Toronto

(writing on brick is from the asylum and it says born to be murdered)

1. So I got in to Toronto a week ago and it has been nonstop exploring, reading, writing, and partying. We are staying at the new college of the University of Toronto and I have a decent single room (with incredible AC). The University of Toronto (UofT) is in the heart of downtown toronto and there are trees everywhere - its amazing how much greenery there is on the campus, and on the all the streets. There are so many residential streets right in the heart of downtown with neat little houses which is cool. Anyhow we read a book called the Skin of a Lion which was pretty baller to kick things off - and we had our classes out in this little outdoor enclave on the campus which was neat. The book was really good - all about early 1900s toronto but really interesting because it was written in the 80s. Been watching all the nfl and nhl games here (people go nuts for nhl up here).
So some highlights - went to the hockey hall of fame and got to shoot on a virtual goalie and also be a goalie against virtual players, also take pics of a stanley cup replica and visit the predators little display case which was cool. They had a ton of old stanley cup footage on tvs everywhere which was wild. Also goalies didn't used to have masks - crazy! Also played hockey foosball which was tight.
Read a bestselling mystery thriller set in toronto called the killing circle by a guy named andrew pyper who met with us and showed us all the places people die in his book and stuff which was cool. Also talked about how popular fiction is excluded in the academy and how thats kind of/ but not always/ lame.
A guy who runs a premiere book/publishing blog called bookninja met with us and talked about how publishing is changing (not dying) and the advent of e-books and how he hates drm and big book companies that really screw over little independent stores. He was pretty funny.
Last weekend was an event called doors open toronto where they open up all the government (and some other) buildings to the public for 2 days. We went to an old fire station (got to hold a haligan and some pick axes and shit which was tight) the toronto archives which was just like the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a castle, an REI type place with a green roof that was like 11k square feet of beautiful grass on top of the building, and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health which used to be an insane asylum and was built by patient labor and they etched interesting stuff into the walls.
More to come here are some pics.

Music/Books/Frisbee

Lately I've been listening to - The Bad Plus, a jazz band that do crazy cool covers of songs you know, Paul van Dyk, trance music, and my roommates country band playing Ophelia in our apartment a lot. links - badplus

I've been reading - Usher by B.H. Fairchild, an incredible and super heady book of poems that are just out of this world, links - The Gray Man ; Frieda Pushnik . I also just read a little 7 comic series called Eternals, written but not created by Neil Gaiman. Also read Neil Gaiman's The Books of Magic which was okay, but he has way better stuff out there.

I got the job as the prose editor for our school's Literary Magazine, The Leviathan! I'll send y'all issues when I start working on them next fall, it should be pretty fun - it's a good group of people working on the magazine.

One of my friends, Lisa Sundeen, and I are currently working on a big project to move to paperless teacher evaluations which would be posted online for students to see, so that you could know how a teacher or class is rated. We are modeling this loosely on Pomona's one, but our goal is to make it the standardized version of class/teacher evals for all classes so that teachers aren't doubling up with their own evals.

Got a costume tournament in kansas this weekend - i think we have 9 people going which should be tough but fun. Bravo early tryout scrimmage against mamabird tomorrow night. That's about it. Everybody post - it's good for ya.

What's everyone else reading/listening to?

spring break

I went halfway down the baha peninsula with about 40 other kids. Legitimately one of the coolest places I have ever been. Every day the most pressing thing we had to do was wake up before the fish taco stand closed (and get these great lunches for less than four dollars). The whole place was actually ridiculously inexpensive. In total everything was about two hundo, gas, insurance, food, drink, stay. We had 4 super nice houses in a villa directly on the beach and I was staying in the best one with a close group of friends from school.



But in the end the thing I will probably remember the most was the bio-luminescence. I had never even heard of it before this trip and the ocean was full of it every night. One night me and Brett decided to go out and the ocean was like a swimming pool (in that there was no wind, no waves) and the night was very dark so it was perfect for seeing the luminescence. We went out on a kayak and the ocean was breathtaking. Each paddle stroke lit up the water like a sparkler and the wake of the boat was this explosion of white green light. When we got going fast enough the front of the kayak rose up and a this ball of light filled the gap, also enough light was created that the bottom of the ocean (5 or 6 feet) was clearly visible as if we had flashlights covering that area. People from the shore watched us go back and forth for about fourty five minutes it was that enthralling.
like this - but way cooler - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN1Yxq8KMsw (1:12 is particularly good)
We played a lot of magic, settlers and cornhole.
I also learned how to drive stick (sort of).

happy birthday

mom and mr spiva!

