Mind blowing

I feel like I'm cheating on Kurt Vonnegut, my long time favorite author, when I announce this: Anton Chekhov is my new favorite author.

College is doing insane things to my mind. I absolutely love reading late 19th century Russian literature. How is this possible?

Today I went to a lunch for the second day of chag at an apartment on a gorge. Literally, on a gorge, as in, falling into the gorge. It was so beautiful. There were probably 25 people there, all Jewish, with some connection to Cornell and the people who live in the apartment. The food was delicious, the company genial...from freshmen to grad students. I really enjoyed it.

Today there was a turtle on the sidewalk.

Today I went to a play called Revolution because my friend Jesse was playing Jesus Christ in it. It was a play written by a student about revolutionaries and religion and bureaucracy. It was much too complicated for me. In 45 minutes, every single character turned out to be a double crosser, everyone had a name that was a metaphor for something else, and the entire play was about something entirely different than I originally thought.

I did go to see the play with some really cool people though, including several foreigners from Dubai/England, Paris, and the Dominican Republic. And Westchester. We discussed it afterward a bit, and I felt like this is why I went here: We went to see the play. It was an absurdly artsy play. We discussed it afterward and made sense of what we could and gave our opinions. We decided it was too much and discussed our weekend plans.

These are the kinds of people I have always wanted to meet! Cultured, diverse, interesting, intellectual...but not trying too hard. Like we went to the play, we talked about it, and instead of spending our evening wearing glasses with no prescription in them and arguing fervently about fascism, we just got on with our lives.

On a more routine note: I finished my hardest week of college yet! It included two "prelims" (big tests) in Human Development and Nutrition, a Hebrew test, a four page paper in Freshman Writing (I wrote about "The Doctor" by Chekhov!), and a unit test in Bio on photosynthesis and twigs.

I can now determine the age of any twig you place before me. I am bound for success.

Shabbat Shalom!