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.