Thursday/Friday/Shabbat – Day 69/Day 70/Day 71
October 7, 2012
Thursday was a day of hard work, particularly in terms of learning sheet music. With performances all weekend and my cough only starting to go away, today I kept my nose down.
However, I did take the liberty of visiting a number of the sukkot constructed on campus to take photos and show the vibrancy of Jewish life on campus.
This Sukkah, the ‘Secret Sukkah’ was concealed in a less prominent location and represented the makeshift sukkot constructed during the holocaust that were hidden and disguised to prevent nazi detection.
This sukkah was constructed by J-Bagel, the Jewish lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning group on campus!
Also, because I get so excited by them, here’s a squirrel:
Squirrel?
In typical US fashion, even elements from completely foreign cultures must be Americanized at some point and testament to this is the Homeland Sukkah.
UPenn Engineering, in living up to their nerd reputation constructed an appropriately themed sukkah, the Sukkah Enterprise, themed after Star Trek.
The two major campus organizations for Jewish life were also represented, with the very large Hillel Sukkah (three of them) and a single smaller Chabad sukkah.
Here’s a Sukkah I didn’t quite understand….
Finally, one of the most popular of all the Sukkot was the T-Shirt sukkah of which many people took photos!
As you can see, the weather in Philly is changing pretty rapidly. Temperatures are dropping and the rain is coming in.
Friday however was an exception. Twenty-seven degrees outside and I was all dressed up in my suit. Today was quite possibly the biggest performance of my life. The Penn Glee Club had a gig scheduled for CCTV – Chinese Central Television, the government owned station. It was estimated that over one hundred million people would eventually see this performance and as a result I was somewhat nervous, this being my debut gig too! Fortunately, this morning I was feeling well recovered and was only left with a slight trace of the virus I’d had for the last week or so.
We got on stage and the performance went very well except for my accidental half second solo during “I can see clearly”. Luckily I don’t think anyone noticed. After the performance I rushed off, thirty minutes late, to my algorithms class. I tried to enter quietly however the professor stopped the class to comment on my suit, remarking that he was pleased he wasn’t the only one dressed up.
Following that it was off to receive two vaccinations to complete my immunization compliance. I was due for MMR dose 2 and meningitis. One of the vaccinations, I can’t remember which, burned a fair amount and I felt a little dizzy for a while after, followed closely by a short bout of nausea.
Lunch was a PGC interview with Theresa, one of the band members for yet another PGC interview! From there I went to my singing lesson that again provided some great new perspective and the late afternoon saw me catching coffee with Robbie Berg, co-member of the Penn Singers and head of the Reform Jewish Community at Penn. After coffee we left together for rehearsal and as soon as that ended I raced off to Hillel for shul!
Starting Friday night was the UPenn parents weekend in which all the parents of student were to stay on or near campus in order to visit and experience a taste of life at Penn. Unfortunately for me, my parents could not make it and so I, along with all the other orphans, were asked to wait a few extra hours before being invited for dinner at Hillel, as the space was already taken up by the families.
Deciding to ditch Hillel, I followed Aviva Kolosky and her boyfriend to Chabad, where the graduate students were having their Friday night meal. The atmosphere was nice and the food quite good, catered by the Rabbi’s wife, who was in fact Australian and used to live just around the corner from me back home.
At around eleven I walked back with Michal (Aviva’s roomate), Aviva and her boyfriend and went into their apartment to chill for a little while. I stayed far later than I expected and by the time I made it back upstairs to my own room I was exhausted and feeling quite sick and dizzy.
Waking up on Saturday morning I felt like death; nauseous, exhausted and soon found I had something of a temperature. I guess the shots combined with my prior illness had overwhelmed my system a little. I dragged myself to the PGC breakfast where grudgingly I performed a few more songs with the group and as fast as possible retreat back to bed where I remained fast asleep till around six pm. After Shabbat came out I worked with Jonothan Leung, a hall-mate, on our operating systems project and then caught a thankfully, earlier night.
Luzern – Day 3
July 22, 2012
As you can see below, the afternoon started with a visit to Sprungli Zurich to pick up a few choice items (will be posted later). After that it was time to drive for a good forty-five minutes!
Following that it was off to visit a beautiful cathedral/monastery of the reformed church, where I learnt about the reformation under the three different leaders; Calvin, Luther and Zwingli. I also drank some of the holy water and am feeling much enlightened. As we came out of the monastery, it started to rain and a couple taking their wedding photo’s was unamused (see photo).
Off we went again, driving another forty-five minutes to the beautiful city of Luzern (Lucerne) where my favorite music artist, Regina Spektor, was playing for the Blue Balls music festival. Much to my dismay, her only performance was on Friday night and thus I had to give it a miss!
A major tourist attraction of Luzern is the chapel bridge (pictured below with the flowers) and the old city walls and towers. Both of these were visited promptly, before settling for a little lunch. Of note in the city is the beautiful tolling of the bells.
Shabbat comes in really late in Switzerland, as the sky barely darkens in summer till well past 7PM. Thus with plenty of time, Eva’s parent’s took us by surprise and brought us to the bar at the top of Prime Tower Zurich, the tallest building in the city. I should mention too that in Switzerland I drank an awful lot of alcohol compared to usual, as it seemed to be drunk with every meal.
Dinner was delicious raclette, a swiss specialty of cheese melted over various vegetables at the table! Served, as per usual with a stout glass of wine. Again, I needed a relatively early night.