little lion man

I too have a tournament this weekend in Stanford, I think/hope we will do well. We got third at the last tournament and beat some schools that are way bigger than us (we were expected to get 9th).
In shades [my acapella group] I got the solo for the song fireflies by owl city. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psuRGfAaju4. its catchy and overplayed but i like it.
The bike has made life so much easier. Back and forth walks that used to take 30 minutes now take 4.
One of my friends at school broke his sunglasses and then gave them to me and then another friend fixed them later. Weird story but basically i have a sweeeet pair of blueblockers, which are these sunglasses which take out all of the blue and turn the entire field of vision into sepia. For some reason i really like to play frisbee in them. Everyone looks super weird and it helps me focus on the game.
I have been watching alot of the winter olympics recently and its awesome. Personally the olympics are my favorite sporting events to watch. While I may prefer the summer games because everyone gets so into it, the winter olympic events can be pretty interesting as well.
USA!
-markham

Sorry for Lack of Posting Lately

So Trouble In Vegas... was a bust. We went 3-1 for the tournament (loss to illinois, but beat oregon state who beat illinois) but the tournament ended up being cancelled on saturday morning which was super lame. We found a small park and did some random scrimmages against other teams (lewis and clark and some people) - but nothing super serious. The strip wasn't as fun either - because they didn't organize a party, but oh well. Decent time overall, but for vegas/13 hour drive (26 total) it needed to be better.

Got in a little trouble recently because I slept walked into a girls room and she woke up to me eating pretzels at her desk - crazy, I know. I've sleptwalked two or three times in the last year, but really none the year before last. It's pretty infrequent but really lame. Anyhow she freaked out to wake up and find some random guy in her room (in a towel no less) and then I guess I just left and went back to sleep in nikki gurley's room. The girl told her RA what happened and then they were in freak out mode, but aparently i had some sleepwalking conversations of complete nonsense with nikki (ex. nikki asked me where I had been, and I told her "the second floor bathroom", then she asked why because she lives on the 3rd floor and I never go to the second floor bathroom, and I replied "because it's the normal one." and when they realized I was sleepwalking everything was ok. Anyhow, it was really weird/irritating.

Anyhow I'm in a creative writing class taught by a woman named Bonnie Nadzam - who is brilliant and a great teacher. She is a grad student of TC Boyle if any of y'all read his stuff, which is also good. I'm really liking the class, and I have to write 15 pages for tomorrow (trying to get us to write without thinking too much), so this is all for now.

Also, I applied to be a NUTC counselor - which, if i get, would be incredible.

Thanks for reading, more updates after this weekend (im headed to Albuquerque, NM for a tourney.)

Stories of late

Speaking of bikes, I had to rescue mine a few weeks ago because I'd lost my keys (naturally). It was actually really fun because I went to get the receipt from the store from which I bought the bike, and then I set to work trying to steal my own bike. It was amazing that no one asked me any questions when I marched into the bike room of my old building with a three foot pair of bolt cutters. I left 25min later with a bike, a broken kryptonite lock, and a really satisfied look on my face, and still I got no questions, not even a second glance...

I have finally started making moves toward going to medical school, and it is looking like there is quite long road ahead. As of now I'm taking my MCATs in the middle of may, a week or two after my regular exams end. I'm in a Kaplan class with Beth and it's going alright, but there is a hell of a lot of info to cover between now and then. I've been having a lot of fun being in a class with beth again, it's been since highschool. One thing that got much simpler recently is deciding whether i'm going to take a year off before going to med school. I saw an adviser who said my app would be much stronger next year, after I have more clinical xp, so I have to spend the summer working with patients in philly or at vandy in some capacity or another. Hopefully my dad ca help me out with that. So, now I have to figure out what to do in my year off after college. It's scary having to think about the future like this, especially since planning is not my strong suit. I'm leaning towards international volunteering, probably something with a medical theme. A fraternity brother of mine is involved with this amazing program where they go to slums in India, fighting poverty with medicine and education. They rent an ambulance and treat children, handing out meds, giving bandages, vaccinations, etc. They hire a few doctors to oversee the operation and sign off on their diagnoses, and after they leave they pay the docs to come back once a week to check up on the kids. One interesting thing is that what they do for these children would probably be illegal in the US, but out of necessity it's welcomed in India. My only prpblem with what they are doing is that it doesn't at all get to the root of the problem, which is the severe malnourishment in the area.

On a lighter note, I have a frisbee tournament in NC this weekend, and I just collaborated with one of my friends on the team to redesign the upenn jerseys. if I can figure out how to add a picture i'll post it.



There we go. Cool right? the fish is actually part of the upenn crest, and the thing on the shoulder is a bit of graffiti that says "Void" which is our team name. The team is way more fun this year, even if we aren't as good as we used to be. Hopefully this weekend we'll have better weather than two weeks ago (we played in 2 inches of snow, nearly froze to death)

Looking forward to skiing with Sam soon (and possibly jesse colton)
Hope everyone is doing well

Edward

Insert Interesting Title Here

I bought a road bike last week and it is shipping right now. Hopefully I can bring it home in the summer and use it as my main means of transportation if I get this sweet environmental internship I applied for. I am pretty confident and excited about getting the job (its in green hills).

