Blitz!

This weekend we had the second Blitz of the year. A Blitz is 24-hour theatre. That is, the theater guild throws a party at 9 pm on Friday and, depending on who shows up, they pick a play to perform. They come up with a set, basic costumes, and props and run through a handful of times so that the play will be performed at 9 pm on Saturday. It's a lot of fun, especially if you are looking for a good excuse to stay up until odd hours of night.

This go round we performed The Eight: Reindeer Monologues. The play is simply eight monologues, each told by one of Santa Claus's eight reindeer. Without going into too much detail, the story revolves around a sordid scandal in the North Pole.

Each of the reindeer are bold caricatures: Dasher was portrayed as a gung-ho general who was "number one from day one." Cupid was the flamboyant reindeer; I played Prancer, the self-centered actor; Blitzen was an ardent feminist; Cupid was the troubled buck who was taken in and reformed; Dancer was the only Jewish reindeer; Donner was the good-for-nothing father of Rudolph; and Vixen was the promiscuous doe that started the whole scandal.

It was jolly fun.

More Music at Hiram!

On November 30th Hiram had the Alfred James Band perform in the KC lounge, similar to the earlier Jason Reeves concert: one of Hiram's "coffee shop" concerts, where the performers play in the KC lounge by the little Hiram Cafe area, while students can just come chill out, plop down into armchairs and couches, and listen to music.

Alfred James Band is best described as cello-driven acoustic rock. It's a three-man band, the different musicians juggling different combinations of guitars, bass, mandolin, and cello. The cellist even played a didgeridoo -- whilst playing his cello! I was quite impressed.

I captured a good deal of the show on my camera. Here are a couple of their songs:





If you want to see the rest of AJB's performance (or at least most of it, what I was able to record) you can find the other videos here.

End of the 12-Week Semester

The end of the 12-Week Semester was marked by an upsurge of final assignments and final exams. The final classes were on Friday the 16th. All students are given at least Saturday to study for the finals, which began on Sunday and run through Tuesday. Wednesday was the first day of a full week of Thanksgiving break.

The 12-Week 3-Week semester scheme works very naturally into the school year. We have 12-Weeks of three (or more) classes from the end of summer until Thanksgiving. Next we have 1 class for the 3 Weeks from the end of Thanksgiving until we break for the Winter holidays. Then the Spring 12-Week begins again in January and ends shortly after Spring Break. After a brief term break we begin the final 3-Week, which ends of course with the beginning of summer.

I was rather lucky with my finals this semester. My Freshman Colloquium professor decided to have a final test in class rather than a normal exam, and my Philosophy professor opted to give us two papers to write instead of an exam. My piano lessons and African Ensemble do not have exams since they are 1 credit hour pass/fail classes. So I only had one exam, for my Introduction to Literary Studies class. The exam was pretty straightforward, I thought. First, we had an objective matching section on paper, and parts two and three were short answer and essay response, completed on computer (those who didn't have laptops were able to use computers in the English building, Bonney Castle). I must say, that was perhaps the most comfortable exam I've ever sat in: for part two, we were allowed to sit in any little nook in Bonney castle. I chose an armchair in the sitting room, where there was a little coffee table to set my books on.

And now we have a nice, relaxing week off before the 3-week begins!

African Ensemble's First Performance!

Well, the African Ensemble had its first performance! We were all very excited to show what we've learned over this semester.

We performed right after the jazz ensemble, which did an excellent job. They played several different pieces, and the solos were entertaining. We watched in the back of the performance hall of the Frohring Music building and were very impressed. At first I felt sort of out-of-place: all the members of the Jazz Ensemble wore nice black dress clothes; we wore our street clothes, decked in colorful African head bands and armbands, and the five dancers wore traditional lapas, which are these brightly colored cloths wrapped around them. Also, the Jazz Ensemble were playing several songs and went for well over half an hour; we had only planned to perform two of our rhythms. But I knew it would be amazing anyway.

After the Jazz Ensemble were done, we situated ourselves on stage with our drums. Olu was wonderful and really got the audience involved with the performance. He told the audience about the different drums and rhythms, so it was both entertaining and educational.

I have video of the performance, but they are both too big to upload directly onto blogger and too long to put on Youtube. I will try clipping some time from the videos and put them on Youtube so you can see them.

The first video is of the rhythm Kasa.

The second video is the the rhythm Dundunba. In this one, Olu brought everyone's volume down for the solos. If he nodded at us it meant, "Go! Play whatever you feel!" I was the second soloist. I am the red blur just right of center. =) Also, five ladies from our ensemble (Kelly, Rachael, Jean, Melissa, and Jooi) went to the floor and danced in front of the audience (unfortunately their dance doesn't show up too well in the video).

Halloween, W;t, and Homework -- oh my!

These last two weeks have been insanely busy for me. My workload over the semester has always been very manageable but in some cosmic misfortune, my three courses aligned together and I was buried underneath a pile of assignments. I had to write a review of the concert I wrote about in the last blog for my colloquium and a play to read for my English class, both due Monday. Then I had two essays to write for Philosophy, a research paper to write for my colloquium and I had to find another play for English. All the while I'd had play practice at night from 6:30 to 10:00 or so, sometimes we got out earlier. But I managed to get all of that finished and I am now enjoying my familiar rhythm.

