By Kirstin Nichols

On Saturday, October 6th, the building excitement from a week of dressing up, a parade, a football game and a pep rally ended in the annual Homecoming dance.

Although many students spent the morning and afternoon competing on athletic teams, by the evening they were looking their best and ready for a night of fun.The preparations for this important night begin weeks ahead of time. The first step in ensuring that homecoming is a success is finding the perfect dress–which can take days. If you were to wander into the dress section of any store in the mall around mid to late September, you would find mobs of girls going through racks of dresses in every color and design. Personally, I found finding a dress very easily this year–I ordered one online and it fit perfectly.

At about 3 p.m., I began the process of getting ready. At a friend’s house, I put on makeup and I flat ironed my hair to the best of my abilities while discussing homecoming events.

Like most homecoming attendees, around 6:15 p.m., I met with a group of friends at a house to take every type of picture imaginable: everyone smiling, everyone serious, girls, boys, pictures in front of a car, everyone together again, and so on.

Because the dance started at 7 p.m., students piled into cars around 6:45 p.m. to head to the G-hall parking lot. I was driven by a senior friend, and we stayed in the parking lot for about fifteen minutes, waiting for others to arrive. When we finally made our way over to the ramp leading to the cafeteria, it contained a long and winding line of students chatting in anticipation of the event. After about ten more minutes of waiting, I finally stepped into the cafeteria, where a row of teachers were sitting at tables. I handed my ticket to a teacher, received two purple tokens, and was finally at the Homecoming dance.

The tokens I was given were a means of voting for homecoming king and queen; multiple boxes with slits at the top were set up on a table, each bearing the name of a homecoming court nominee. I placed each of my tokens in different boxes, and then met up with some more friends that had driven separately.

The cafeteria was completely decked out in carnival decorations, including a fortune teller, a ticket booth, a “carousel”, a “hot air balloon”, a “roller coaster”, a building “selling” taffy, and a “crab shack.”

As always, there was a photo booth in the hallway outside of the cafeteria, where groups of students were waiting in line to capture the fun of this festive night.

Teachers had prepared for the event of everyone seemingly taking their shoes off at once. At the corner of the cafeteria hallway and F-hall, were rows of brown paper bags bearing assigned numbers which held the shoes of students. I’m sure this was greatly appreciated by many, as in previous years corners behind trash cans have been filled with piles of shoes.

After homecoming ended at 10 p.m., many students went to the typical go-to locations–Applebee’s and IHOP–for late night meals, while others went to the houses of friends, which is what I did after stopping at McDonald’s. Needless to say, there were many exhausted Arundel High School students Sunday morning.

Overall, I feel that homecoming was a success, from the preparations made by teachers to the amazing detail that the SGA put into truly capturing the theme of a carnival in our cafeteria. I can’t wait until next year!