Spring Break and Snow Days

            The first time I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I remember being struck by the spring imagery; as the winter loses its power, leaves appear on trees, birds start to sing, and grasses and flowers begin to appear. I don’t think I ever understood the real power of the regeneration metaphor until now. After weeks of nothing but patches of dirt coated with hardened snow, finally – finally! – green plant life started to show its face.

            And this morning, it snowed again. And then froze.

            Oh, well. In four days I will be on a plane on my way to the tropical island of Taiwan. We’re flying out of New York, not Boston, which means that for an afternoon flight, we are leaving Harvard at 12am Wednesday night/Thursday morning.  That means we’ll miss Housing Day and all its included activities, but hey – we’re going to Taiwan.

We’ve been rehearsing a lot for this trip, and there are still several more songs we need to finish memorizing before we perform, including one in Chinese (not as scary as it might sound – except for the soloists, we all just sing ‘doos’ and ‘das’ like normal). We had a three-hour rehearsal yesterday, and it’s the hardest I’ve worked at singing for a long while, between memorizing the tunes and needing to sing at the top of or above the staff for long periods of time.

I came out of rehearsal with a tired voice and an energized spirit; we have some great times of community together. Speaking of tour, thank you so much to all of you who have supported and continue to support us through prayer and donations! As treasurer, I am doubly aware of what you’ve done for us, and I can’t say thank you too many times!

Hopefully I’ll have time to write a blog next week, and I’ll take lots of pictures and let you know how things go. Until then, though, I should probably stick to talking about what’s already happened. It’s been a pretty good week overall. I made an A on my physics module quiz, watched three different film versions on Pride and Prejudice (and finished the book), and had time to exercise. And besides that, my parents pleasantly surprised me by announcing that they would be flying up here at the end of the semester to help move my things into my House*!

The high point of the week was an a cappella concert I went to with Charlene, one of the girls in my a cappella group. The Radcliffe Pitches and Harvard Krokodiloes performed, and they did excellently. Their singing sounded wonderful – they sang a lot of older songs, from “When I Fall in Love it will be Forever” to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”. They also had a lot of comedy incorporated, and we had a great time.

It was also an interesting week in Hebrew. Last Wednesday, in the interests of developing more abstract vocabularies, we had a discussion on ethical dilemmas. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a moderated discussion on philosophy or ethics, but no one ever gets to say everything they want to. The problem is exacerbated when no one is using their native language – I’ve never seen a group of people that looked so frustrated. Our TF nearly died laughing.

The only bad thing about going to Taiwan is trying to finish my normal homework, plus the physics take-home midterm and four papers I have due the week I get back. I'm not sure how everything is going to get done, but it'll get there somehow. I hope I get to post next week to tell you about Taiwan, but if not, you'll have a very long post with lots of pictures in two weeks. Until then!

*I don’t think I’ve explained this yes, but Harvard freshman live in Dorms, while upperclassmen live in Houses. Housing Day is the day we find out where we’ll live for the next three years, excluding transfers, and everyone gets super excited about it – upperclassmen run into the Dorms screaming their house names to let people know where they’ll be.