The Final Blog Update While You Can Still Call Me Freshman

Well, it's been a while, but I've been busy! With finals approaching and Math class still a pain in whichever part of the body you prefer I've had my hands full. Let's see, since Niada closed (a pretty spectacular success for Alysha, I think :) ) I've been acting in the Directing class finals for both Liz and Alysha (although getting shoved over is about all I did in Alysha's. Does that count as method acting?) For Liz's I got to play Oberon the fairy king in a scene from Midsummer Night's Dream. It was fun, and I hope we did well enough to get Liz an A.

After Niada closed, we had the Cast Party. This time we headed to Issac Spiecher's apartment and had pizza while watching Iron Man. Fun stuff. Issac threw Hershey's kisses at our car as we left (he explained later that he was throwing them at me... another "fangirl" reference.) Later that week directing class rehearsals started in earnest, so in Liz's scene we had Katelyn as Dewdrop the fairy, Winter as Titania, and Chloe Payne as Puck, although about a week before the we presented for Liz's grade she had to re-cast Jordan as Puck. Kudos to her for learning all her lines in a week! It went pretty well I think. Alysha did an earlier scene from Midsummer, and we had the hilarious duo of Mitch and Justin playing Oberon and Puck, respectively. I played Demetrius, a love-struck stooge chasing after Mary Simpson's character, Helena. Basically I just run on stage, back into her accidentally, ask why she doesn't love me, get pushed over, then run off after her. She had way too much fun with that, I think.

This week went by fast, with much work being put into Math and Arabic. I came to realize that if you summarize the "stories" that accompany each chapter of my Arabic textbook you get quite a jaded picture of the world our two characters inhabit. Check it out.

Story One: Maha
Maha is an Egyptian girl living in New York. Her dad works for the United Nations and her mom is a prof. at her University. She never sees her parents since they are so busy, she has no friends because she dislikes people in general, and she hates New York for a variety of reasons. I dub her a whiner.

Story Two: Khalid
Khalid is a twenty-something teaching assistant at the University of Cairo. He wasn't allowed to study literature like he wanted, so he had to go to business school because his dad thought that business had a better future. Now, since his mom died and his grandmother won't let him sleep past six A.M., he has to raise his brother's, because apparently Dad can't be bothered. Khalid spends most of his free time in sports bars playing chess and smoking, a habit he hides from his grandmother. Reverse Cinderella?

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Khalid and Maha are first cousins, and that later on Maha apparently goes to Egypt and they get romantically involved.

What???


Anyway, after the parade of homework and studying and putting off studying by writing silly articles, we arrived at the weekend. Friday night we had the dueling events of the Sock Hop hosted by the ballroom club and the Invisible Children presentation in the Chapel. I went to the dancing lessons at the Sock Hop first, reasoning that I could come back after the Invisible Children presentation. Invisible Children is an organization working to put Ugandan children orphaned by AIDS and the war (which until recently devastated the country) through school. They showed a very powerful video and then two Ugandan people (the grandfather of the boy who was the main subject of the video, and an IC employee on the ground in Uganda) spoke to us. It was very good, and I was about to donate some of the eighteen dollars I have to them, when I realized I couldn't find my wallet. I spent about an hour and a half looking for it before I finally found it next to the sink in the Sanderson Men's room. How it got there I have no idea, I'm just glad I found it. Later that night Isaiah and I watched Blade II and enjoyed riffing it at every opportunity for taking itself WAY to seriously.

Saturday night we had a double feature in Jordan's room: Zombieland and Hot Fuzz. Gareth Jones, myself, Liz Brink, Liz Simpson, Alan Cheney, and Jordan herself spent the evening laughing and (at least I) enjoyed the fact that since Jordan hadn't seen the movies, I could have fun keeping her in the dark as to what was about to happen, kinda like watching LOST with Josh Bernitt. :) Needless to say it was awesome.

Sunday was pretty quiet, although I did finish my penultimate math assignment and started on the final one. It's almost done, and then my nightmare of a class is mostly over. We went to the Founder's picnic, played cornhole and frizzcup, had hamburgers, and generally had a good time.

That brings us up to today, and pretty much the only memorable thing was dinner. Me, Ann, Jordan, Lauren Hartzell, Zach McElrath, Laura Vickery, and briefly Chris Musser had a great time telling stories and eventually Jordan literally dragged my chair (with me in it) about fifty feet away from the table. I can't even remember why, but it was hilarious.

So, that's it for now. I'll try and update again on the flipside of finals. Oy vey...