The Globetrotting Geek

Thursday/Friday – Day 6

October 3, 2012

These two days marked the low point of my health on the trip so far. With a racking cough and rain outside to complement, I painfully worked my way through these two days.  Highlights included a mixer with Penn Dance at the Glouse (Glee Club House). The Glouse is the residence of a few senior members of the Glee Club who have devoted it to worshiping the history of the club and its traditions. The Annenberg Center for Performing Arts, where all students groups perform their shows has a policy that each group gets one full performance and one shared performance free of charge in the space, due to demand and costs, per year. Thus, traditionally the Glee Club shares its fall show with Penn Dance, a group that is what it sounds to be. Aside from shared rehearsals, there are a limited number of social events that take place in order to try to integrate the two different student groups. This one was a house party like any other, only Glee Club members were banned from singing in the fear that we might intimidate the girls. Forrest, one of the other Newmen consumed his fair share of drinks that evening and was trying to convince me to adventure and ‘find the Penn Dance girls’ who at that point had left. I responded with ‘run Forrest, run’ at which point he bolted out the front door.

Other than that, college has settled into something of a routine, with my twenty hours of rehearsal and more of study a week, adding up to give me very little free time!

Monday – Day 60

September 27, 2012

Today was a bit of a challenge in that I was trying to get all my work done well in advance prior to Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), the most significant Jewish festival of the year. Aside from my regular class hours, I was frantically trying to complete a few assignments, in particular the usual difficult physics problem sets, which can take me over eight hours to complete a piece.

The main standout from the day was a catch-up lab session with Kostas Daniilidis, a very sweet lecturer and researcher, taking my algorithms class. The private session with him was quite helpful and out of all my professors, he seemed most able to communicate the material in small group sizes.

The evening was a double rehearsal! First up Glee Club with a usual two hour rehearsal, then a quick dinner at the Hillel, followed by two hours of University Choral Society. By this point in time my voice was getting pretty sore…

Switzerland – Day One

July 19, 2012

Flying Etihad ended up being quite lovely! Great staff and a huge range of entertainment options. As we drew close to landing, I took in the beautiful sight of the alps and Lake Geneva. I was stunned at how physically beautiful the landscape was!

Landing in Geneva was a simple process with passport control taking no more than a few seconds. Their visa on arrival process is very liberal.

On exiting passport control I shaved in the airport and cleaned up a bit, feeling very yucky after flying for so long and, then proceeded to baggage collection.

At this point I started to get a bit disoriented and after collecting my baggage, had a rather long appointment in the ticket office to convert some money, buy a ticket from Geneva to Zurich and, attempt to purchase a 20CHF prepaid SIM card.

Eventually I got to the train and boarded, trying to sort out all my paperwork. I spent a good ten minutes trying to replace the SIM card in my phone which wouldn’t come out and finally when it did so, my phone wouldn’t connect to any network! I needed to call my dear friend Eva to let her when to come pick me up from Zurich HB, the central station where I was heading. In desparation I asked a woman and her daughter in the next row ‘parlez-vous anglaise?’ to which the answer was a resounding no. It was at this point that I became very grateful for high school french and proceeded over the next minute to attempt phrasing my request, which I did so in very broken french.

Over the next then minutes we attempted to call Eva, who’s number I had apparently taken down incorrectly. Finally they realized I was using the wrong dialling code and I got through to her and I sighed in relief.

I sat back down in my seat and ate a piece of dairy milk. Wanting to give my thanks to the two, I offered them some and ended up getting caught up in an hour and a half long conversation during which my french improved immensely.

Two hours later, after much gazing out the window at the countryside, I arrived into Eva’s warm embrace. We then spent the afternoon in Kusnacht, her town, walking along the edges of Lake Zurich. Amazingly I managed to avoid the bulk of jet lag and slept soundly in a comfortable bed at her place surrounded by swiss chocolate.