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.
Tuesday – Day 67
October 4, 2012
The second day of sukkot I enjoyed far less than the first. Tuesday’s I have electrodynamics, the course that I struggle to catch up in. As a result I decided to attend the lecture and listen in. The lecture was just as difficult as always compounded by the fact that I wasn’t writing any notes! To top it all off, the midterm was announced… one week away. I was suddenly inspired to ‘get my study on’. Other than that lunch in the sukkah was lovely, saw a few people I haven’t in a while, then studied in my room till havdalah.
After sukkot, I worked hard to prepare for my midterm, before PGC rehearsal at 9PM. The rehearsal from 9-11 was pretty much newmen only and as a result worked well for us. I finally feel confident with a good few of the songs and found which ones require more focus from me. The 11-12 rehearsal was not quite so productive. In fact, a number of the oldmen commented that it was their least productive ever. However, a highlight from it was being told who my mentor was. JHo, Jonthan Ho, an awesome tenor, agreed to mentor me for my time at Penn and presented me with a book on the history of the Glee Club and a few of their albums on CD. He, much like I, has a love of barbershop harmony, and is an all round excellent (and musical) guy.
Friday/Shabbat – Day 58/59
September 25, 2012
Friday morning algorithms was relatively standard, nothing exciting there, recursion relations. However, following that I had a good number of meetings to attend.
My first stop was the office of ‘Liberal Professional Studies’ to investigate further study at Penn at some point in the future where, the bottom line seemed to be, well, all about the bottom line. At five thousand dollars a course unit, study at Penn does not come cheap! Following that it was off to ‘International Student Services’ to investigate visa options and to look into required course loads, nothing exciting there.
Early afternoon was my singing lesson with Brian Carter, and while his approach was far different from my past experiences with singing teachers, it was well worthwhile and really opened my eyes to some new things. I am looking forward to a productive semester with him.
My afternoon however was much more exciting as I packed my bags, a little kosher food and headed to the train station with the PGC for a weekend retreat. After an hour an a half on the Amtrak (US regional train system) to Doylestown, we placed our bags in the room and chilled for a while before coming together as a group later in the evening for an ice-cream dessert.
After dessert, there were a few speeches by the board members and then a few games, notably among them, ‘Never Have I Ever’ (sans-alcohol) that was played for a good few hours in order to help the newmen and oldmen integrate.
Shabbat morning there wasn’t nearly enough of a sleep-in as we were up at eight o’clock for breakfast followed by team building activities. For some of you at home these will all be incredibly familiar, but they involved ‘trust-falls’, standing up in pairs back-to-back, sitting on each others laps in a circle and marching etc.. All up, the activities ran for around five hours before we settled in for lunch.
After lunch it was time for the ‘newman’ talent show, in which every newman was obligated to display a talent of theirs (non-singing), from stand-up comedy, to poetry or even card tricks, the show had it all. My talent that I presented was in fact my decent aussie accent, coupled with a translation of Waltzing Matilda, much to the bemusement of the crowd.
The late afternoon was reserved for the PGC to do homework, which for me meant reading a little of my textbooks and explaining physics and maths to Joseph, one of the other newmen.
After Shabbat came out, a bonfire was raised a little into the woods and with a ‘smore kit’ under my arm, I headed out there. For those of you who have never come across them, a smore is a toasted marshmallow, with chocolate melted underneath, sandwiched by two Graham crackers. I think they’re my favorite US food right now. Around the campfire, I ate multiple smores and listened and tried to join in with the glee club as they sang some of their repetoire.
We moved onto Disney songs, and a few other arrangements that I knew from prior experiences, including ‘For the Longest Time’ in which I was given the privilege of the solo.
After a good while of this we quietened down for a bit and Erik Nordgren , our director arranged for us to go around in the circle and discuss where we imagined ourselves in ten years time. This was a wonderful opportunity to contemplate a little, and was one of the times I felt most comfortable and tranquil since leaving home.
The peace couldn’t last for very long however, as we soon started ‘Viva La Company’, a song/game wherein the company sings a chorus after which a member of the company improvises a two-line comedic verse making reference to in jokes. This game was played by us for approximate two hours and resulted in much mirth, though by the time it ended at 2AM I was well ready for sleep.