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.