Friday/Shabbat – Day 270/271
May 3, 2013
Today was nothing special, just lots of prepping for 121 grading. A few more miscellaneous tasks and some physics study. In the evening, I had a meal at Hillel with many close to me, followed by a brief visit to the Glouse to say hi. One notable feature of the meal was the presence of Rivka Holzer, who at first seemed a little quiet but. However this actually spirited friend of Ariella’s managed to leave quite an impression by the end of the weekend .
Shabbat was lovely, it was a goodbye OCP lunch for me hosted by a few friends, though there were so many others who I wish were invited, my friends unfortunately had limited table space and limited food. I would have to arrange more meals with the others after.The meal was one of the best moments I’ve had at Penn, with so many people I appreciated present.
The evening was spent at The Penn Pipers’ concert. The Penn Pipers are a subset of the Penn Glee Club and are a much tighter (musically) group. They perform barbershop, do-wop and the occasional modern acapella piece. I genuinely enjoyed their concert, their sound was superb and their performance lively.
Following that, I ate a speedy dinner, and then got dressed for “Kegfault”, the bi-annual CIS house party. As much as it isn’t particularly my scene, I was drawn my the company, a whole lot of people I knew, all together having a (hopefully good time). Much to my surprise, Rivka dragged Ariella and Louis along. Something I would not have expected given my prejudice of her as a typical religious Jewish girl (sorry Rivka). Turns out, she was a qualified bartender and was soon mixing drinks for us. Over the weekend, my view of her and changed quite dramatically and I only wish I was able to spend more time with her to kindle a stronger friendship.
Hell Week, Part 2 – Thursday, Friday, Shabbat
February 20, 2013
Thursday was the most singing I’ve ever done in a single day. At 8AM I woke up as the singing was to begin at 8:45 for Valentines Day. I was scheduled from 8:45 to 4PM on Singing Valentines, whereby quartets comprised of PGC members would deliver Valentine’s Day messages in song, during class, to those whose loved one’s had donated a given sum to habitat for humanity. In four separate quartets, I raced from building to building, from class to class, singing my heart out for all “My Honey”ies, “My Valentine”s, “My Little Margie”s and to members of faculty, staff, and students. Highlights were as follows: singing at Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks and Aunty Anne’s Pretzel’s and PGC members receiving free food from them. Singing for the elderly head of the Chemistry Department (Madeline Joillet) and of course singing for “her majesty” Amy Gutmann, President of The University of Pennsylvania. Embarassingly enough, a quote of me calling her, “her majesty” even made the Daily Pennsylvanian. I can only hope she didn’t read it.
Following all the normal shifts, I was then on a shift for Phone Valentine’s for those to whom we were unable to deliver in person. These included two good friends back home. Phone shift went all the way till 5:30 a which point I raced home, changed, ate a little something and then headed off to full rehearsal at the Zellerbach Auditiorium.
Rehearsal again ran well past midnight, and left me more than half dead. I think I’m truly beginning to understand the meaning of incorporeal.
Friday I thankfully had no classes, but to make up for the lack of things for me to do, of course, I had another walkshift at 10AM. I managed to quickly run out of Penn Glee Club flyers and so, while waiting for my shift to end, I decided to help out the Pan Asian Dance Troupe in advertising their show, “Revenge”. There I met a sweet girl by the name of Donna, who was somewhat bemused with my marketing techniques.
The afternoon was spent grading homework for CIS121 that I had thus far neglected, and I only just managed in time for our staff meeting. After the staff meeting, I had only just enough time for Kabbalat Shabbat, before I was off to the theatre for our very first performance!
It was well received, much the same with the matinee performance. However, after the two, I was thoroughly exhausted!
In the afternoon, there was the Glee Club Graduate Club reception, where we sung a few songs from our standard repetoire, however, unfortunately I was fairly out of practice with a number of the pieces.
Our final performance Motzei Shabbat, was filled with members from the OCP (Orthodox Jewish Community at Penn) and I felt very well supported. A few tears came to my eyes as I was asked to speak along with the seniors, on what it felt like to be partaking in my final show.
Following the end of the show, we had ‘strike’, taking apart the set and emptying the theatre. This took us till around 1AM at which point the cast party began. Mark Glassman and Erik Nordgren, an old alum and our conductor respectively were both present and helped add to the environment. Mark’s ‘roast’ was particularly entertaining, and though I wasn’t savaged quite enough, it was still hugely enjoyable. Finally at around 3AM, hell week came to a close and my eyes were laid to rest.
Wednesday/Thursday – Day 53/54
September 16, 2012
Wednesday’s significance was again to be found in the evening activities.
First up was the “whine and cheese” event and first rehearsal of the Penn Glee Club. This event featured newmen, oldmen and alumni, gathering together for snacks, socialization and, to complain about the drinking age. In the years prior to the subsuming of the Glee Club under the official university banner, alumni would bring wine to drink with the newmen. However, sometimes traditions must change and this was one that fell to the wayside.
After a good while of mingling, we sat down with newmen at the front, oldmen at the back, and listened to a few speeches about the club. The most significant of them being the talk from the president and past president of the Penn Glee Alumni Club. He talked about the how singing binds us together and how we’ll learn so much more than just performance during our time as members. Of how the friendships made never fade and of the tap-dancing to come!
We were then handed the sheet music to five of Glee Club’s most important songs but, before we could get started we needed to warm up vocally. Our director Erik who had been a member of Glee Club for thirty-two years, asked us all without humming, without talking or any vocalizing, to sing a concert pitch A on the count of three. Amazingly, we did it near perfectly, with very little note fishing. A few standard warm up exercises followed.
Following that, we sung through all the pieces, trying to sight read. Once the newmen were even asked to sing it by themselves! The rehearsal ended what seemed to quickly and I was sad for it to end thus begrudgingly I tramped back up to my room.
I returned to my room to work for a while only to later receive an SMS: “I hope you’re coming to the 9:30 dance call! – Sarah”. By the time I received this message it was already 9:28 and I raced down to Platt again without evening changing into dance clothes.
The dance call was contained a very faced paced routine that we were to learn on the spot, and unfortunately for me, my dancing has never been good and without the practice from recent performances, I was terrible. I felt quite embarrassed at my terrible execution or non-execution as it was of the routine and knew at that point that I was not going to be receiving a large role in the musical. Luckily, with all the time commitments I already had, I wasn’t desperate for one anyhow.
Thursday had two events worthy of being written about. The first was the Penn Engineering Careers Fair that I embraced with gusto. I met with representatives from many of the worlds largest technology and engineering firms (Google, Facebook, Hulu etc) but was most impressed by a start up called Twilio that handles some of the backend work needed to support Whatsapp and other internet-telephony applications.
The second event that I will cover in short was my bus ride to Toronto. After a stop by the Hillel for some smores, I left campus at about 7PM, not realizing how close I would be cutting it to get to my 7:30PM bus on time. I made it by catching a cab and soon began my twelve hour trip to Toronto, ON. First transfer was New York City at 9:30 where I went for a bit of a walk. Down past Penn Station, past the Port Authority to grab a bagel and revisit the O Neil theater, my old haunt from waiting for the book of Mormon. I briskly returned to get caught in the maze of the Port Authority Terminal and again, only just made my bus.
That bus ride was long and uncomfortable, with the seat next to me taken up by a lovely Chinese student from NYU. A 4AM stop off at Dunkin’ Donuts woke me up from a half hour nap, and the visit at 6AM to Border Control didn’t help. Finally at nine-thirty I arrived at Toronto and was most glad to see Steven Silverberg, Sarah’s dad, waiting for me.
Dunkin stop at 4AM