I really like my drawing class so far. This is one of 18 drawing we had to do for a recent homework assignment. The drawing is a blind contour which means you can't look at your paper but simply follow the lines of the object you are drawing (no shading, coloring, filling in etc...) and they frequently get distorted in scale and image but this one turned out well. The teacher particularly liked this one and showed it to the class.

First frisbee tournament of the semester is this next weekend. I'm pumped.



ps my brother and i both independently decided that sean astin was our individual doppelganger (for a recent facebook look alike thing), except that i was sean astin from the goonies and he was sean astin from rudy. pretty funny. and then my mom made a picture of the astin family members looking like shofners, the one of my dad is kindof a stretch but its a good photo.

Honor Council Retreat

I'm on the Honor Council at Colorado College (its a group of kids that tries to promote a culture of integrity on campus through education [all the first years get presentations and candy] and events [barbecues, coffee, etc] -- we also investigate and have trials of people accused of plagiarism, cheating, etc) -- and each year we go to the CC cabin which is about an hour away from campus in the mountains. At the cabin we do new member orientation, as well as discuss new issues for the council. The new members are really great/intelligent/cool - one of them had a puppy named Koru that came up to the cabin with us (really awesome puppy, not quite Mushu level, but we are talking pretty great). We discussed two main issues. First was concerned with aderol and ritalin and whether or not the illegal use of these 'study' drugs is something that the honor council would persecute. The second was about confidentiality and the right of the accused to evidence brought against them. Anyhow, some pretty interesting topics but I won't go into them right now. Later in the night we had smores and dinner. Good time overall.

Trouble In Vegas (ultimate frisbee tournament) is coming up next weekend and I can't wait. Nikki is going to be taking some pictures with a super camera her dad lent her, so hopefully I'll have some neat stuff to post afterwards.

End of January

Spring 2010 Classes (also crazy that its already 2010)
Modern Architecture and Sustainability: This professor is amazing! He does not even have to bring notes to class, but talks the entire time non-stop and goes really in depth without making concepts or topics seem overbearing. Probably the class I look for to the most.
Natural Resource Economics and Policy: The prof worked in SoCal electricity for a very long time and he knows his business, very informative, very smart.
Art History [Ancient World]: I just added this course. Another lecture style course, a lot of slides and cool comparisons between ancient and modern art. Pretty straightforward and enjoyable.
Drawing 1: The teacher is really intimidating and harsh-grading wise. Almost the entire class did awfully on our first assignment, but I like her a lot. She is reminiscent of E, except way meaner.
CATZ: athletic training class twice a week, so sore

other things
-frisbee team is going to be really good this year
-acapella group just took four new members
-new room mate (old one abroad)
-finally stopped raining
-going to start writing comics for the newspaper again


-markham-

Winter Break + Seattle + Start of School Year

Winter Break - Highlights include seeing everyone, and dominating at Seven Little Idiots (a savage ultimate frisbee tournament in Athens, GA) where we routed a Ring Team, a bunch of other teams, and ended up 2nd place losing in the finals to a bunch of national champions. It was fun. Then I travelled to...

Seattle! -- where I visited my girlfriend and her family (which including all the step people was quite large). There is a picture of me with something called the troll which is this huge wild sculpture under a bridge with a vw bug in its hand. I ate a lot of great food (salmon, shrimp, crabcakes, and a dessert called the Lunar Lander), learned some karate from nikki (a blackbelt) and saw the Karate Dojo where she works. It was cool, I got to see a black belt demo team do a choreographed fight. I outjumped all of them and was able to touch the ceiling, that was really high. Muahah. Went to historic places in Seattle such as the pier and some really old bookstores and stuff, also read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which dad gave me -- it was addicting. One of the best parts of the trip was going to the San Juan Islands for 2 days and a night. We took the ferry over, which was huge, and then stayed in a sweet little cottage. I searched really hard for these japanese glass balls that come up on the shore but didn't find any. We did however see a bald eagle as well some seals. There was a raging storm the night we were there with gale force winds so we couldn't take the kayaks out, but it was intense being at the sea while it went insane. Brunch in the sky needle was epic. Totally worth it, rotating slowly hundreds of feet above the city where you can see everything, it was beautiful -- a rainbow showed up at the end of our meal when the sun started coming out.

School --- I'm in a class called Shakespeare's Tragedies in Film, we're reading Titus Andronics, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello as well as watching several film adaptations of the plays. So far we've watched Julie Taymor's Titus (wild, lots of time periods and crazy costumes, good overall) and Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet. We played Air Force's ultimate team last saturday and won 15-6, but my ankle is hurting now and i think it might be some minor tendonitis so I'm icing/IBprofening/resting it until vegas in 2 weeks.

I hope all is good with all the readers (Gammy, I'm giving you a shout out, how you doing? I know I haven't posted in forever - sorry). Also, hopefully more people will start posting.

Can we revive it?!

Not alone, but together... maybe, just maybe...