Unfortunately I missed trick-or-treating because of a play rehearsal. Every year the Hiram village children come trick-or-treating at the residence halls and students are encouraged to decorate their dorms, dress up, and give out candy. But I still got in the spirit and went to my classes in costume on Halloween -- I was Death on Vacation. That is, I dressed in a black T-shirt with a white and blue Hawaiian shirt over that, swim trunks, and sandals. The costume was completed with a Hawaiian lei, shades, and bone fingers painted on with White-out. It was really cold, especially at 8:00 in the morning, but it was worth it to see friends' reactions. The cold probably just added a bit of the shock factor.

The play, W;t, went very well. It was a very fun experience and I'm glad to have been a part of it. I would say the only true downside to being in a play is that you never actually get to watch it! Heather, who is a Hiram alumna, did a wonderful job as the lead role of Vivian Bearing. Here's a picture we took of the cast, after closing night. From left to right: Heather as Vivian; Jesse as Dr. Kelekian; Darren as Dr. Jason Posner; Sara as Nurse Susie; John, me, and Lindsay as the four lab technicians; and behind Claudia and Lindsay is Rachel, as Professor EM Ashford.

Oh, and as a side note, yesterday was the first official snowfall of the year here at Hiram! The cold weather has arrived!


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Now playing: Five for Fighting - The Devil in the Wishing Well
via FoxyTunes

Concert Hopping

Last night there were two music events scheduled at Hiram. First, in the Frohring Music hall, were Tina Bergmann and Bryan Thomas, a hammer dulcimer player and and bassist, respectively. My colloquium professor encouraged us to attend and write a one page review of the concert for class. The music was amazing, and I was surprised by how much variety the two musicians could muster with their instruments! I filmed two of their songs:






After the Hammer Dulcimer concert, I ran over to the Kennedy Center Lounge, where another concert was underway. KCPB managed to get Jason Reeves, an up-and-coming musician most known for singing with Colbie Caillat, to have a little concert here at Hiram! His music is amazing and I got three videos of him. I also picked up a CD after the show.

Playing

We have been making great progress in African Drum Circle! We have learned each of our rhythms and a dance to go with the last one. At the end of the semester we will be performing in a concert to show off what we've learned. Now we are going through all the acts to make sure we know how it'll go along. I can't wait until class tonight, to see how it's looking so far.

Immediately after African Ensemble tonight I have to go to play practice for W;t. We are moving through pretty quickly, I think. By now I have all of my lines pretty much memorized and most of my actions as well. The equity actress hired to play the lead role arrived recently so we've only recently been able to rehearse with someone actually playing the lead role. On Thursday we had a rough run-through of the entire play, trying to recite without our scripts as much as possible. As the days count down towards the opening night, our rehearsals will get more intense. I hope that we will not have rehearsal during trick-or-treating night, but I'm suspecting that we will, which is unfortunate because I wanted to hand out candy and have a costume planned out already.

Fall Break

This weekend was our Fall Break. We had class from Monday through Wednesday, and Thursday through Sunday we had off. It's a nice little break from college right around the time when stress just begins to pile up on the average college student.

My last class on Wednesday ended around 11:00, so I left about an hour later. I worked for half a day at my summer office job in Cleveland. On Thursday I visited my High School, NDCL, which is in Chardon. That is such a strange experience! It feels so surreal to be walking around the halls of my alma mater like so many alums before me have done, feeling rather superior in my non-uniform clothing despite myself. (Ah, the feeling of Jeans and a t-shirt is so much more sweet when surrounded by others in oxford shirts, dress slacks and skirts!) I was able to see all my favorite teachers and no-longer-underclassmen. I ran into five of my old classmates which was a nice surprise, and I picked up my yearbook. Also, I borrowed one of the English textbooks I used last year -- it would be very helpful this semester in my Intro to Literature class!

I worked in Cleveland all day Friday (yay, Christmas shopping money!). On Saturday I caught up with my homework and went shopping for Halloween supplies. On Halloween (or a few days earlier, this year) all the children from the village come to the dorms for Trick-or-Treating, so students like to decorate their doors and dorms a bit for Halloween. About $20 at the Card Factory Outlet fetched some great supplies for decorating! And I also stocked up on a lot of candy to give to all the little ghouls and goblins. I returned to Hiram Saturday night, and put up some of the decorations.

Today I finished what little homework I had left and spent most of the day so far doing all the laundry I left accumulating over the past two weeks.

Sarah's Daughters

Last Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday there was a play called Sarah's Daughter's. It is about a woman whose grandmother and mother died from breast cancer. Later she learns that she has the BRCA gene and is diagnosed with breast cancer as well. She worries that her two daughters will get breast cancer as well.

The play is a one-woman show, with senior Kelly Hanahan as Joanne, and another student, Emma Strong, played the cello throughout the performance. (The play is Kelly's "Senior Capstone Experience"). The show was very good, and the ending is simply amazing. I can't imagine memorizing almost 90 minutes' worth of lines!

I saw the opening and closing night performances. On closing night, the Canadian playwright, Jeff Nisker, was there, and we got the opportunity to talk with him and ask him questions afterward, which was very interesting. Also, this was actually the American Premier of Sarah's Daughters! A US premier, here at Hiram!

Sarah's Daughters is part of a series that Hiram is putting on this year called "Cancer and the Arts." So far we've had the play Sarah's Daughters and a discussion with the creators of a musical called Unbeatable, A Musical Journey. The next play will be W;t by Margaret Edson (I'm playing one of the lab technicians in the hospital, an English student, and a rehearsal assistant). Also, the artist of the local comic strip Funky Winkerbean will be visiting campus as part of the "Cancer and the Arts" series (Linda, a character in the strip, dies of cancer -- today, I believe).

