Monday/Tuesday – Day 56/57
September 21, 2012
Monday was a fairly standard ‘Yom-Tov’ (festival, literally ‘good day’). The morning was spent in service in Sarah’s family shule (synagogue) and I was privileged enough to be given a big honor in the service, I was called to the Torah first out of everyone!
Lunch was again, quieter, with just me, a friend of Zack’s, and the rest of the family. However, this was all in preparation for another huge dinner! That night Robin was hosting Steven’s side of the family, very different characters from hers. Of note was Uncle Terry (Trevor? I’m not sure the name is correct.) who was unmarried and earning well, spending his gains on travelling around the world. He told me of his trips around Eastern Europe and even mentioned his upcoming travels to Iran!
Though dinner went late, Sarah and I stayed up again as we knew that we wouldn’t be seeing too much of each other however, eventually we needed to retire.
The next morning was much the same as the previous, just this time I had become more accustomed to the practices and musical tunes of Sarah’s synagogue, which improved the experience.
Finally we had a quiet meal! Just me and the family eating some leftovers; delicious! The afternoon Sarah and I just chilled, knowing we didn’t have too long left. Soon it was time to pack my bags, take a photo of Sarah and I, then back to thus bus station.
Friday/Shabbat/Sunday – Day 54/55/56
September 19, 2012
After arriving in on Friday I was forced to begin a mad rush to complete all of my work that was due before my arrival back at Penn. So out of my bag I grabbed my notes, grabbed my laptop and… rifling through my bag I couldn’t find my charger! This was particularly worrisome as my laptop contained all the most recent source code from my programming assignments (they were yet to be uploaded to the cloud).
This necessitated a trip to Best Buy to purchase a charger so that I could complete my urgent work. This turned out not to be a huge issue a Robin, Sarah’s mother, was going to Costco, opposite the tech store, to shop for Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year). I purchased the cheapest universal laptop charger in the store, checking for plug and power compatibility beforehand and returned with Robin back home to Sarah’s. Unfortunately when I plugged in the charger, my laptop still refused to boot! Oy Gevalt!
By this time it was well past midday and thus there was a mandatory stop for lunch before trying to figure out my next move. Luckily, Robin had forgotten to buy meat, so on our way back to Costco I took the non-functional charger with me and went to return it and buy a new HP branded one. However, despite my best efforts, I had left a piece of the packaging back home and thus was required to work out yet another seventy dollars in order to get myself back up and running. A return visit to Best Buy with the extra piece was then put on my ‘to-do’ list.
At that point, Sarah and her brother Zack, returned home from college and after a brief spell chatting, Sarah and I headed to the living room to put in some hours working before Shabbat.
Shabbat dinner was a peaceful family affair and soon after I was fast asleep. The sleep in fact continued till around midday the next, and meant that I woke up just in time for lunch. After that, it was time for a good hour and half walk around the area to get myself acquainted and to enjoy the pleasant weather. A shluf (sleep) in the afternoon rounded off the day. When Shabbat came out Sarah and I drove to see ‘Premium Rush’, a decent film with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, about bicycle messengers in NYC and we both enjoyed it, though it was nothing to rave about. Though I did think Joseph looked an awful lot like the properties manager from the PGC (Penn Glee Club) a lovely well dressed guy by the name of Devin. Returning home, Sarah and I talked till the early hours of the morning, while busily trying to get a little work done. Finally at about 2AM we called it in and headed to sleep.
Sunday was another trip to Best Buy to return the charge. After that, a good hour on the piano to relax a little and then again, a mad rush to try and complete all my work. Unfortunately I didn’t manage it all on time and now needed to talk to professors to try and obtain limited extensions to hand in my work Wednesday on my return to the states.
Rosh Hashana first night dinner was with Sarah’s Mother’s family. I was slightly overwhelming being introduced to so many new people at once, however, the food was delicious and, I had a great time entertaining and being entertained by her younger cousins. To them I exposed the fact that Sarah has an encyclopaedic geographic knowledge that includes every country in the world and their capitals. I also introduced to them a scoring system by which you could earn a point for finding a capital Sarah didn’t know. The sum of all our points by the end of the evening was a measly one. Trinidad and Tobago she had forgotten.
After a delicious dessert, it was time to go, however Sarah’s little cousin wasn’t too happy over the fact and made me promise to come back for Shabbat dinner another time. An evening well spent.
Wednesday/Thursday – Day 53/54
September 16, 2012
Wednesday’s significance was again to be found in the evening activities.
First up was the “whine and cheese” event and first rehearsal of the Penn Glee Club. This event featured newmen, oldmen and alumni, gathering together for snacks, socialization and, to complain about the drinking age. In the years prior to the subsuming of the Glee Club under the official university banner, alumni would bring wine to drink with the newmen. However, sometimes traditions must change and this was one that fell to the wayside.
After a good while of mingling, we sat down with newmen at the front, oldmen at the back, and listened to a few speeches about the club. The most significant of them being the talk from the president and past president of the Penn Glee Alumni Club. He talked about the how singing binds us together and how we’ll learn so much more than just performance during our time as members. Of how the friendships made never fade and of the tap-dancing to come!
We were then handed the sheet music to five of Glee Club’s most important songs but, before we could get started we needed to warm up vocally. Our director Erik who had been a member of Glee Club for thirty-two years, asked us all without humming, without talking or any vocalizing, to sing a concert pitch A on the count of three. Amazingly, we did it near perfectly, with very little note fishing. A few standard warm up exercises followed.
Following that, we sung through all the pieces, trying to sight read. Once the newmen were even asked to sing it by themselves! The rehearsal ended what seemed to quickly and I was sad for it to end thus begrudgingly I tramped back up to my room.
I returned to my room to work for a while only to later receive an SMS: “I hope you’re coming to the 9:30 dance call! – Sarah”. By the time I received this message it was already 9:28 and I raced down to Platt again without evening changing into dance clothes.
The dance call was contained a very faced paced routine that we were to learn on the spot, and unfortunately for me, my dancing has never been good and without the practice from recent performances, I was terrible. I felt quite embarrassed at my terrible execution or non-execution as it was of the routine and knew at that point that I was not going to be receiving a large role in the musical. Luckily, with all the time commitments I already had, I wasn’t desperate for one anyhow.
Thursday had two events worthy of being written about. The first was the Penn Engineering Careers Fair that I embraced with gusto. I met with representatives from many of the worlds largest technology and engineering firms (Google, Facebook, Hulu etc) but was most impressed by a start up called Twilio that handles some of the backend work needed to support Whatsapp and other internet-telephony applications.
The second event that I will cover in short was my bus ride to Toronto. After a stop by the Hillel for some smores, I left campus at about 7PM, not realizing how close I would be cutting it to get to my 7:30PM bus on time. I made it by catching a cab and soon began my twelve hour trip to Toronto, ON. First transfer was New York City at 9:30 where I went for a bit of a walk. Down past Penn Station, past the Port Authority to grab a bagel and revisit the O Neil theater, my old haunt from waiting for the book of Mormon. I briskly returned to get caught in the maze of the Port Authority Terminal and again, only just made my bus.
That bus ride was long and uncomfortable, with the seat next to me taken up by a lovely Chinese student from NYU. A 4AM stop off at Dunkin’ Donuts woke me up from a half hour nap, and the visit at 6AM to Border Control didn’t help. Finally at nine-thirty I arrived at Toronto and was most glad to see Steven Silverberg, Sarah’s dad, waiting for me.
Dunkin stop at 4AM