Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 168/169
January 18, 2013
Tuesday I was invited to the Phi Psi date night and went urgently looking for a date. To my luck I ran into a good friend from Penn Singers, Lauren Nagy, whom I asked and who agreed to accompany me. Physics in the morning was difficult again. I’ll be most glad when I’m done with electromagnetism but I think I may need to retake the course when I get home in order to be sure I’ve learnt the material well enough. After physics was my first singing lesson of the semester which was enjoyable as always. It provides me with an opportunity to have my improvement measured and the chance to improve further.
Following the singing lesson I attended the visit of the Australian Consul General to the University of Pennsylvania and heard him speak on how best to ‘bat for team Australia’. This inspired me to start a plan for an Australia student network across the Ivy League schools.
Then it was dinner and a quick change into a suit before Glee rehearsal. Unfortunately I could only linger for twenty minutes before dashing outside to run through the rain to the Phi Psi chapter house, where I met Lauren. There we socialized pleasantly with the other brothers, potential pledges and their dates before heading off in taxis to the venue. When we arrived at the venue, the first thing that struck us was the volume. The music was cranked way up high and it was difficult to talk to one another amidst the booming beats. Unfortunately this detracted from the experience as a whole and resulted in Lauren and I leaving a little earlier than we might otherwise have intended. As it turned out, this was my last event with the brothers. I was dropped from the process, which was completely understandable, and returned to life as before.
Wednesday I resumed compsci classes and unfortunately this meant returning to a very large workload. I was gifted by Professors Boon and Smith with two assignments, due the following week. With much else to do besides, the familiar stress levels from fall semester were returning. In the afternoon I set about completing various logistical tasks I had left, before Glee rehearsal at 5. After rehearsal I had a meeting with two of the other TAs for CIS121 in which we planned and wrote the homework for the week. Finally getting back to my room late I began work on the assignments and passed out somewhere around 2AM.
Friday/Shabbat – Day 159/160
January 7, 2013
Friday and Shabbat were unfortunately more of the same. Singing and dancing without end. As a result this post is going to be kept very short. Unfortunately my Shabbat was mostly without the Shabbat and while everyone else was going out to eat their meals I was eating a supply of fruit and pita that I had purchased beforehand. Suboptimal.
The above photo portrays a fun moment of me being dragged around the rehearsal space, a definite highlight.
After rehearsal on Shabbat everyone walked to Nord’s (our director’s) home for snack and a little time to relax. Amongst the activities was a screening of the ‘newman’ scavenger hunt video which revealed just how poor our singing was that day. Thankfully the oldmen cut us a little slack.
Back we walked through the dangerous neighbourhoods of northwest Philly and late that night I finally made it back to Hamilton Court, my new residence!
Thursday/Friday – Day 151/152
December 31, 2012
Thursday was snowing and thus I was inside much of the day, visiting various galleries and reading lots of books. Finally I was getting the holiday I needed! In the afternoon I went to see Les Miserables which by my reckoning was good. Just good. Not particularly great as many had hoped. I put this down to the musical character of the movie, which was a little repetitive and thus dull. Many of the actors spent the entire time speaking the songs with trembling lips and tearful eyes, which meant that not that much singing actually took place.
Friday was shorter than I would have liked, largely due to the early dinner and shabbat time of 4:30. Thus my day mostly consisted of going for a walk in the city then catching up for coffee with Irit Shacharai, one of my mentors from the Weizmann Institute, pursuing research at the Rockefeller Institute. After that it was back to Yoni and Rivki’s for dinner with the girls and then some peace to read!