Bowling, Twister, Campus Day Blisters

This Wednesday was Campus Day, a yearly event where all classes are canceled and all the students are encouraged to volunteer in some community service projects. I signed up for the Habitat for Humanity group. My volunteer time was scheduled for noon to 5:00, so I enjoyed a nice sleep-in and a few hours of relaxation.

At noon we went to the HFH's storehouse of donated furniture, the ReStore. Half the group stayed to help them while the others and I went to a nearby church and dug post holes for a handicap-accessible ramp that was going to be built. Talking to each other made the work go faster, which was relatively rigorous because the soil was so rich in clay. We had to stop an hour early when the rain became too heavy for us to continue. So we returned to the ReStore to help the rest of the group finish building a wall.

We finished pretty much on time and returned to campus. Dinner was served at the KC, and it was spectacular! It was a welcome break from the regular dining hall food. They served plenty of salad, pastas, potatoes, rolls, roast beef....

After dinner I took a shower and went with some friends to the giant Twister tournament at the KC. KCPB spread out several mats on the floor and the action went in rounds. Generally two people faced each other on a single mat, and once one fell, the other got to go to the next round. As the numbers dwindled, the play became more difficult, with four players to a mat. Finally it was down to the last two players: Nick Michalenko (another Freshman) and myself.

Now, I hadn't played Twister since about the fifth grade, but I was doing very well that night. I never realized how flexible I am. I'll have to take up yoga... But anyway, Nick and I had a veritable battle of the wills on that Twister mat. It was hard work staying up on feet and palms, stretching from spot to spot. Everyone was astounded with our endurance. Neither of us would give up, and the whole ordeal of the final round lasted about half an hour! Several times there some rather... awkward positions we had to contort to, to get to the only available spots. Sammy, the man on staff who captures pictures of everything on campus, was sure to get all of it, and was kind enough to let me post them here.

After a while I came to a point where my leg just couldn't possibly reach the called spot, whether it went over or under my arms. Even if balance were not an issue I couldn't move my leg there, and I toppled. I was exhilarated, and second place didn't seem bad at all after a show like that!

Here are some pictures of the whole tournament...

After Twister, a bunch of us went to Garrettsville to play cosmic bowling (it was college night at Skylanes). With me were Aimee and Heather (my neighbors on 4th Whit), Karen, and Claire. Phil and Nanda took the lane next to us, so Karen didn't get any pictures of them. But here's another snazzy little slideshow of us goofing off at the bowling alley:

See, Hiram's not boring. There's always something to do. Just look for it.

Is Hiram Boring?

Our AV club, Terrier Productions, likes to go around campus sometimes and interview the students about certain issues. The latest "Your Take" episode posed the question "Is Hiram Boring?" You can view the video here:



Personally, I don't think Hiram is all that boring. Like some of the students said, you just have to know how to find fun. The weekends in particular at Hiram sometimes seem so... empty. I think the reason for this is that everyone returns home for the weekend. So many people return home because they think the weekends are boring. I think if more people stayed they would not have to look so hard to have fun.

But the nice thing is that it kind of encourages you to get out and find people, find something to do because it won't always come find you. For instance, my Friday night: After classes the campus starts to empty. I went to dinner, alone, and found a few friends to sit with and talk. We decided to go to the KC lounge. We played air hockey, table tennis, and pool. We had some food between games, listening to songs played by the DJ's for Hiram's radio station and chatting with each other. We got to meet new people. Then, around midnight, we moved to the lounge of Miller and some watched tv, others played more ping pong, and I taught Rachel a song on the piano. I left a little after one.

It was a fun night. I believe there was also a movie night and a bonfire last night. You can always find something to do here; you just have to look sometimes.

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Now playing: Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
via FoxyTunes

Toga!

It seems to be a law that every college in the country have at least one toga party every year. I have no idea why the Greek clubs and fraternities host them because the Greeks never actually wore togas. But either way toga parties are just one of those things that every college student must experience, so a bunch of friends and I got very excited and toga'ed it up!



Fourth Whit gets ready for the party; Becky helps Heather with her toga.



We arrived a little late to find about 8 people there on the dance floor. We thought, "Wow, another crazy night at Hiram!"



But after a while everyone else showed up and the party started!



Haha, a lovely group photo of Becky, Heather, Aimee, Claire and I.



Yeah, I used to have large biceps and a six pack, but then my free trial for Photoshop expired...




Leslie and I. "Should we get somebody to the picture for us?" ... "Nah, take it Facebook style!"



The toga party was interrupted around midnight by a fire alarm. That was a sight, a ton of people in togas, evacuating a building during the cold cold night. My friends and I decided to leave the party early and just hang out because we didn't know how long it would take for the party to start up again.

Hiram Happenings

I've been saving up some pictures of different events that have taken place over the last few weeks, and now that I have a good few I'll share them here.



Back in week one we had a beach party. At the left is my friend Sara, and I;m at the right. Our friend Anh got camera shy and jumped out of the frame at the last second.



KCPB held a casino night at the Kennedy Center, which was 'slots of fun. (Bad pun, I know...).



Playing Blackjack (I only won on two hands).



After the casino games were over, they had a Chinese auction, or raffle. This guy won a large jar of pickles, and multipacks of Pringles and Ramen (he was much envied).



Sammy, the guy who does pretty much all photo-related business for Hiram, picking one of the raffle tickets.



Wenhao is wicked awesome at table tennis. We went to the KC Cafe lounge to play one night, and that was a humbling experience...



