Friday – Day 84
October 22, 2012
Friday morning I woke up not so wonderfully, but the weather was too nice and the workload too light for the day not to be wonderful. I made it through my classes in the day and had another helpful singing lesson! Rehearsal for Legally Blonde was cancelled in the afternoon, providing me with more free time to go do some pre-Shabbat shopping and just enjoy myself a little.
Shul was at chabad with a tiny minyan, turns out the entire OCP (orthodox community at penn) had left for fall break, which started today! Thus, I had not planned for food on Friday night, expecting to eat at Hillel which, unfortunately was closed. Thankfully Alyse, a Drexel student, opened up her home to me and I ate dinner with Arianna, Alexis and Zack, some of my favorite people at Penn. After a lovely dinner and a good walk with them it was time for a good, long, sleep.
Wednesday/Thursday – Day 82/83
October 21, 2012
Today was yet more stress! I had a large programming assignment due for algorithms that I hadn’t yet started! As a result today was a flurry of activity for me. The lecture in the morning was nothing special but until my Ruby on Rails class I worked hard on the project, barely even stopping for lunch at Hillel.
My Ruby class has also improved significantly, largely due to the fact that I have recently put in a good few hours in to learning the first few weeks worth of material that I had only skimmed over previously and now understood it much better.
Evening was a rehearsal again, PGC as per usual, with dancing and the band. Fun as per always,
Following rehearsal I grabbed my laptop and walked over to the engineering quad, where a number of the TAs (teaching assistants) and students were busy on the assignment. To give a brief overview, the task was to write our own implementation of a stack in Java using two queues and then write an Infix to Postfix converter and Postfix calculator using the stack class we had made. At the end were a few analysis questions that also needed to be completed just to ensure we actually understood the task we were completing.
At about 9:23 I received a message from Charlie McClelland, one of my favorite oldmen from PGC whom I was meant to be interviewing this evening. We ended up rushing over to an Indian restaurant, Sitar, to catch a meal before it closed at 10PM. Our meal was delicious and the conversation excellent, though he had the sportsmanship I lacked ( being a past member of the Penn track team). However Sitar was soon to close and our meal was forced to end. Thankfully we didn’t end there, running by the Harnwell Starbucks to find a place to sit. It was all taken up by students busily finishing off the remainders of their work before fall break so we retired to my suite where we shared a little wine and chatted, discussing Australia amongst other things for a few hours. So far this was my favorite interview experience.
Thursday was my day to do errands, the shopping, various forms, the bank and a few other miscellaneous items. Physics was hard as per usual, though I followed along relatively well today. Operating systems was nothing special, as per usual I slept a little, keeping awake just enough to follow along. However, today I received excellent results from several assignments and so was in a dapper state all afternoon.
After a few hours of working in the evening, I received a message from Molly Hutt, a PGC alumna, inviting me out to check out a few bars in center city. So overjoyed to have received an invitation to go out and one that coincided with a downturn in my workload, I immediately replied in the affirmative, dressed myself and, set out to meet her and Patrick, another newman, to adventure in the city.
At the first bar we visited, the atmosphere was not so exciting, the crowd was too dressy and unfriendly and the only redeeming feature was the five dollar champagne. After a creepy guy invaded Molly’s space, we finished our drinks quickly and headed out to explore further.
The next place we found was a bar called Barbuzzo, which was a bit of a dark venue had an inviting feel to it, lively, with a great looking bar and well set tables. The bartender was excellent and the specials menu was terrific too. Patrick went for a pilsner, Molly a wine and I the sangria, all of which were fantastic. A pizza that was shared received top marks as well and the service was great. Highly recommended and we all said we would go back there.
Our final stop for the evening was the dog bar with pictures of puppies on the walls. The place was filled with an older crowd this time and we sat in our own booth discussing life while Patrick sipped yet another beer, Molly a wine, and I some Jacob’s Creek. Good to drink the taste of home.
Thoroughly tired from our night out we all walked back to Penn together before heading to our respective rooms and dropping to the floor.
Saturday – Day 78
October 16, 2012
Today can be described very simply. Sleep. I need it fairly badly by this point and sleep I did. After waking up late at around 11AM I read the autobiography of the previous conductor of PGC, Bruce Montgomery’s “Brother’s Sing On” and then headed to Hillel for lunch.
There I met Aviva’s parents and had a lovely conversation with her father over lunch before returning to my room to sleep for the rest of the afternoon.
After Shabbat came out I quickly set to work preparing for my midterm, an interview, and lots of other assorted homework.
At 10PM I decided I had worked hard enough and went upstairs to the Rodin Rooftop Lounge to watch The Avengers with about one hundred others from the college house!
As soon as the movie finished I headed back to my bed and promptly fell asleep.