing touches, frantically sticking gum drops and M&M’s to the structure. When the timer rang, I exhaled gratefully as I looked back at the finished result. Despite the trials of fastening graham cracker walls with cream frosting, I looked around at my group and remembered the conversations, the jokes, and the bonding and felt as satisfied as I could possibly be.