While Wenhao stayed at the KC playing pingpong, I went to the Bowler lounge to play blindfolded hide and seek with some friends. One person wears a blindfold and has to try to find the others, who move around and throw pillows at the blinded person. It's lots of fun, especially at midnight. Here's a blackmail photo I took of one of the blindfoldee's, Travis.



And today was the blood drive! Today was my third donation so far. B Positive. Lots of fun.

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Now playing: Dave Matthews Band - Ants Marching
via FoxyTunes

Blitz!

Friday and Saturday I participated in a Blitz. At Hiram, a Blitz is one part theatre, three parts craziness. On Friday at 9:00 p.m. the theatre guild threw a party in Drury Hall. Then they pick a play, based on who shows up and is willing to act. After a play is voted on, the roles are divided, and the group reads through the lines. Then everybody scatters like mad to get costumes, make a set, find props, and draw publicity posters. If we have time afterward we do another read through. Then when we finish, usually between 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning, we get some sleep before meeting for breakfast at 8:30. We practice and nap and get everything ready to put the show on at 9:00 that evening. So, in a few words, Blitz is 24 hour theatre.

It's crazy, but fun.

When I spent a night at Hiram last year, I was lucky enough to help prepare a Blitz and had a great time, so I decided to do it this year. We chose a play called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged]. It is a very funny play that sort of summarizes all of the famous plays into one, similar to how Shrek makes a conglomeration out of all the fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The first act deals with all of the plays but one, while the second act is entirely dedicated to Hamlet. It's a three-man show, and we began with four actors: myself, Carla, John, and Toni (President of the Theatre Guild). But it was easy enough to divide the roles up since each of the characters play several roles. Carla and I were to play the same character, divvying up the male and female roles among us. An hour later we decided to turn our character into a pair of conjoined twins, which was a big laugh. However, the next day, we encountered a twist in the plot. Toni had to visit a relative in the hospital during the day and therefore could not be in the Blitz. I ended up taking her role, letting Carla do my old lines. We found out that you have to be very flexible with a Blitz.

It turned out very nicely, and everybody seemed to really enjoy it. Scenes from the play include a botched-up Romeo and Juliet death scene, Titus Andronicus portrayed as a cooking show, Macbeth performed with outrageously over-the-top Scottish accents, all of the comedies lumped into one, and all the histories portrayed as a bloody football game. Also, Othello was a riot. It is written into the play that we try to skip Othello since none of us are an African man, but Carla's character gets the idea to present Othello entirely in rap form. None of us were particularly good at rapping, so our friend Rachel Kuhn (who until that point was only in charge of the lights) did the rap for us while John beat-boxed and Carla and I danced in the background. Rachel's awesome like that, there isn't a role she could not do. Hamlet was lots of fun, with sock puppets and sword fighting and lots of screaming from Carla, who played Ophelia (who drowns herself by throwing a cup of water in her face). Then, once Hamlet ended, we performed Hamlet in two minutes, then Hamlet in 2 seconds, then Hamlet backwards! (In the backwards play, Ophelia, who was soaked after drowning three times already, drowned backwards by spitting water back into the cup. I got to play a bunch of roles, such as a narrator, Macbeth, and Hamlet.

We had a blast at Blitz, and the audience really enjoyed the show as well. I can't wait for the next Blitz to come around!

Extreme Makeover: Dorm Edition

Well, the time has come... or rather, it came a week ago, but I'm just posting it now because I used a friend's camera to get pictures!

My roommate and I have only had one actual argument to date, and it was over our bunk beds. Wenhao absolutely hates bunked beds because all the beds at his school were bunked, and it was his dream to come to a school where he would not have to be constrained so. I really did not want to have to move everything around again, and my dad and I tried a million and a half different configurations, but none of them worked, leading us to bunk the beds. (Corner dorms are nice in their own way, but they also have their own set of hassles). Wenhao was adamant about this point, and even measured everything out by the floor tiles and planned how something would work. The layout he imagined was actually very awkward, and I told him it wouldn't work anyway because it entailed moving my desk, and my cable would not have been long enough. He said he had a long cord I could use. Our argument (for lack of a better term, it was very civil and neither one of us got upset) lasted until one in the morning and he showed no sign of relenting, so I gave in because I had class the next morning. We agreed to try out his idea on the weekend, and if it didn't work, we'd go back to bunks.

The weekend came and we began to move everything. Things went fast and according to plan until we discovered that the cord that Wenhao was letting me use was still not long enough to reach where my desk stood. Wenhao panicked because he did not want to go back to bunks so I thought a bout it for a minute and came up with a different layout that would not be as awkward and would actually work for both of us. And after moving some things around, everything fit together very nicely. The only awkward part is that Wenhao's desk is sort of isolated in a corner, but he still has plenty of room, so we're both happy.



The view of the rearranged room. Wenhao's area is the right wall and corners while mine is the left, and my bed lies along the window, which is neat because I love the outdoors.




Wenhao's side of the room. He put up a Lebron James poster.




My side of the room. I have space under the bed now to put stuff like my keyboard, so my closet is a LOT less cluttered now. The desk is in the same place as before, but the dresser has switched sides of the room. I also put up some posters. The Harry Potter poster came free with my copy of the last book at the Borders midnight release party. The other two, the poster of Van Gogh's Starry Night and a novelty poster I bought at Hiram's poster sale last Wednesday.




Close-up of the posters.




Now my book shelf is right next to my bed, which is cool. This picture makes it looks as though my bed completely blocks the bookshelf off but there's actually plenty of space and I can reach all the books easily.

