Sunday – Day 79
October 17, 2012
Until such time as I am in better health, I am going to be spending a little less time writing the blog and a little more time sleeping.
Sunday was another mad day of working and rehearsing, the main issue being the physics problem set due on Tuesday. Along side that, I had prep for an interview on Tuesday night and an Operating Systems midterm that I felt I had little to no time to study for.
On top of all this, today’s rehearsal for Legally Blonde was scheduled from 1:30 to 6:00 with a PGC and Penn Dance collaborative rehearsal set from 6:00 to 9:00. As you can imagine, by the end of this I was quite drained and didn’t quite have the energy to keep going.
I was so stressed out that I even let myself slip a little and played forty-five minutes of a game called ‘Supreme Commander’ that I used to play in Australia with my friends. Immediately after that I switched off the lights, set my alarm, and fell fast asleep.
Thursday – Day 76
October 12, 2012
Thursday (my birthday) didn’t start to well as I woke up feeling awful and exhausted thanks to the late night of coding. Physics, expectedly, didn’t improve my mood. Lunch at Hillel was no better and very few of my friends were in today. Operating systems in the afternoon was marginally better and I slept through most of it, waking only to answer questions from the lecturer. Towards the end of the lecture my phone buzzed and I raced outside seeing the +972 country code and was very grateful to speak to my brother Adi for a few minutes.
Following that Jonathan and I went to office hours to try and fix up some of the bugs in our code. After a little help, I was soon on my way again, this time for a walk by myself for a little soothing me time. I walked all the way across the Schuylkill River and into center city. This was the beautiful view of the Philly Skyline from South Bridge.
After that I just wandered through suburbia for a bit just enjoying myself, before popping into a liquor store to buy a mini whiskey bottle (Jack Daniels) and a nice bottle of Australian wine. I just kept walking and walking till I came across a nice little cafe and bought a fresh sandwich on whole wheat. However, I still have to say, Americans have no idea how to do food. Nothing is as fresh or as crisp as it should be, and everything is slathered in sauces with all sorts of extras no one needs.
Returning in time for dinner at Hillel, which was not spectacular either, I met up with Michal and Arianna who took me to Ben and Jerry’s after dinner for a free scoop of birthday ice-cream!
Back to my room again for a few hours, just working hard at it, before at 10PM I decided to call in Rigel, my neighbor and Anil, for a celebratory glass of whisky. We toasted to health and a successful semester and chatted for a few minutes.
I also received an email inviting me to a party for the cast of Legally Blonde and went there for a good two hours, having a smashing time and was again, toasted, by the cast, and sung a few songs kareoke.
At 1AM I returned to my room and still needed to work with Jonathan! Up for another while working before finally, at three, I was able to get to sleep.
Wednesday – Day 68
October 5, 2012
It’s rather exciting to be almost caught up on the blog. It means I can almost remember things that have happened. One of the most amazing things about studying abroad is the sheer number of experiences that get packed into such a limited period of time!
For example today was my first ever ‘midterm’; in algorithms. I knew the material relatively solidly going in however as soon as the test started I panicked a bit and stress overcame me. As a result I don’t think I did too well, thankfully all my subjects here transfer back as pass fail, even though I am assigned grades by Penn.
I wasted much of the rest of the day, not caring too much, as I was too put off by the exam.
The evening was a PGC rehearsal combined with our band, and involved us attempting to dance and sing both at the same time. Whilst combined, it was something of a failure, the individual elements worked well and I’m sure that with practice, we’ll improve greatly.
After rehearsal I had a quick dinner at Hillel in the Sukkah, followed by a walk to the Penn Arts Shop. Shop in this case being shorthand for workshop, where all the performing arts groups at Penn construct their sets, build their props and, design their costumes. I was quickly set to work by Sarah Tomberlin, the stage manager for Legally Blonde, scraping paint off chairs that had been painted on, layer over layer, for years. The paint was thick and hard to remove, and the scraper blunt and ineffective. I was also working by myself, in my own corner of the room. Another dud job, but one that had to be done. About one hour in it hit 9PM when I knew the presidential debate was going to be started, and I and a lovely but highly partisan ‘democrat’ girl petitioned for the laptop playing the music to be switched to a live stream of the debate. After around fifteen minutes of fumbling around the stream came on and we set to analyzing the debate, or in her case ripping Romney to shreds. I neglected to mention to her that though I didn’t necessarily support him, I thought Romney had better presented himself. Finally, after a second hour of scraping, this time with her, I finally set back off to Rodin where I worked for a few hours and then headed off to sleep.