Like most months, October started on the 1st. It was a Sunday. Kaba picked me up at Brandeis and we went to meet my family at a tennis court in Arlington to celebrate my grandfather Irwin's 94th birthday (Oct 10). We played tennis for a while and then we drove to my grandparent's house to continue the festivities with a fun lunch in their backyard.
My cousin Gefen tried to teach me how to drive stick-shift on his car. It was a humbling experience that involved the car making some terrible sounds while shaking. I am more grateful than ever that automatic cars were invented.
I returned to campus in the evening and it was officially Halloween season! My friends and suitemates Lauren and Jennifer updated the board outside our door to fit the season and I cut out our art from the Brandeis Hoot which we hung below it.
Time crept on...
In Oral Communications, we practiced spontaneous speaking by discussing ridiculous topics like what type of building is best. I said a "cruise ship" because it is a building that also moves. In Screenwriting, we practiced filming scenes (a new addition for the digital literacy requirement). In Japanese Film, we watched and discussed the critically acclaimed Rashomon. In Natural Language Processing, we learned about using the Naive Bayes classifier. As a TA, I led my second recitation session but the students had so many homework questions, I never got to have them do my practice problem I made. On Thursday, I went home by train and had my annual eye appointment. My eyes are in good shape!
Before I knew it, it was the weekend again! And a big one at that! On Saturday, I was interviewed by a first year student for a podcast she was making for her journalism class. The podcast is about young filmmakers and she chose me for her first episode because my film Frat Material won two awards at the 2023 Sundeis Film Festival. Here is a link to the episode! https://open.spotify.com/episode/1hPGqeIZoPuqBTiIFGmOEF?si=ATIFjOdkSmWQ1tb0rQRxNg
In the evening, we had a belated birthday party for my friends Lauren and Jennifer! It was Bat Mitzvah themed and we had a lot of fun! We even danced the Cotton Eye Joe. I always knew the song but had never learned the dance before. I am a slow learner when it comes to dancing but I think I did pretty well!
On Sunday, I stayed in my room most of the day working on homework. Then we had Monday off due to Indigenous People's Day so my friends and I had arranged to go to Honey Pot Hill Orchard to pick apples! We had an early wakeup call at 4:00 in the morning when the fire alarm went off because someone burnt their ramen. Luckily, I remembered to wear shoes when leaving the building unlike when we had a nighttime fire alarm in my sophomore year. We all tried to go back to sleep and later that morning, Kaba dropped off the Honda Odyssey and I drove my friends Jamie, Michael, Irina, Lauren, Jennifer and Ethan in that car to apple picking and other friends went in a separate car. The weather was perfect and we picked many apples and took a ton of photos.
We had to drop off the car at my house afterwards so we took the opportunity for me to show them where I live. On the way, I pointed out spots in Maynard where the movie Knives Out was filmed. When we got to the house, I gave them a tour and we grabbed some decorations to take back to our suite. We took the train back to Brandeis and hung out in the suite for a while.
The following morning, I woke up with a bad sore throat. I had a little irritation in my throat the day before but I thought it was a tonsil stone (a reoccurring event for me) but it was hurting pretty bad on Tuesday morning so I decided to take a covid test. When the second red line started to appear, I crumbled to the floor. After three and a half years, I had Covid - the very thing that had disrupted our way of life so drastically for so long.
I immediately notified everyone. I felt especially terrible that I had contaminated my parents. A few days later, they too would test positive :( I began my isolation.
I was able to attend Screenwriting via Zoom. I watched my Natural Language Processing and Japanese class recordings and kept up on homework as best I could. The only class I couldn't do virtually was Oral Communication but the professor said he'd catch me up and in fact, when I returned, I wasn't even behind because everyone's presentations had taken so long. The only class that was a real challenge was Yogalates. I only needed to go to one more session to get credit for taking the course so I wrote to the professor to see if I could just go to a session in the next module. He said I could so long as it was the fifth or sixth week of the new module so that I "learn new moves". So, I'll be back on the mat on Nov 28th.
Elina and Kaba sweetly brought over lots of food for me and my parents threw in some other items including a bar of chocolate! With lots of food at my disposal and jugs of water to drink, I didn't need to leave my room except to use the bathroom or refill my water.
Symtom-wise, I had some high fevers. The worst was 102.9 but I took tylenol to keep it down. I also had an incredibly painful sore throat a few days in. It was so painful to drink water. Other than that, I was just tired and had a bit of a cough.