Weekend Update

After not having a weekend for over a week, it was very refreshing to have a 3-day weekend for Labor Day. Many students went home for the weekend, which kind of gave everything a rather subdued atmosphere here. Everything is better when everyone is here and there is something to do (for example one party was postponed simply because there were not enough students here).

I had to go home for the weekend to accept a small community scholarship (to any high school senior reading this, seek out every opportunity for scholarships you can! Sure, it gets annoying filling out so many applications and writing essays over and over, but it's worth it, even the little ones really help, from tuition to books, etc.

Saturday night I was bored so I went to go see the last showing of the play True West. I saw it opening night as an assignment for my Colloquium class and I thought it was a really great production. It starts out slow, as if it won't go anywhere, but it gets insanely hilarious and the entire set gets demolished during the play. Lots of raucous fun including a scene where one character takes a golf club to a typewriter (this last time he was so forceful that one of the keys flew out at me in the fifth row! I felt like a concert-goer catching a guitar pick, haha, but then I get excited about that sort of thing...)

After the play was over, I decided to help the cast and crew "strike the set." I had met most of the kids a year ago when I spent a night at Hiram. (Another side note: one of the best ways to figure out if a college is really the right institution for you is to spend a night there. It really helped me make my decision!) I never realized how much construction goes into plays! We completely dismantled the set, and I found out how much construction goes into each production. People usually think of theater as just a soft hobby but there is a lot of fun construction work involved. I got a nice cut across one of my fingers tearing up the floor tiles, large enough to warrant a band-aid. I felt inducted into the group, but then I get excited about that sort of thing, remember?

Around 10:30 we finished and left for the Steak n Shake in Aurora at about 11. Midnight food runs aren't uncommon at college, and they are a great deal of fun!

The next day I left for home! There was a fun little festival in the neighborhood and the best fireworks display ever. Then today we had a Labor Day picnic with all of the neighbors, which was very nice. Then a short evening drive and I'm back on campus at nine.

New Digs

Well, I managed to take some pictures of our swanky pad. Take a step inside Whitcomb 422...



As you can see, half my luggage weight was made of books. Books I have not yet read, books I read all the time, and lots of books that I frequently refer to for projects and English stuff.



This is my desk, and it is kind of messy right now, I'm still in the middle of organizing everything. My sister gave me that really jazzy desk lamp. You can see my laptop, and it's a very nice one. You DO NOT have to spend a ton of money to get a good one! Shop around and you can find some great deals. College expenses pile up fast and you don't want to have to dish out all of your money before you even get to campus. This one is brand new and I paid almost $500 less than the retail price. Have faith in eBay.



Our dressers are next to the closets. Mine is the messy one on the right.



We bunked the beds to make plenty of room. It's a really nice setup, but Wenhao really hates bunk beds, so we are going to try a non-bunk approach this weekend, and if it works we'll keep it that way. If not, bunks it is. Oh, mine is the sloppily-made top bunk (are you noticing a pattern here?)



This is our very swanky rug. Nice change from linoleum.



A view from the door. We have a nice big window. That's Wenhao's much tidier desk on the left. Note the fan! These really come in handy during the muggy Ohio summers....




This is the fantastic view of campus from our window!

Keeping to my One

Today was my first official day of classes at Hiram, and I must say that it was packed. I really should not be writing this blog with all of the stuff I have to do tonight, but I want to write it all down before it all ebbs away from me.

The day began, after a quick breakfast in Miller, with an 8:00 a.m. Intro to Literary Studies class. I was excited to see Brian, one of my high school friends, there with me. Lit was in Hinsdale today, but from now on classes will be in Bonney Castle, headquarters of the English Department. That is cool because it is just like a home and has a kitchen, and the professors stock it with warm drinks to help us early students wake up. Class was a hodge-podge of discussing our roles in the class and analyzing literature. Then we participated in a group activity where we drew objects from a bag (my group's was a framed cross-stitch of a small alley in Shambles York) and critically analyzed them before discussing our conclusions. Our homework for the class was to read a section of the text and take notes, and from those notes we will work together to construct our class syllabus.

Immediately after Lit I hopped on over to Frohring for my colloquium, Music in a Changing World. We received a syllabus, which very conveniently lists all of our assignments and tests for us. We were told that a mandatory part of the class is to participate in 2 meetings of the African Ensemble, the first of which was tonight. Extra credit is offered to those who participate in at least 9 of the 11 meetings throughout the semester. Then we were assigned quite a bit of homework: a reading from the textbook (both the introduction and the first chapter, roughly 68 pages), a chapter to read from a book that Prof. Dreisbach xeroxed for us, and the first draft of a 3-5 page essay!

Before classes started I viewed my Monday afternoons as a great break from classes, but after the flux of assignments I decided it would be best to spend some of that time working. So after lunch I decided to check out the library. This was the first time I've visited the library properly, exploring it a bit before picking a seat to work. The library is simply amazing. It is a beautiful building, and is much more spacious than I first predicted, judging by the outside. There are four floors, and each of them are packed with books, and the media collection is in the basement. The architecture of the building is simply wonderful and it can sometimes be hard to read in there without letting my mind wander, tracing the curves of the beams and ceiling. One of my favorite rooms is a large, round reading room with a few tables in the middle, computer stations lining the circumference, and international flags hanging from above. The ceiling opens to the second floor. If you visit the second floor, you will see a large, round bench that looks like a circular bar with plenty of room for books and materials, but in the center is the hole that looks into the reading room below.

