Off to Chicago

I’m midway on my way to Chicago; I have a layover in DC. Google is being generous this Christmas and supplying the airports with free wifi. Woohoo!

I won’t be able to make any of them, but Arabesque is hosting some workshops post-Christmas.

Have a happy holiday if I don’t post anything tomorrow and safe travels to those of you who are like me and traveling this holiday season.

 

Happy 4th of July!

It’s Independence Day in the US. I unfortunately have decided to skip the barbeque I was invited to (weather in Chicago is quite dismal right now, and it looks like inevitable rain) to visit the people at the hospice and work on my thesis. I took yesterday off to lounge around a bit (applied for some jobs, watched a DVD that I’ll review tomorrow). It’s difficult to “keep my eye on the prize”, because I feel a little burnt out right now. I haven’t had much of a vacation in years. By vacation, I mean break of sorts. Just a week or so to sit around, walk places, etc. It would be nice to travel, but I think I need more relaxation than hop around a bunch of different places, feeling obligated to see everyone and everything.

Part of me considers quitting my volunteer work to allow for more “me” time, but it really takes about 3 hours out of my week, including travel. Not that much, in the grand scheme of things and supposedly visiting Alzheimer’s patients helps them with their loneliness. I could slow down the thesis, but I’m hoping I have job come Sept/late August, so I don’t want to have the adjustment of a new job with a thesis.

I really just need to keep myself going. Anyway, I hope everyone else has a relaxing holiday.

 

In need of another vacation

The funny thing about vacations is you need a vacation from them. Time to catch up on sleep, home stuff (grocery shopping, laundry)… Unfortunately, I had to jump back into work. We didn’t get home until around 10:30 PM, and I had to be at work/school by 10:15 AM. Not pleasant.

We began summer school teaching today. It went okay. I’m amazed that students sign up to take summer physics and get something out of it. My learning style involves more time for digestion; I don’t care for the quarter system (10 weeks of class, as opposed to the 15 weeks in a semester), and I don’t understand how you can learn something in about 3 weeks.

I also came back to being part of my lab. One of my favorite things about my lab is we’re a community of sorts. Everyone is interested in everyone’s research, we do at free will talk to each other about it, and there is some level of respect and appreciation there. Today’s sign was the practice run of a grad’s thesis defense. I thought it was cool that people did make the effort to show up, even if that was the only reason to be there. My advisor genuinely wanted us all to support this student. My experience at school has been- variable, but I genuinely do enjoy my lab. Today is just an example of why.

Tomorrow is yet another day of work, as well as the real run of this student’s thesis defense.

 

Sorry for the awayness

I went on vacation briefly and forgot to announce that. More updates will come tomorrow; I am dead tired and have work tomorrow.

 

2009 Goals

Happy 2009! I hope everyone had an awesome New Year’s Eve. I mself had a very quiet one in, which was nice.

Since I’m a goal-oriented person, here are my goals in physics and dance this year. I hope that they will guide me along.

• Do well in school. Enough said.
• Practice more and incorporate other things into practice. I basically want to start really incorporating more yoga into my practice. Since my schedule is weird because of school, I’m also looking to start using DVDs as a supplement to my practice. I will write about the change of mentality with that later.
• Complete my thesis defense by August.
• Save money to go onto a trip. I haven’t done a long vacation in a while, so this is really an award/treat for me.
• Practice Odissi on my own. I miss Odissi a lot, and I have the book that my teacher wrote, outlining many steps or arsas. I feel like I understand enough of the posture to at least be able to drill and keep the strength in my legs.
• Gain proficiency with tribal dance and learn Turkish Oriental. I love Egyptian Oriental, but I am interested in spreading my wings and trying other styles. Tribal I’ve been doing, but I’d love to be better. Turkish is very new to me, but I love the energy in it. Since my overlying goal in dance is to eventually become some flavor of professional, I’d like to increase my knowledge.
• Expand and refine folkloric and lesser known Middle Eastern dance. I loved what I did with Aradia while I was in Vegas. I want to learn whatever I can this year. Raqs al assaya (cane), melaya leff, anything.
• Attend as many workshops as possible. Disappointingly, there has not been much word about workshops in Chicago and making it to other workshops outside of Chicago is difficult. However, I hope everyone just got so busy with the holidays that they haven’t posted events yet.
• Practice zills and veil. I really would like to be better at both. Zills done well are just amazing and veil is so beautiful.

 

So how successful was I with my goals this year?

Overall, I’d say I was successful. Mind you, I didn’t complete everything, but I’m still alive and healthy. There is always next year.

