This past weekend

Hi! Luke here to inform y'all about his incredibly uneventful weekend.

Friday

The Vanderbilt University Orchestra (that includes me!) gave a performance at 8pm that included J.S. Bach's Concerto for Violin and Oboe (Carolyn Huebl and Jared Hauser, soloists) as well as the fourth movement (Adagietto) from Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Good stuff.

Saturday

Live at Rand! From 6pm-10pm, students gathered in Rand Dining Hall to experience the diverse talents of Archive Nights, Army of Infants, Whisky Angel, and Resistance House Band (featuring our very own John Sims-Jones). The concert gave me a temporary hearing impairment, but it was totally worth it!

Sunday

I rewatched the epic war movie Patton (1970), based upon General George S. Patton's campaigns in North Africa and France during WWII. This movie is often considered one of the greatest war movies ever made, and it's a personal favorite of mine.

Also, at some point during the last few days, I stumbled upon the Celebrity Look A Like Generator. According to this generator, the celebrity that yours truly most closely resembles is - I kid you not - Silvio Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister of Italy.

Pictured: me?

Peace out.

Super Spectacular Musical Weekend!

Hey everyone! Jacob here.  I've been pretty busy the last few weeks, but its that time again! So listen tight, and I'll let you know what's going on this weekend!

Saturday, we've got one of our biggest events of the semester, Live at Rand!  There's quite the line-up planned for it, ranging all sorts of local musical tastes, so if there's not something you'd enjoy there, well, then I'm pretty sure you're a tree or something else that lacks the ability to hear.

Pictured: You, if you don't like any sort of music at all.

Then, right after that on Sunday afternoon, our very own Nell will be singing in the VUCC Spring Concert!  The VUCC always puts on wonderful shows (I would know, I've been there!), so this one promises to hit the same level of excellence.

Of course, we're all busy this time of year, and free time if hard to come by.  But if you're available, these are the PERFECT chances to let loose and enjoy yourself for a few hours. And the best part? They're both FREE! 

Revolutionary France and Dinosaurs: What more could I ask from a weekend?

If you haven’t noticed, the Pub is one of our favorite places to eat as a Mayfield. We started off our weekend there on Friday night with some dinner and lively, varied discussion that ranged from fond remembrance Harry Potter to heated controversy about the ethics of using drones in the US and plenty of things in between!
 

What Enjolras actually thought about Marius and Cosette

After, Linda and I went to see Les Miserables, presented by our beloved VSG. It’s a stunning movie, and VSG always does a great job supplying theater food! My favorites were the gummy fruit snacks. I swear I could live on those. Though it’s a heart-breaking story, pieces of humor can be found. :) See the left, courtesy of the user tainteh on deviantart:

After that, I enjoyed some well deserved sleep. Saturday wasn’t anything unusual - I worked with some pretty cool amigos in the Call Center, and then studied and cleaned the day away! I would post a picture of my “clean” room here...but it’s already untidy again.

Sunday was more eventful. I went to church in the morning, and in Relief Society (the hour of church when women meet together) we discussed encouraging quote by an old LDS prophet, Lorenzo Snow: “Do not expect to become perfect at once. If you do, you will be disappointed. Be better today than you were yesterday, and better tomorrow than you were today.” Sometimes, I think Vandy students obsess over constant perfection in our schoolwork, relationships, and life, when maybe constant improvement would be a more realistic and still valuable goal. :)

 Then, I came home, and planned to have a super focused afternoon and evening but nope! DINOTOPIA.

So this is Nell’s favorite movie. Basically, two half brothers who hate each other wash up on the shores of an undiscovered land after a plane crash. Oh, and this undiscovered land has a whole society of human and dinosaurs. It’s a 4 hour long epic that includes all kinds of cool ideas: importance of tradition versus innovation, love triangles, scary dinosaurs, life philosophy, family relationships, peaceful dinosaurs, treasure hunting, flying dinosaurs, personal destiny, and my very favorite, baby dinosaurs.
Spoiler Alert: The very best part of the film is when one of the brothers - Carl -wins best essay in an important examination by simply writing the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody, sine no one in this isolated culture has heard it before. "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. open you eyes, look up to the skies, and see."

And with this picture of the movie's adorable baby dino, I bid you goodbye and hope that you have a lovely week, dear readers!

Love ya much!
Sam

 

Post-Spring Break Festivities!

Hello Vandyland! Lindsey Franklyn here! If you guys don't know it already, today's our mid-week blog. And on our midweek blog, we like to let you guys know what's happening on campus, just in case you don't have plans for the weekend...or maybe you're just a busy body who likes to know everything that goes on campus. (It's probably a good party skill, but you have to refresh your memory every week, unfortunately).

Back to this week and the events going on, however.

You don't have to be Superman to save lives when you have Marrowthon here! Tomorrow, March 14, VCS will be hosting its annual Marrowthon event of the year. It's from 11am - 6:30 pm, plenty of time to come by if you have pesky labs in the middle of the afternoon!

If you're interested in learning more about what's going on, I suggest you check out their Facebook Link. It's bound to be a great event, and every little bit help!

