Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 211/212
March 5, 2013
Things are revving up to a dangerous level here. Too many projects due, too little time. Physics this morning was difficult as I was low on sleep but the majority of the day was spent on project work. Networking was becoming quite an issue. Rehearsal was a welcome break from work, and as previously stated, I’m really enjoying it. Tonight I also grabbed coffee with a non-Penn friend who takes dancing lessons off campus and had a wonderful time. The music selection committee for PGC met and I suggest a few of my favourite choral, barbershop and more modern pieces for consideration. hopefully at least Bogoroditse Devo will make it through.
Wednesday was nuts. I skipped all my classes to code through the day straight. Networking still wasn’t coming along at nearly the necessary pace. The group had been quite problematic and unfortunately we weren’t coming together as a whole fast enough by any measure. Some members contributed far more while others close to nothing. A complete disaster. Thus the day from 11AM to 5AM the following morning was spent desperately trying to salvage what marks we could. Pretty exhausted and barely finished with the minimum for the project, we submitted late and I, exhausted, walked home and fell asleep almost immediately for the brief few hours I would get.
Thursday/Friday – Day 184/185
February 3, 2013
Thursday I found myself with more time than expected and even had an interesting and productive physics lecture in the morning that delved into the workings behind MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). The afternoon saw more errands (they never seem to end) before a lovely dinner at Hillel, a meeting with the dining philosophers and, a few more ‘shop hours’ building the Glee Club set.
Friday was a little nightmarish. I woke up late after my usual night of intense work and went straight to grading homework for the computer science class. The problems proved more subtle than initially assumed and as a result took us a great many hours. In face as a team of 14 TAs we were grading for more than 4 hours. This left me quite tired after the subsequent TA training and faculty meeting. Shabbat dinner was nice as the company was excellent (Ariella, Aviva, Michal to name a few) and I had a proud moment of remembering a ‘mishna’ that detailed the ‘halacha’ when it came time to decide if we could ‘bench’ separately or not (ignore the sentence if you missed those words). I hung around with the jew-crew for a few hours, then sleep. Peaceful sleep.
Friday/Shabbat – Day 159/160
January 7, 2013
Friday and Shabbat were unfortunately more of the same. Singing and dancing without end. As a result this post is going to be kept very short. Unfortunately my Shabbat was mostly without the Shabbat and while everyone else was going out to eat their meals I was eating a supply of fruit and pita that I had purchased beforehand. Suboptimal.
The above photo portrays a fun moment of me being dragged around the rehearsal space, a definite highlight.
After rehearsal on Shabbat everyone walked to Nord’s (our director’s) home for snack and a little time to relax. Amongst the activities was a screening of the ‘newman’ scavenger hunt video which revealed just how poor our singing was that day. Thankfully the oldmen cut us a little slack.
Back we walked through the dangerous neighbourhoods of northwest Philly and late that night I finally made it back to Hamilton Court, my new residence!