Shabbat/Sunday/Sukkot – Day 64/65/66
October 3, 2012
I’ll keep this post brief in an attempt to try and catch back up to date! The major event in these few days was the Newman shopping trip which essentially involved a full day’s worth of shopping. Locations visited included Macy’s, the Salvos, the ‘Coat Depot’, Florsheims and Reading Terminal Market.
My purchases were as follows:
Two pairs of dress shoes (one black, one brown, same style) – $140
One black suit – $170
One blue suit jacket – $40
Thee shirts – $60
One tie – $4
One reversible belt – $20
This took a good full day and plenty of walking about!
Late Sunday afternoon was a rehearsal of my big scene in Legally Blonde, set in Harvard Law School, where my character is an admissions counselor deigning to refuse entry to Elle Woods, the protagonist. Thankfully Anil had helped me learn my lines so all was well in that department.
Other than that, of note is the large number of sukkot that have sprung up around campus as part of a sukkah-thon in which students from Penn vote on their favorite sukkah and the winners are presented with some sort of prize.
Shul on sukkot was nice, nothing special of mention there, meals fine too. However, the best thing about being a Penn on sukkot was that many of the Jews weren’t there which meant I had a little time to get to know some of the others a bit better.
Rehearsals never seem to end for me! Monday night, as well as being Sukkot, was a two hour PGC rehearsal, followed by a two hour University Choral Society rehearsal. The policy for the most part being that missing for Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur is all cool, with other festivals less so.
Tomorrow hopefully I’ll post some photos of the sukkot, if it stops raining!
Thursday/Friday – Day 6
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!
Tuesday – Day 61
September 28, 2012
Today was a mad rush! Erev Yom Kippur (the evening before) and I had still so much left to do, plenty to arrange and even more to eat. By this point I was feeling rather ill, with little voice left, and was severely sleep deprived due to the combination of retreat and hours of work.
Thus, I dragged myself through the day, through the various meetings I needed to before heading to Hillel for Seudah (feast) with Michael Altit, a Jewish friend from Sydney. (For those Hineni-ites following, he is best friends with Dee Smith’s sister). After that it was up to my room to prepare punctuated by a brief trip to the fourth floor to borrow a shirt from another Jewish guy below.
Michael and I walked along Locust Walk together at around 6:00 for the minyan at 6:15 and as we did so, many other Jews around us walked too; all to Houston Hall where the orthodox service was being held. Kol Nidrei was packed. I estimate around four hundred student, alums and family members attended the service and as a result there was a strong musical feeling to the service with everyone singing with great fervor. A few Israeli’s left when Ma’ariv started but otherwise it was still packed right through.
After shule I chatted for a while to Aviva Koloski, a new friend from the Hillel and, subsequently realized I need to go to PGC rehearsal. Though it may not have been a particularly traditional thing to do on a Yom Kippur, I figured acapella singing is one of the few things that are actually permitted on the day and so excepted myself to leave. However, this turned out not to be so wise as rehearsal ran for five hours, and with a sore throat, no food, no drink and no water, I felt like I was about to perish by the end of the musical marathon.
I trudged back up to my room, lay my head down on my pillow and, instantly fell asleep.