Being locked in for a week and a half ended up giving me a lot of time to work. I finished my Japanese essay, read a whole book for my Japanese class, wrote a screenplay for a short film I plan to make, drew two cartoons, talked to a professor about computer science careers and took time to just chill and watch TV. The only big event I missed was Parent's Weekend which was also the 75th anniversary of Brandeis.
Upon my triumphant return to the world, Ethan and I filmed a video of my friend Irina's dance team. I am still working on editing it but the video will eventually be on my Youtube channel. I attended a play and also met up with my friends Yair and Ethan and we made apple sauce from our apple picking apple. It was super yummy!
There is a directing course at Brandeis where the students have to find actors to direct in a scene and I was asked to be a part of a scene. I've actually done this the past two years as well. After two rehearsals, we performed the scene in the class. The director received notes and we will return in December to try it again.
As we got closer to the end of the month, Halloween and all its festivities began! On October 26, in my Brandeis Buddies volunteer group, we went trick or treating around campus. Then immediately after that I met up with Lauren, Jennifer, Emma, Michael, Iva and Petra and we got shuttled to Drumlin Farm to volunteer as scarers for a haunted hayride.
Jennifer, Petra and I were all witches and I even got green face paint. We'd wait until the hayride drove by and then we'd jump out and try to scare the kids. Sometimes I was almost too successful (one kid started crying) and other times we woul getting mocked by a preteen shouting "Your hat fell off, that ruined everything" or "I can literally see your fire extinguisher". I guess you can't please everyone. One girl said "you did a great job!" so at someone enjoyed it. It was a fun night and I feel I gained such a new perspective being the scarer since I've been the ones getting scared on a haunted hayride but have never been the scarer before.
The following morning I turned 22. I got lunch with my friend Tanner, attended class and then I took the train home. On the train, I sat with a friend from Screenwriting who happened to be on the same train and we chatted for a bit. At home, I went on a walk with my dad and saw the impressive halloween decorations one house had. Once we were back home, we made pizza which is something I have done on my birthday ever since I was three years old. This is my twentieth year doing it. And it came out delicious if I do say so myself. Elina and Kaba came over too and we had a lovely time!
I stayed the night in Concord and then in the morning my family went to a scarecrow contest at a local farm to look at all the impressive creations!
Afterwards we had a birthday celebration in Lexington for all the October Birthdays (we have a lot in my family!) At the party, my grandfather Irwin gave me a copy of his book "The Unity of Science" that just came out! I had helped him over the past three years acquire permissions for the figures used in the book and I drew some of the figures. Irwin had worked so hard on the book so it was pretty exciting to finally see the book in person. On the train back to Brandeis, I ran into a friend from high school robotics who I hadn't seen since 2020!
When I returned to Brandeis, I put on my Where's Waldo costume and met up with my friends. We first went to Spooky Spingold which is an event in the theater building where theater students try to scare you as you walk around the building. After my experience as a scarier I felt for them as they attempted to scare us. It's always awkward when you see someone you know but they are trying to scare you so you can't just say "Hi!"
After making it through Spooky Spingold, we checked out the school's Halloween Party which was honestly a letdown. It was just some tables set up with people decorating pumpkins. One guy saw me in the "Where's Waldo" costume and yelled out "I found you!!" and then asked to take a photo with me. I felt like a celebrity haha.
We waited like thirty minutes for a psychic reading (one of the only activities at the event) and passed the time by learning a two person hand clapping game.
Eventually we gave up on the psychic and headed to my friends' suite for a Halloween party!
On October 30th, I went home and surprised my dad for his birthday (I wasn't kidding about all the birthdays in October!) and on Halloween Tanner, Michael, Emma and I went Trick or Treating in a nearby neighborhood. The neighborhood was full of trick or treaters and one house even had a little popcorn stand set up and had a golf cart with a huge pumpkin on the top. Another house had a Halloween movie playing on a huge screen outside. All the people were very friendly to us even though we were clearly older than the usual clientele. As I figured though, if we didn't go this year, when would we ever go again! We ended Halloween by watching The Shining which in my humble opinion isn't scary but I also believe that I can't get scared at school so maybe that was part of it.
And just like that October became November. And November started on the 1st as well but that's a story for another blog post (the next one).
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