So that I can end positively, my biggest failures this year involved really not choreographing and virtually no progress on my thesis. I did some choreographing, but the music I have didn’t really speak to me. I simply wasn’t inspired. I’m starting to feel more inspired, though, which is good. My thesis will have to be completed this year coming. I look forward to it, and I’m glad that I didn’t stick with a project that I didn’t enjoy.

I wish that I would’ve practiced more, but life (school) and illness seemed to get in my way a lot.

For positives, I’d say that I did a decent job overall with everything else. I feel my dancing is much stronger. I still am terribly disappointed I haven’t found an Odissi or Bhratanatyam teacher that is accessible, but- you can’t have it all. I’ve learned a lot of tribal dance and gotten excellent ideas on fusion. I survived 3 workshops .

As far as school, I was happy with my grades this past quarter and even happier that I did well with programming. I am not a programmer, so this is indeed a pleasant surprise.

I also am not broke for the next year. Yay! I’m squirreling money away for a vacation. We’ll see how that goes, but hopefully sometime soon I can take a proper 1-2 week vacation. I’m thinking I want to go to Europe or some place warm. Hmmm.

Have a good New Year’s Eve/New Year!

 

My Las Vegas trip

Not being a gambler or much of a drinker/party person, Vegas was perhaps not the most fitting place to go. However, I was curious and figure I should see it once. I wanted to see the bright lights and an Elvis impersonator. I also had left the city of Chicago in about 6 months, so I thought I should leave for a bit.

My vacation was actually really good for my dancing. Despite being quite sick the bulk of the trip, I had a 2 hour private lesson with Aradia of Las Vegas. I only heard of her from Bhuz, which is a shame. I think she’s one of those kind of hidden jewels in the dance world. I felt really comfortable with her, even though I just met her. She’s incredibly sweet, friendly, and humble. She seemed to really enjoy herself teaching.

My lesson was on Hagallah, Persian dance, and a brief intro to Turkish Oriental. I love the “folkloric” dances, so this really exciting for me. Aradia is very knowledgeable on what she teaches; I learned as much historically as I did about combos and style of dancing. Until I had emailed her, I had no idea that she could teach these things. My familiarity with her was that she was a cabaret dancer, not someone who was also a folkloric dancer. It just goes to show that it never hurts to ask someone.

I liked the Persian and Turkish Oriental the best. The Persian dancing she taught me had more theatrical elements to it; for instance, she taught me how Persian dancers will act out doing their makeup during slow parts of songs. As much as I love dancing to the music and just feeling the drums or the violin, I prefer somewhat of a story or a mood for dancing. The Turkish Oriental is different from what I’m used to with Egyptian Oriental. Turkish is bigger and more energetic. Having done Egyptian-based technique for so long, I found doing the Turkish really difficult, even though they were moves I was familiar with. Hagallah was fun, but going into it, I didn’t know that it was a coming of age dance. Since Aradia studied this dance under three different people, she has solid knowledge. The hagallah felt much like the Aida Nour workshop dances; very simple but intriguing.

I saw a Cirque du Soleil show, Mystere, while there. I wasn’t expecting to be inspired by it in terms of my dancing. The attention to detail was breathtaking in the costumes. The performers were always in character, even if they were rather difficult to see (balcony singers off to the side). The physical movement was gorgeous; they weren’t just performing stunts but doing artistic work. I haven’t read much about the show, but there was some kind of story or theme in it. Adding that really blended everything well and made a cohesive show that could amuse a child or an adult. I know I can’t do a show of that magnitude, but I’d like to do a show that’s powerful and can reach so many people on different levels.

Now I’m back to the daily grind, with about 2 weeks left of vacation. Time has really flown.

 

Las Vegas

I have to go to a meeting with my advisor, but I thought I’d announce that I made it back to my apartment at midnight. OHare was a mess of problems. I will write more about my trip later today or tomorrow.

 

Viva Las Vegas

A few seconds ago, I just sent off my application to one of the schools (a Dec. 15 deadline, ouch). With that out of the way (and the worrying begins, along with the dash to finish off other apps), I need to pack for Vegas and get out of the cold Chicago weather!

Have a good weekend. I’ll be back on Tuesday.

 

The little personal statement that could

I’ve been working on my personal statement more vigorously since class left out. Because I’m going to Vegas and will be without steady internet (not to mention relaxing), I had to up the deadline for myself from 15 Dec. to 12 Dec. I know 3 days doesn’t sound like a lot, but you never know.

I’m not normally a work in public kind of gal, but for this, I learned that I work better at a cafe than at home. I think it has something to do with the weather. It’s cold here (right now we are about 10 degrees above 0 F), and when this

is your view, you tend to go for the cozy and cheerful. There’s something about working the cafe that makes me more productive, even though there are plenty of people to watch.

The game plan for today is to get everything written so that I can sit on it, forget it, and edit it on Monday. Hope for the best for me, please?