theyellowhobbit

Interesting fact of the day:

Although Fresh Grocer is sold out of dayquil [in the caplet form at least, and I can't take liquid cough medicine] the convenience store underneath 1920 Commons, which takes dining dollars, sells both dayquil and nyquil, in both solid and liquid forms. Yay! Free [or prepaid] drugs!

In other news, I have hair dye on both of my arms, and all overmy shirt. Fortunately the shirt is already in bad condition and I just happened to be wearing it when GM decided at 9:45 PM that she wanted to dye her hair. She's a redhead now, thanks to me! [I learn from the best, sirena_lupin.]

The sickness of death made most of yom tov quite awful. There were times that I felt fevery, and achey, and really thought that I was going to die or something. And the entire time my throat has been in pain.

I didn't want to go to Student health unless I knew I was sick enough to go and possibly break yom tov. Of course, I had no way of knowing how sick I was, since I had no thermometer. EB had one in her room from when her roommate was sick, and it turned out I had a 100.6! That was wednesday night. So Wednesday and Thursday morning I skipped services since I couldn't get out of bed on Wednesday and woke up too late on Thursday. Either way, I was in no shape to do a happy singingy shacharit for CJC.

After the insanity that was Wednesday night, I crashed at Mikey's. I didn't want to stay in 308, because I had just taken a nap [which made me feel worse] and wasn't going to sleep right away, and didn't want to hang around in the dark by myself because in general I need light. And it was cooler in there than it was in 308. Using Mikey's extra sheets, I slept in groovin_reuven's bed, since he was away in Lower Merion anyways. Don't worry, we didn't infest anything. And you were the one who probably got me sick in the first place, so you can't re-get the virus.

And Thursday marked the actual trip to student health. Before that we went to Hillel for Mikey to eat lunch and me to watch people eat lunch and drink water. I also stopped in 308 to change my shirt (cynara_linnaea, next door and entering the High rise whe I did, had a peasant top I had given her freshman year when I didn't think I'd be wearing short sleeves any more. Some of my clothes are ones I wouldn't ask back [like my halter top] but now I'm thin enough for the peasant tops. If I can ever get into the black skirt with butterflies, I will be estatic.) and Simone was there. Apparently she had been worried about me since I never came back and I wasn't at either OCP or CJC davening, and "no one" knew where I was. At least a few people kinda knew I was crashing at Mikey's, and I was fine. I would have told her had I seen her between when I decided to go there and when I actually went there, but I didn't see her. I thought we had told cynara_linnaea, AA, AB, LS, levana_b, arigi, masteraleph, and EB, but I guess not. Then again, this is the same Simone who when I went to UMD 2 weeks ago called on Sunday, saying "Rachel! You weren't at services or the tisch and I didn't see you all weekend! Are you ok?" Me:"Um.. I've been in Maryland this entire time." Her: "Oh." Yeah. Silly Simone.

And student health told me I had a virus, which the doctor herself had last week, which should go away feverwise soon, but destroyed the lining of my throat, and it will take 6 weeks for the cells to grow back completely, but I should feel better before then. And I'm no longer contagious.

My triage was at 2:45 and my appointment was at 3:45 so in between I showed Mikey the museum, and he got to meet Janet Monge!! And yes, he agrees about her awesomeness. Trivia of the day: She has a bunch of stuffed gorillas on her shelves. Most of them she has give away. They originally were put up on her door as a prank by one of her students!

On the way back from student health, we saw Ben, who was on the cell phone, but I talked to him for like a minute. He thought I was better and that passover was over, and both were wrong assumptions, since it was still passover, and I'm still sick! But I was cheerful because I was outside and now I knew what I had and that it's going away soon!

I was so happy when Yom Tov ended. I could have tea and cough drops again!

I also found out that the Jewish Studies Department gave me a Brenner Award for 1000$!! This amount may decrease depending on my other awards, but yay! 1000$!!!!

That's it. I'll write a dream post later if I have time.

I feel sick. I'm all stuffed up and tired and icky. My mom is also sick, and she might have caught it from me, even though she got sick yesterday while I was in New York. It's only 10:14 and it feels like 12am.

That being said, levana_b's house was awesome. Her dog Shatzi is really cute, and acts like a giant cat. And it was a nice relaxing shabbat where I got to be anti-social, but yet still hang out with levana_b. No cooking involved. Which I guess could be said of my Shabbats in Providence as well, but there's no one my age there.

It's weird, I'm like maybe 2-4 years older than some of the kids, yet I feel closer to the parents, like Dr. Gottesman, and Mrs. Yavner and Mrs. Felder. And they're all in their 40s, so almost my parents age. Maybe because they're also BTs*, while the kids are b'nei BTs*** and thus FFBs**. And there are some things that someone born into that Ultra-Orthodox community wouldn't get. They're nto as worldly people, which is not a bad thing, but it makes them different from me.

Or maybe it's just that I'm in college, and the kids are still in high school. Maybe college really does make you mature. Though I don't feel mature. But at Penn I don't feel there's a huge difference between the people who grew up frum and the people who became frum at Penn. Maybe it's because Modern Orthodox Jews are more assimilated.

I tried a little experiment. levana_b's parents were asking me such things like where I was from, whether or not I went to seminary, etc. And although neither of them grew up frum, I still wanted to see if I could pass off as being an FFB. Though then I asked levana_b, and she said that her mom knew beforehand that I was a BT. Yet it didn't seem like she did. Maybe she didn't remember.

In any case by Saturday I decided I was being silly, after all Mrs. S is a convert and Mr. S. is a BT. And unless I want to lie or be evasive, there's no way for me to pass as an FFB. I don't think that makes me any less frum.


*BT= Baal[at] teshuva. Someone who was not born Orthodox, but became so later in life, or someone who started off religious, became unreligious, and then became religious again.
**FFB= frum from birth. Someone who was born into the orthodox world.
***B'nei BTs= children of BTs.
There is no apostraphe in BTs, or in FFBs. Technically it shouldn't even be written like that, because the plural of ba'al teshuva is ba'alei teshuva, bu I guess they need a way to abbreviate it. But an apostraphe is either possesive or contractive, and BTs is just plural. Kind of like the 1920s or something. People keep on doing that on Beyond BT and it annoys the heck out of me.[/rant]

I feel so dead. I still have a store throat that's filled with fleghm [I'm sure you wanted to know that.] It'll probably turn into Bronchitis soon if it hasn't already. But I don't have time to go to Student Health until after Ruderman's class, which I still have to go to, even if someone else gave him my paper for me. I'll cough and die during class, and get everyone else sick. At least it will prove my dedication as a student. Can someone please come over and make me chicken soup and type my paper as I dictate it to you and hug me and make me not sick?