Sunday, October 21, 2007

and so here i am finally, at the end of week 4, thankful for its being over. an econ midterm on monday and one ihum paper due on friday do not make for a great week overall. wed was the first time i slept at 2am, having been on the go from 9am. that was a truly exhausting day. strangely enough, i do feel some satisfaction from having endured the craziness of a truly packed week.

but the nature of uni is that it does not give you the bad without the exciting too. part of the reason why wed was crazy was the flamenco performance that i went to on campus. "noche flamenca" was radically different from what i expected. commercialisation led me to believe that flamenco is an energetic, passionate and lively dance to loud music. i never expected the serious, passionate singing melding with some pretty amazing hand-clapping to provide live music on the spot. also eye-opening were the dancers who moved their feet so quickly that they literally became a blur. you could say that tap-dancing was born out of the flamenco, an art form that has its origins in spanish gypsies. did i mention that i paid only $5? (:

that same wed night i met some amazing people and discovered the kindness in others. at midnight, while looking for a native speaker of spanish to be the subject of an interview (a recording of which was due thur morn), i met alex in the hallway outside my room. she's from the dorm next door and agreed at once to help me out. the 8-min interview took us close to an hour to complete but she was so gracious and nice about staying to help me out. that really surprised me. my upstairs dorm mate, while mugging for his CS miderm, helped me figure out garageband and transformed the recording into an mp3 file at 2am. and yesterday my other dorm mate helped proof read my ihum paper 1h before it was due. <3 cool people.