phoenix entertainment: Week 3: enjoying our classes, a night of dancing, and the start of ...

Monday, July 23, 2012

Week 3: enjoying our classes, a night of dancing, and the start of ...

Mercy

?Ramadan Mubarak!?

Ramadan Mubarak everyone! Well, finally the day has arrived when all the Muslims fast and I did so too on Friday. But it was really hard for me. I didn?t know that they don?t open the dining hall early in the morning and I just found out the night before right before the retiring time (at 11 pm when all the students are supposed to go to bed). We Cilley Muslim girls were horrified and five of us tried to gather food to eat at night. One of my dorm advisors was nice enough to give us some food to eat to survive the tough practice of fasting. And so early in the morning we ate the oatmeal bars and drank lots of water hoping that it would keep us alive till 8:18 pm when it?s time to break the fast. During the iftaar (when the fast is officially broken), the food that was served was delicious. There were lots of other Muslims I got to know there too. There were students from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Emirates, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon and even surprisingly Muslim students from Italy and France. I never expected Exeter to have so many Muslim students. Talking about religion reminds me that I went to a Catholic church last Sunday. As it was my first time in a Catholic church, during the mass, I was really amazed by the melodious hymns and prayers.

Speaking of prayers, I badly need people to pray for me so that I get a good grade on my first drawing project. So far, we have learned using pencils, charcoal and sketch pencils but now we have moved on to using pastel colored pencils. Now we are learning to play with color and add life to our pictures with it. And in my creative writing class, we have now started writing stories and create fiction. And last but not the least: my electronics class is going as usual. We finally figured out that if there is danger then the power box has a red light that will glow brightly to warn us. So the class is going smoothly, with more red, green and blue LEDs lighting up every day, and no more fires.

The most exciting thing that happened this week is of course the dance party that happened tonight. I danced a lot in my 1.5 inches high heels and my legs hurt a lot. Even in the air-conditioned room, we were sweating like pigs because of dancing so much. Well with this good note, I am going to finish my blog post. Oh, and one more thing, we are going to Massachusetts tomorrow! I am going to board a train for the first time in the U.S. We will go to visit the Asian University for Women Support Foundation, have lunch with them and take a tour of Harvard University and around Boston. I can?t wait for tomorrow! See you all next and, sadly, the second-to-last week.

Kritika

?All of us here in the Exeter summer program came from diverse backgrounds and languages, and in these three weeks have made such good friendships that it?s hard to believe only a couple weeks are left.?

At this moment, I wish I had the powers to hold these days back and live them forever. All of us students here in the Exeter summer program came from diverse backgrounds and languages, and in these three weeks have made such good friendships that it?s hard to believe only a couple weeks are left. This week small and exciting things happened. I especially liked the enthusiasm among the Muslim students here to fast despite all the big challenges of staying without food and water for more than sixteen hours.

Finally this week ended with a blast dance party, and I have just been back from it. It was fun to see girls worrying about their dresses from a week ahead and asking around of people what they are gonna wear. I also joined them and went to several of my friends? rooms to see their dresses, and they all were so pretty. But! The funniest thing is that most of them were wearing different dresses than they showed me. Girls were looking so much different that for a few, I had hard time to recognize them. All of the upper school kids were together and it was a great opportunity to make new friends. I had lots of fun, though I am exhausted now.

Mercy and I are looking forward to meeting Ms. Katsuki tomorrow; she is one of the friends of AUW and she works for them in Boston. We will go with her to visit Harvard and probably see Mr. Kamal?s house. Tomorrow we have to wake up really early and catch the train at 7:17 a.m. We will travel by ourselves for the first time in the U.S, and will be back by 6:00 p.m. I hope it would be a fun day and I will share the experiences next week.