Chill Out in this Igloo

If you happened to make your way down to Whitman today, you may have seen some pretty epic snow sculptures. But I have to say -- this one stole the show.Freshman Emi Nakamura constructed this giant igloo outside Community Hall with fellow classmates Hyunmoon Kim '13 and Flora Thomson-Deveaux '13, who both helped Emi out after she sent a message asking peers to join in on her project over the WhitmanWire, a listserv for Whitman residents. "i'm currently by myself... D: anyone who wants to help me build it is welcome!!!" the message read."I was thrilled with the end product, and had no regrets in not catching up on schoolwork whatsoever," Emi said.Standing at least 6 feet tall, the igloo took three hours to build. Step inside and you don't have to bother bending over. It's warm and extremely quiet; when I took the tour, I could hardly hear anything outside -- despite the igloo's two entrances.The main complication? According to the architect, the ceiling wasn't too easy to build. Using recycling bins and trash cans to pack the snow into large bricks, they soon made the walls bend inward, but at a certain point, they worried the ceiling was too high to pack together. "Our concern was [the ceiling's] stability which we maintained by one person holding up a block of snow in place while the others packed loose snow on the adjacent blocks for reinforcement," Emi said.Still, though, not too shabby -- and a good place to post up if you're proxless in 1963 Courtyard.