Friday – Day 77
October 15, 2012
The dreaded lurgy hath returned! I’m currently quite sick and so don’t have the same amount of energy to put into blogging that I normally do. Lest to say, Friday was tiring. Evidently having a drink or two, working for a few hours and then sleeping for two more isn’t a wise strategy for good health. I barely survived Friday’s classes and then rehearsal from four to six nearly killed me.
Following that it was a quick performance with the PGC for International Ivy League students before swallowing a quick Shabbat dinner and going to meet Jonathan who was still struggling with the project. Due to Shabbat I couldn’t really code anything and so I helped him to find bugs in our code that was due at 10PM. Needless to say it was a bit of a failure and we ended up submitting a half baked project. Fingers crosses we still do ok.
After that we and a few other students went up to my apartment to drink a little of the Australian wine I had bought for my birthday and then after a glass each, all returned to get some sleep.
Wednesday – Day 75
October 12, 2012
My midterm was a disaster. Probably a combination of not understanding one of the questions correctly combined with having no idea what-so-ever on how to do another of them. At least now I know where I’m very weak. Electromagnetism is hard.
My algorithms class was nothing exciting, same for Ruby. Though I feel I’m slipping behind in that one simply because I have no time to study for it amongst everything else. Penn was recently ranked the worlds second most stressful institution and I’m certainly feeling it now.
There was the usual five to seven PGC rehearsal and I went for a lovely interview with Andrew, the baritone section leader, after, before getting back on to work on the operating systems project with Jonothan. Far too many hours had been spent on it with far too little progress and the due date was fast creeping up on us. Due to his illness we weren’t able to progress as quickly as we would’ve liked with me taking the brunt of the work for the first two weeks of the assignment period.
This heavy assignment work meant that doing anything for my birthday around that time was pretty much out of the question and the clock passed midnight with me hardly noticing. Thankfully a bit later Sarah notified me that I was in fact twenty one, else I might not have noticed. Then she presented me with the best possible birthday present, a video of many of the people I love and am closest to from around the world, recorded on YouTube each sending me a personal message. Another highlight was skyping with another close friend from Melbourne who along with a friend had sent me a few delightful presents. Quickly unwrapped to much joy were:
A Disney Song Book
a Binary Tie
and a fantastic tshirt!
These two events conspired to turn an otherwise unhappy evening into something rather nice.
Though, I was still up till far to late at night and had an early wakeup the next day.
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.