Also, there are so many books there that I didn't think would have a spot in the library of a out-of-the-way village like Hiram. I found a very useful book that dissects and explains all of the radicals in Chinese characters, which will help me a bit with my Chinese. (I am not registered for a class, but Wenhao is teaching me Mandarin himself, and I'm teaching him German in return. Very quid pro quo.) I also found dozens of books in German, several of which are by an author that I have been interested in reading for over a year, Stefan Zweig. There were even a good handful of books about the Baconian Theory, one of my favorite conspiracy theories!

After the tour I worked at a table on my readings for a couple hours, but I did not finish. I took a break and hung out with some friends before eating dinner and running off to Frohring to catch the African Ensemble meeting for the evening. I was expecting the experience to be a bit awkward, but it was really one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had yet. Our instructor, Olu, was very funny and engaging. He really pumped some energy into our colloquium class! First we learned a few different types of ways to strike the drums. These drums are all hand played, which means that there are several ways to manipulate the sound with one's hand. After we learned the hits we practiced drumming in sync with each other, which we accomplished pretty quickly. Next we learned a very catchy rhythm and Olu was pleased with how quickly we caught on. We did a lot to mix up the music with different breaks, tempos, and patterns, and by the end we sounded really good. Olu had told us that the drumming could be very hypnotic, and he is right! I found that it is best to play without really thinking about what we are playing, but to feel it, to let the hands strike the rhythm that they knew. After a while, my hands, as well as many others' hands, began to get very sore. My palms were, and nearly still are, raw red, and the base of my right ring finger has that puffy sort of swollen feeling one gets after being stung by a bee. My hands ached with pain but my brain did not want to stop just yet. Then Olu had us stop and rest with our eyes closed as he tapped a quiet rhythm on his drum and spoke to us soothingly and had us repeat him, mantra-style. He likened college life to the drumming we just learned, that our hands keep looking for that first strong beat that will lead them into the rest of the patter before finding the One first beat again, repeating. He called this keeping to the One, and that we should keep to the One in life: to concentrate, and give our studies here at college our best effort. If we lag behind, keep to the One and speed back into the rhythm. As the pace of life changes, keep to the One and change tempo with it.

By the time we left we learned that we had accidentally been playing over half an hour longer than we were supposed to! We were doing so well that we just kept going and progressing to more difficult breaks. I left excited, and I cannot wait until the next meeting two weeks from now. My hands will have healed by then, but will they have healed for tomorrow morning's piano lesson?

Moving Day

Yesterday I finally moved into my dorm at Hiram! Dozens of cars lined the streets as students and parents unloaded luggage onto the lawns. Then began the actual moving. I happen to be on the fourth floor of Whitcomb, so that was some extra climbing for my dad and I. Because Wenhao could only bring so much stuff with him (2 suitcases' worth of luggage for the entire year!) it was up to me to bring some of the larger appliances that most roommates divide between each other. That was fun carrying up the stairs. It was quite a workout, and in typical Ohio humidity at that. Thankfully, my wonderful friend Mike, a classmate from high school who is also going to Hiram this year, offered to help carry the boxes, and it was all accomplished faster than I had expected.

Next came the truly fun part: unpacking and setting up the room. I had been looking forward to setting up my dorm for some time. We had got many neat and useful items at Bed Bath and Beyond (between our coupons and the coupons that our neighbors saved for us, we managed to cut down a lot of the dorm room expenses!). Upon first entering the room, my first thought was that it was too small. But really, it was just set up in a way that did not offer as much space. The beds were arranged in a way that made it difficult to move around, especially when we began putting all of the boxes in there. My dad and I studied the room for a minute to try to figure out the best way to lay it out. We decided it was best to bunk the beds. Our room is slightly different from other dorm rooms because it is in the corner of Whitcomb, and so the holes in our bedposts were a different size than the pegs that the RA gave us. My dad drove off to Garretsville to get some metal piping from the hardware store while I continued to unpack and move things around. The metal pegs worked nicely and the beds were very easy to bunk after that! I thought that Wenhao (who was not there at the time) would be very surprised to come back to the room and see it changed around so much. But there is so much more space now that he liked it.

Wenhao gave me a gift of a neat orangish-red bracelet and two scarlet hanging sort of charm decorations, traditional in China. I knew that gift-giving is a large part of Chinese culture, and researched it a great deal before coming to Hiram, learning of all sorts of gifts to avoid. Some of the customs are very interesting while others I thought were kind of odd. But I finally decided upon a book called The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck. It is very appropriate as it is written by an American woman who grew up in China. I wrapped the book in red paper, as that is supposed to be a very fortunate color to the Chinese, and wrote "friendship" in Chinese characters on the top (or, as best as I could, that is).

Soon after the welcoming ceremony (where one of the Deans made a much-appreciated joke about the required reading book) I met up with Wenhao for the first time. I had to say a quick goodbye to my parents before running off to my first Freshman Colloquium meeting, Music in a Changing World. I was surprised to find five students in my Colloquium that are from my area, three of them from Concord!

So moving in was pretty exciting, and I am sure that I will enjoy my years here at Hiram. Now, on to finish setting up the dorm...

Catching up

I have neglected my blog lately, which isn't good because once I put something off I forget about it entirely and I want to get in the habit of writing stuff down regularly.

