Sunday/Monday – Day 51/52
September 13, 2012
Sunday I intended to get down to a bit of work, however Penn had other plans. Sunday to Wednesday marked audition season for the various groups at UPenn. Things started out well, tutoring a few Jewish girls in my Ruby class, helping them to set up their computers for the class, however flipping through the F/Penn program I noticed that auditions for The Penn Singers, the Broadway and light opera company at Penn were at twelve. Plucking the day, I headed off to the Platt Student Performing Arts House, just off main campus, where auditions were being held. Along with me I brought the music to “Some Enchanted Evening”, my personal audition favorite, and was soon met there by a good number of friendly theater people. I was then presented with a monologue to learn in the few minutes before the audition, playing the part of Leo Bloom from the producers. The audition consisted of me singing my piece, which went well. Vocal exercises, which went decently, and the monologue, over which I stumbled a few times. Further than that they taught me a few bars of the cast song “Hail Poetry!” which I didn’t quite get but I felt decent about it. Following that I saw that the ‘Off The Beat’ acapella auditions were in the same corridor, feeling a bit plucky I decided to audition for them too. However after a twenty minute wait outside I was informed that they would not take an exchange student due to the lack of worth in investing in my training. Remembering that other auditions were on that day too, I wandered over to Irvine Auditorium where the ‘Penny Loafers’ acapella auditions were being held. For them I sung ‘Under the Bridge’ by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and was made to do a good few minutes of exercises and vocal dictation.
I won’t tire you with the details of every single audition, however, The Glee Club auditions deserved a special mention. Testing both my rhythmic and melodic sight reading, along with my ability to box-step, I had a lovely time in the audition interacting with both the director and the other members of the club.
Monday was much the same, running back and forth between clubs and classes. In the evening I met with Google representatives and listened to them give a recruiting spiel. As if anyone needed to convince me that working there might be a good idea. Following that I raced off to the University Choral Society, a half credit class I was taking. At the entrance to the rehearsal room stood a mostly older crowd of between forty to eighty, all waiting to rehearse. This was a slight shock for me given my expectations of a student choir. However, I soon settled in and had a lovely evening singing. Towards the end of the class my friend Thea ran out and came back a little sullen. A while later my phone buzzed too and I check the transcribed voice message to find indecipherable garbage. Listening to the original I found a message telling me I had been accepted into the cast of Penn Singers and their production of Legally Blonde this fall! I raced off to meet the cast at a meet and greet in Platt and following that headed back to my room to work a little before, finally, sleep.
Friday/Shabbat – Day 49 / Day 50
September 12, 2012
Nothing significant about my morning course today, algorithms, except for a few new friends. However, and for this I’m sorry I didn’t bring my camera, was the student society fair. This was my opportunity to sign up to EVERYTHING. The groups were ordered by type eg; religious, sports etc. and this gave me the opportunity to join as many conflicting groups as possible. It was also in plain sight of their competitors and also led to a few interesting conversations. I joined the more right wing ‘Friends of Israel’ group whose table was directly next to the ‘Friends of Palestine’ group who I joined as well. I’m now a proud member of pretty much everything but the Pro-life coalition. I collected thirty-eight flyers and signed up to over thirty groups (I didn’t have the time to write my name down on everyone’s forms!)
The afternoon was all work, finishing up my coding assignment and getting ready for Shabbat with Penn Hillel, what will probably be a regular occurrence.
After the service and dinner it was off to the Rabbi’s roof, a fifteen minute walk away, for a bit of a party. Climbing through the maze of corridors, up three separates flights of stairs we passed a somewhat confused security guard we came to the roof. Surrounded there by air conditioning vents and with a view of construction sites, it was hardly picturesque.
However, turning the corner we came to a little ‘rooftop oasis’ filled with plants, deck chairs, a cooler full of Budweiser beer, and a good forty plus Orthodox Jews. After meeting the crew and chatting for a good while, our party was finally shut down by the Rabbi’s doorman, who closed the roof at 12PM, sending us down and back home to sleep.
Shabbat was a relaxed affair again with an accidental sleep in till past midday. At that point I went down to Rodin Jew (Rodin Two), the second floor of the building, home to the Jewish Engagement Program for lunch with Ariella and her friends. After a good few hours of schmoozing over a delicious shabbos lunch, it was time for a short shluf.
Shluf complete, I walked in the rain to F/Penn – Freshman Performing Arts Night, to which I had previously arranged a ticket for myself. There I spent a good four hours listening to oodles of acapella music and discovered that yes, there is in fact such a thing as too much acapella. Alongside that there were performances from numerous dance groups and a fine selection of theatre and comedy as well. Inspired by the performances to audition, I hurriedly wrote down the names of a good many of them in order to audition in later days.
Thursday – Day 48
September 10, 2012
BREAKING NEWS: Shaanan was accepted into the Penn Singers, the premier Light Opera/ Musical Company at Penn. As such he was partying tonight and didn’t have time for an extensive post.
Today was an all new set of classes! First up was Electrodynamics I, a post-vector calculus, Junior level physics course (PHYS320). The class was full of around forty older kids and not particularly warm and friendly. The material was difficult and the lecturer got right into it. Homework was set immediately, a series of vector calculus revision exercises that taxed my brain a fair amount. I will need to get plenty of help with that.
Next up was Operating Systems, a slightly larger class (CS380) with around fifty students. The class required an advanced knowledge of the C programming language and our first assignment was handed out immediately: writing a shell for the Linux operating system. Difficult but doable.
Finally was my random class Russian, which today went well, learning a bit more of the alphabet and the difference between the two kinds of vowels, hard and soft. Stay turned for more details.
The afternoon I coded away at the Operating Systems project, not even stopping when it was time to leave for my night activity at 6. I knew there was a second bus leaving and decided to wait for that instead.
At 6:30 I headed downstairs for ‘The Rodin Sophomore Cruise’. The bus arrived at the port at around 7:00PM and after a minute we were informed that the second bus had in fact refused to start and that we might be waiting a bit longer till we set a-sail. Half an hour passed and the remainder of the supposed attendees didn’t show. Rumours passed around and it was eventually made clear to us that the original bus too had gotten stuck along the way. Finally at around eight thirty, the last of them arrived and we finally left port. The cruise was most enjoyable and I even got to dancing, after a little prodding. Highlight of the trip was meeting a very friendly girl by the name of Stephanie from my building too and a musician by the name of Rigel from my floor.
After we returned it was quickly back to my room and, exhausted I was soon fast asleep.
<RODIN CRUISE>