Some call this “Hell Week,” in reference to the insane amount of all-nighters, papers, and projects leading up to finals. I on the other hand would like call this an opportunity to practice stamina.

Chrissy and I both felt overwhelmed with work last night, so we escaped. We brought our laptops and our to-do list minds and settled into Leotah’s Place in Kensington.

Despite it being only my second time at Leotah’s, it somehow reminded me of home. As we walked in, a table of 8 women were knitting and talking over tea. In the next room were a few people hunched over their computers listening to music and typing furiously into their keyboards. Then, pushing back a little bit more and through a waterfall of beads, sat a couple on their first date.

Chrissy and I awkwardly sat down at our table and overheard the making of blissful conversation from the couple a few tables away. We decidedly plowed away at homework and swapped music suggestions as is tradition. Here was me stalling on homework, playing around on Photobooth.

For newbies to Leotah’s, it is a quaint little cafe with coffee, tea, sandwiches and desserts. There is nothing terribly out of the ordinary, except low prices and comfy atmosphere. My favorite part is the wall of beads one must walk through to enter the last room. I often like to go through this passageway unnecessarily and make feeble attempts at creating the sound of wind chimes.

You’ve got to be a kid sometimes. Runaway to grab coffee, have good people around, and play in some beads if it makes you’re heart happy.

Yours,

Sarah Hawkins

I realize that I risk sounding like a big old hipster but I just saw 4 concerts in 10 days. Thankfully I worked all summer with the knowledge that I would become a concert junkie being that we are in Philly which has a huge music scene, but never did I ever think I would have experienced the craziness that ensued. Actually, I knew pretty well what I would be getting myself into but alas here is my recap on the best week ever.

Last Thursday, November 4th Jackie Burke and I traveled the blue line all the way down to the 69 street station to see our beloved Interpol. This band has been on my bucket list since the 11th grade. We got to the Tower Theater and were easily the youngest people there. Nonetheless we had ourselves a ball and belted out all of the words to our favorite songs like the annoying 20-somethings we are.

Friday through Sunday- Immersion Weekend (you can see pictures on our FB page of this couple of days)

Monday, November 8th? I forget. Jackie, Victoria, Laura and I took the Megabus from the 30th street station in Philly to D.C. to see Jonsi. We met a lot of really cool people, listened to a great opener called “Mountain Man” then had our hearts burst from pure, unadulterated happiness during the entire set of Jonsi. So good. Mind-blowing even. We got back to Philly around 3, taking a cab back from the megabus stop.

Tuesday, November 9th I had a coffee date with the lovely Chrissy Gelok.

Wednesday, November 10th was Victoria’s 21st birthday so of course we were going to celebrate with the best, Sufjan Stevens. The show was in the Kimmel Center, and it was absolutely beautiful. A lot of people from Messiah went to the concert, main campus and MCPC alike. After probably what was the best concert experience of my life, somewhere around 17 of us went to IHOP, then returned to our respective campuses.

Friday, November 12th I had another date night with Chrissy and Annie. The best.

Saturday, November 13th one of my best friends from Messiah, Beth Boyer, came to see Ben Folds with me at the Tower Theater. With a little bit of batting of eyelashes to the usher and some networking skills, we managed to work our row T seats up to the 10th row from the front. We rushed to the stage for the encore, and were 10ft away from Mr. Ben Folds himself. Ahhh. The best.

That night I went home, hitching a ride with Beth. Now I have returned to a pile of work, but I must say it was definitely worth it. I probably won’t be going to any concerts in the near future, but I do have my eyes on some Josh Ritter tickets for February if anyone would like to take me.

Yours,
Sarah Hawkins

I spent some time this weekend in a different city, and that city would be New York City. For my art history class, we went to the city on a field trip to visit the Met, and look at the impressionist paintings. It was a Saturday was devoted to art. A two hour lecture from my professor, and then I was free to roam around the museum. . I have two obsessions right now: the chicken parm hoagie from Hoagie’s Heroes in the SAC, and John Baldessari. I had no idea there was a special John Baldessari exhibit going on in the Met right now, but I freaked out when I learned so. It was amazing. I love him even more now. If anyone is ever in NYC this season, go check out his show. It is running until early January. The best. Besides that, I really appreciate that the art history courses understand the value of seeing art in person. Looking at a Monet or a Seurat on powerpoint is just not the same as seeing the real thing in person.