Since my birthday, the date of the last post, I still have not finished my college shopping. I went out today and got a bunch of it done, but I still need to get my books, a bookshelf, a pillow, some storage bins, a hamper, and all those fun school/office supplies from Staples. For my birthday my parents gave me a stage stand for my keyboard, which is really nice, now that I don't have to play the keyboard on my dresser or bed. My amazing sister Heather gave me some "fun accessories for my swanky pad" and they are quite swanky indeed! She went way over the top with her generosity, and I just love her so much for it too. But her gifts also have a very practical side as well, which is excellent; she knows from experience what a college student should have in times of need. My wonderful brother wasn't sure what to give me so he gave me the universal gift of money, which always comes in handy as well!

Shortly after my birthday, we ordered my laptop. I had built a Dell Inspiron online and I thought I had worked at it very conservatively but it was still way too expensive. So i went on eBay and did some searching around and found a brand new Gateway MT-somethingorother laptop for like $350 less than retail value. We took the risk and ordered it. Thankfully the seller was an honest man and the laptop really was in brand-spanking-new condition. It works like a dream. It has a nice, big widescreen, which is excellent so I can play DVD's on there (and now I don't have to get a TV!). The keyboard is a nice size too, so I can type easily on it compared to some other laptops I've used which make it difficult to type with such miniscule keyboards. I absolutely love Windows Vista, I think there are some really fantastic upgrades from XP. I was hesitant to get Vista because I have heard so many negative comments about it, specifically concerning annoying pop-ups, but I have not run across any of these yet. And it runs so quickly, too! It has a nice selection of games. Mom has been playing Ink Ball, and she gets really into it, freaking out when a ball goes too close to a hole of a different color and starts swearing really fervently at the computer, haha. Also, I love the selection of "Sample music" that it includes with Windows Media Player. They usually include a few songs from little-known artists from around the world or songs that have long sicne entered public domain so that users can test out the sound quality before playing their own music. But the songs they included are really quite nice, I love the world-beat, easy listening sort of melodies they have included, and it really goes nicely in the background while I'm playing mahjong.

I move on Friday, which seems both so close yet far away. On the one hand, I'm really excited to go. On the other, I still have much work to do. I have to clean out my room, wash the clothes I'm taking to Hiram, finish my shopping, and pack everything up. I have packed a few things so far, such as all my toiletries, laundry, and first-aid stuff, as well as all of the stuff Heather sent to me. I'm going to go through my books tonight to pick out which ones I'm going to take and which I'm leaving behind.

Today I also got new glasses. The prescription is a little stronger this time. I went with slightly thicker frames in black, and I think they look nice.

Today I also talked over Skype with Elke, my German pen-friend. It was really fun, but I have noticed that my German speaking has slipped considerably this summer! A little bit ago I also talked with Wenhao over the phone at work. He seems really nice and sounds excited to be coming to Hiram. I had some difficulty understanding him over the phone, but speaking with him face-to-face should be much easier.

Midnight

Hmm... nothing.

Well, I'm off to shower and then go to bed... I've got to be up early tomorrow... or rather, this morning.
;)

August 6

In less than two hours, August 6 will arrive and I will have turned 18. This is supposed to be something of a rite-of-passage moment in every person's life, but I haven't seemed to fully grasp this yet -- similar to how it takes some time to accept the death of a loved one into your daily life, until it becomes something one accepts as true and not as something one has to be reminded as a truth.

I have not anticipated this day like I have for many of my previous birthdays. I remember when I was younger how I would start counting down the days and hours to the moment I could officially call myself older and add a number to my life, a countdown that always began a month in advance. As the days slowly ticked by I would have fantasies of what it would feel like to be a seven-year-old, such an auspicious age to be or a ten-year-old where, labeled with a double-digit, I could precociously imagine I could include myself with those elite few known as teenagers, the ranks of whom I would not officially join until 13.

Sweet-sixteen arrived nicely, with the stock birthday card jokes of driving tests and getting cars, only to later prove false for the next two years.

Seventeen was a kick through the door onto the threshold of adulthood: that summer I worked in the hayfield, stacking and unstacking heavy, cumbersome bales of hay. My birthday was no different, and less than an hour after waking up, before the idea of seventeen had fully sunken into my thoughts and before I even got around to eating breakfast, I had to hurry outside to help unload two wagon loads of hay into the barn. As a birthday treat, I was promised that all I would have to do was unload the two wagons, which is far preferable to loading them, and take the rest of the day off rather than work that afternoon. But, as fate would have it, that August day was extremely hot, and under the stress of moving bales of hay as fast as I could, gritting my teeth toward sweet relief for the rest of the day, I got heat exhaustion, a variance of hyperthermia. On top of the usual discomforts working with hay gives a man, my face was burning, my forehead pounded with each of my heartbeats, and my empty stomach churned uneasily. So I decided to have a glass of water and lay down to relax the pain away. This failed and I began to feel nauseous, so I locked myself in the bathroom and took a cold shower. Soon the nausea knocked me off my feet and my body still was not cooled down, so I ran a cold bath and slept in the water for at least half an hour. I drained the tub and hardly stood up to leave when I began throwing up.

There are many things I will never understand in this world, and one of them is how my stomach, completely empty but for about 12 ounces of water could produce torrents of vomit, a gallon at the least. The mess cleaned up and my stomach emptied, I dashed to my bedroom and lie down to let the body's best medicine, sleep, do its work. I woke up at 7:30 in the evening feeling much better physically but feeling a deep sense of disappointment that my 5 year vomit-free streak was broken on my seventeenth birthday, a day that I had all but slept through.

