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
Friday – Day 36
August 28, 2012
Today I finally saw it! The Book of Mormon!
After an early wake up at 6:30AM it was a quick breakfast followed by public transport to the Eugene O’Neil theater. By the time I got there at 9AM the standing line cue had already formed. What was lovely about the queue was that there was a real sense of community among the people standing there waiting for tickets as they were all the more dedicated people. When someone needed a bathroom or lunch break, the others would graciously hold their place in line. I chatted for a few hours with the two Canadians and one New Yorker next to me in line before heading off to the grocery store nearby to buy some sushi and the paper. The weekend edition of the New York Times was huge and left me with another few hours of reading material until the ticket lottery at 12PM.
The Ticket Lottery
Disappointingly I did not win one of the tickets available (they were front and centre) however on hour later, after a good deal more conversation, I finally reached the front of the standing room line and by 1:10PM I had a ticket and had purchased the sheet music to the book of Mormon. I then went for a quick-lunch and perused the Disney store, whiling away my final hour before the start of the show.
The Disney Store
After that it was back to the theatre where I finally got in line to see the show!!
As I walked in, the usher gave me a run down of the procedure for those with standing room tickets, advising me that I was not to disturb those in front of me with 155$ tickets. My standing slot was right at the back of the theatre about twenty rows back, however, it was dead in the centre and provided me with an excellent view of the action.
The Stage
The lights dimmed, the show started, and, I proceeded to have a most excellent two hours. The show was laugh-out-loud funny, with a smashing score and an excellent book. If you are in New York ever, I give it my full most recommendation.
I arrived home just in time for Shabbat with the family and, settled down for a quiet night in.