Feels incoming.

VSG Presents Les Mis! And in case you guys don't know anything about Les Mis (perhaps you're living under a rock, or you're a part of Les Mis fans who are 'too cool' to go see the movie), VSG will be having Les Mis showings on March 15, 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. For more information, give a quick look at this link. (I'd also like to point out how many people are going; it's a definite indication of the movie's quality).

Come join VandyIJM as they (and you, hopefully!) stand for 27 hours in solidarity for our 27 million brothers and sisters enslaved worldwide. Rest assured, you don't have the stay the entire 27 hours, but any hour that you could stay would be great, not to mention an awesome show of solidarity on the part of Vanderbilt students. For more information, check out their facebook page, where you can sign up for a shift on their google document. The event is March 14 to March 15, so mark it on your calendars! 

Don't forget to come out and support the Baan Jing Jai orphanage weekend! Vanderbilt Running Club and  Thai Your Shoes Foundation are working together to put on a 5K for our the Baan Jing Jai orphanage in Pattaya, Thailand. The 5K is happening this Saturday at 10:30 a.m. on alumni lawn, so no excuses about not knowing where it is! Sign up information here

And so the second half begins...

But first, I get to reflect upon my absolutely MARVELOUS Spring Break!!! Oh, yeah, btws, this is Nell! ;D

So you see, I'm in this awesome group called the Vanderbilt University Concert Choir. Cool, you already knew that. But really, if you love to sing or just love listening to singers, come check us out, join us, or just attend our concerts! :D But let's move on. Every spring, we are fortunate enough to go on a tour to random awesome cities. Washington D.C., Orlando, Chicago/St.Louis, and New Orleans. We go sing at churches and high schools to advertise what is the amazing Vanderbilt!

This year, we went to Chicago and St. Louis! See, look at our awesome tour shirt. (The blank spot has all of our names.) It was pretty amazing, honestly. Our Vice President did a magnificent job planning it, and we had plenty of choirites from both places to help us find awesome places and have fun times. One of those awesome places was... oh wait for it, wait for it....

THE ZOOOOOOOOOO!

It was FREE! Guys. I really love zoos. Like. I really really love zoos. And let me tell you, Lincoln Park Zoo was pretty amazing, actually! So I went with 7 other wonderful people who were just as excited to go see the amazing animals. It was a really enormous zoo, but somehow, my legs held up rather well, which was super exciting! Our lovely bus driver took us there, too, which we were really fortunate he did. Yay for awesome people! So, how about I show you some of the awesome animals we saw? Are you ready? It's going to be a lot!

So I'm actually really proud of this picture...  

Have some fearsome ants (aka choirites).

MEERKAAAATS! 

Ok, this aardvark was too cute.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, you may see a prime example
of the primates Homo sapiens in their natural domain.  

This guy kept stretching out his neck. He was great. <3

So, I should've paid more attention...
This animal I have never seen before, and it looks super awesome, so I am sad I do not know its name. 

I introduce you to Mr. Dwarf Caiman.
I will own one one day, that I can promise. 

All righties, so there is the end of THAT onslaught of pictures! That was just a very small portion of what was at the park, actually. We were quite fortunate in the weather, in that it was a bright shiny day in Chicago, and that a lot of the exhibits were actually indoors. It was amazing! Something even more amazing and a "what the heck" moment? I ran into some friends there! They were on ASB (Alternative Spring Break; it's a great program that you should check out if you like to volunteer), and they just happened to be at the zoo during their short break at the exact time we were there.
... What.
So yes! I saw some awesome band folk, and it was super exciting to see them.

We had a random snowball fights as well, and I got to hug an awesome little hippo statue, because hippos are awesome. Basically, the day was full of win, as you can see below in our final group photo.

But anyways! Enough with the zoo. The rest of tour was amazing as well. One of the schools was cancelled due to snow, so one set of choirite parents invited us to their home and feed us as they had planned, and then we sang for their family! Their dog barked at the beginning of the Alma Mater, but let's be honest, it was really loud. I dunno, it just would be really cool to have a university choir singing in your home, don't you think?

VUCC in the Basilica

One more highlight from this trip, though (since I overloaded on the zoo). Our choir sang at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis. .... Wow. Just. Wow. That was phenomenal. I wish I could share a video here, because the reverb lasted for 7 seconds. Meaning it echoed for 7 seconds. That's a long time. All the pictures inside are mosaics; no paintings at all! Furthermore, 95% of these mosaics were completed by a father-son duo over 76 years. Isn't that crazy? Basically, it was a very powerful concert. In fact, our tour guide complimented us grandly in stating we were one of the best groups she had heard sing in the Basilica!

As per usual, the end of tour became rather emotional as we held banquet, where all the highs and lows (sharps and flats, haha, get it?), funny quotes, sweethearts, and Secret Buddies (like Secret Santa, but over an entire week) were announced. Then on Thursday, we left St. Louis for Nashville, were my Tata came to pick me up to go home. The rest of my week was relaxing at home, and it was exactly what I needed.

Now, here's to a good second half of the semester, for all of us!
Nell signing off.