And now, 1 hour and 15 minutes to go, I reflect about how I have not counted the days or gone through any of the rituals that I once practiced, and that this eighteenth year of my existence has sneaked upon me. I know, from 17 birthdays' worth of experience (or 18, if you include the day I was actually born) that for the most part there really is no profound moment of revelation as the clock strikes midnight, no brilliant step up in my abilities as a person, no amusing ruminations about how the person I was a day ago was silly and less experienced in the world. I have not contemplated the trip to the store where I would purchase a pack of cigarettes, lottery tickets and porno mags, just for the simple fact that I can. Today I have not felt any great sense of anticipation for tomorrow or sense myself rising to the climax moment of blowing out the birthday candles on an ice cream cake and opening up gifts. In fact, today was rather uneventful and by all standards mediocre, a run-of-the-mill Sunday where the only thing I contemplate is having to get up early to go to work tomorrow morning (and it is for this reason that I dislike Sundays more than Mondays).

No day is more extraordinary than any other. Each is a day where we continue to live and, hopefully, to grow and learn. Each is one day closer to that unknown moment when we will not be blowing the candles out on a cake, but the candles of our lives have either reached the ends of their wicks and flicker out peacefully in a wrinkled pool of melted wax, or gutter and tremble in an uncontrollable gust that puts our fragile flame -- out, out. It is all fine and fun to celebrate our birthdays, but what about our deathday? Any one of the days that pass us by may be the anniversary in the future, near or far, that will be marked as our last. Shouldn't we therefore celebrate every day, live every one as if it were our last, as every one very well could be? My birthday, after all, was the death day for countless souls -- those lost in the bombing of Hiroshima as the most infamous example, along with myriad others throughout history who have died from causes both natural and macabre.

These are the musings of a young man, on the edge of eighteen, as he counts down the last fifty-three minutes of being seventeen -- anticipating the moment of magic and revelation. *He makes an early birthday wish at 11:11.* He counts down the last minutes not for the extra privileges, the cake, the presents. But for the fact that he knows he can claim this extended moment in time as his own, to look back on them with pride, and to look forward from them towards the rest of his adventure.

Wenhao Found

In an attempt to get in touch with Wenhao, I sent him a letter through snail mail. Shortly afterward I was chatting with Radina, a Hiram first year from Bulgaria, on Facebook, and she told me to ask Mrs. Hale, who is in charge of all the international students, for his home email address.

So I emailed her last night, and this morning woke up to find an email from Wenhao waiting in my inbox! She must have forwarded my Hiram address to Wenhao. So now we are in touch, but we can only really correspond at certain times of the day. With a 12 hour time difference, he's just going to bed when I am waking up, and vice versa.

His English is pretty good and I was surprised to learn that he's a Lebron James fan. :) We'll have to go to a Cavs game sometime then...

Mission Finding Wen

The moment I and several of my future classmates have been waiting for has finally arrived: we received email notifications of where we are staying on campus (which somebody had already figured out how to find online) and who our roommates are (which everybody has tried unsuccessfully to find out until now).

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I will be sharing a room with an international student, Wen Hao Li, who lives in China. I'm very excited about this because I am always looking for opportunities to learn about other cultures.

I have been on pins and needles lately, wishing to know who my roommate is, so that I can get in tough with him to find out who is bringing what, so that we don't end up cluttering ourselves out of the 11.5' X 13.5' dorm room. But I think it's safe to assume that Wen isn't bringing any large appliances, since it would be both difficult and expensive to fly, say, a dorm-size fridge overseas. So I don't think I have to worry about what not to buy any more, but I still want to get in touch with Wen before we start college.

I am not sure if Wen has his college email yet, since students get that at orientation, and international students have orientation right before everybody else moves in... so I have no idea whether or not Wen has received my email yet. The email included his address and phone number. I'd love to send him a letter snail-mail, but I'm not sure how long it would take to reach him. As for the phone number, I will have to try calling from work, which has free phone connectons through the internet, but I will have to time it right with the 12 hour time difference.

Also, I'm not sure if he is returning home for the breaks. It is very expensive, after all, to fly these days. My family is willing to have him over for the holidays, since we live only 45 minutes or so from campus, and we have extra rooms now.

So, this has become my new mission: finding Wen.

The End

Why is it that all anybody cares about these days is the end? Why do they care about the end if they never bother to concern themselves with what goes on in medias res? After finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, at least three people at work asked me, "So, does Harry die?" I answered, "I'm not saying!" to all three.

One man indicated that he was really interested in the last book, and that he'd "have to look up how that one ends." I replied in an innocent yet barely accusing tone, "Why don't you just read the book?" He stammered some reply, "Yeah, I'll look into that..." What difference does it maketo you, whether or not Harry Potter dies if you have never taken the time to read his story? If the only important element of a story was the ending, the publishing industry would be out of business. Authors write books, not synopses.

One woman said she forced her husband who took the time to read Deathly Hallows to tell her how it ended. I shook my head and told her she shouldn't have done that. What amazed me was that she was at least interested in the books, having read the first three! I asked her why she would want to know how it ends when she could read everything that happens from where she left off. She replied she didn't have time to read, and I responded that she could listen to them in her car on the way to work. But too late for that, I guess.

A Beginning

I have tried to force myself to keep a journal for several years now. But my thoughts go too quickly for me to handwrite them, and I end up putting off journaling for several days, often running into weeks. I hope that with a blog I will be able to keep a better practice of writing my thoughts and happenings on a more regular basis.

I am about to enter college and think that what better time is there for me to start something this blog, with such a new, big change?