I could talk about art for literal hours, but I won’t, haha.

After the museum a funny thing happened. Jackie and I went to Central Park because it was beautiful out, and we were just lying in the grass, and I see a man walking towards me and smiling. He started talking to me, and asked me if I was from the city. I was slightly weirded out, so I told him I was from Philly. He responded, “Oh, well Philly is a suburb of New York.”

It was a joke obviously, but it addresses the mentality that people- me included- have of New York City being the center of it all, and then everywhere else just only being second best. Like, “Philadelphia is nice, but it isn’t New York.” I mean, New York City is huge, it has 8 million people living there, there are so many opportunities there, so many things to do, every foreigner ever visits there. It is the city so nice they named it twice. But what about the other cities? Why do the other cities just not even compare? What is it about New York that people are so infatuated with that they don’t give anywhere else a second thought?  I don’t have the answer, but being here, I have really learned to appreciate the nuances of Philadelphia, and embrace the differences between Philly and the Big Apple.

That’s all I have.

-Victoria

This weekend, amongst the Halloween hullabaloo that was Philadelphia, I played in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament.

Victoria, Jackie, and I play for the girls’ team at Messiah, Mastodon Revolution. As soon as we came to Philly campus, we knew that we had to keep playing. With that said, we befriended the Ultimate kids at Temple. It couldn’t have been better timing. Temple was in the midst of trying to start a girls’ team, but didn’t have the turnout, we were looking to keep up and improve our skills.

It was a match made in heaven (well, Philly).

Another MCPC lady, Jean Zipagan, joined once we started going to Temple’s practices. The momentum has kept up. What was once a humble beginning of 6 or 7 players has now developed into practices capping somewhere near 20.

In regards to this weekend, Messiah was put on the waiting list for a particular tournament that Temple got into but still needed more players for. The girls that we (MCPC ladies) were practicing with were now side by side some of our teammates and dear friends from home.

Over all we played hard and won a few games. More importantly than that though, we played together. I say that with the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy, but I don’t particularly care. It was truly a beautiful thing.

It was great to see Temple and Messiah girls alike hugging, huddling to keep warm, and cheering on one another.  It was definitely a “Proud Mama” kind of moment for me, although I could never be credited with creating such a phenomenon.

My worlds are continuously colliding, and I love it.

Thanks ladies for playing your hearts out and inevitably making my weekend that much better.

Sincerely,

Sarah Hawkins.

Carving it up

The final round of donut eating

Juss chillin

Today’s topic of discussion: The Halloween party we had at MCPC on Friday. Real food, real fun.

First order of business: The costumes. I was surprised by how creative and into it everyone was with dressing up. This is coming from the girl who in 8th grade wore a brown oversized sweatshirt and called herself the molasses monster because the rest of her friends were the characters from Candyland. I actually really liked my get up this year; I went as Andy Warhol, pop artist extraordinaire. Other notable characters were Kanye West and Taylor Swift, Waldo, and a turnip. Dr. Peterson’s was the funniest, in my opinion, as he went as a younger version of himself. Not much has changed really.

Kanye and Dr. P fought for the glory

Secondly- The activities. There was pumpkin carving and decorating. This is always fun, but I don’t trust myself with a knife so I did not partake. I think I actually cut myself on Yi’s retractable plastic knife a few times. It was mainly psychological though because I thought it was real. One thing I am always up for is the good old donutonastring eating contest. I like to talk myself up beforehand and intimidate the competition. It never works. There was also a photo booth section complete with props where you can get some free memories from a DSLR camera on a tripod. Fancyyyyyy. Lastly, the dance-off. MCPCers faced off against each other on the Wii’s “Just Dance” game. Alejandro surprised us all and took home the prize. He had a huge smile on his face the whole time he was dancing. He was also in a skirt.

Third, and probably most important, the snackage- We had DIY caramel apples, cheese and crackers (a classic), chips and dip, and of course, CANDY. I went to town on the cheese. I am definitely missing cheese in the cafeteria. This is a hint for the food committee.

So that is it. I had an awesome time, I believe everyone else did, and I was at a Frisbee tournament the rest of the weekend so it was actually my only chance to celebrate Halloween. Good show.

-Victoria