Day 127: "The queen is not amused."

After reading Sonnet 127 on the bus this morning, I attended two more of Ms. Deveneau's classes. The first was in the format of a lecture on Reconstruction to her "regular" US History class, the second a discussion on the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address as well as Reconstruction to her AP class. It was interesting to see how she covered the same material in differentiated levels of depth for the two classes. I have also often wondered how teachers are able to present the same lesson more than once while making it sound just as novel, and it was cool to get a flavor of this today.

Post-class, I got to catch up with some fellow alums over coffee -- Ryan "Babes" Barbalace, Elias Chajet, Jacob "Brother" Seo, and I had lots of fun, laughs, and country rap at Starbucks.

Back at school, it was time to hit the ceramics hard! I spent today "cleaning up" the bowls put together earlier this week, by smoothing out any rough corners and checking that all the joints were sure to hold.


By the end of the school day, I was able to boast 7 completed bowls. Now only 793 left to make for the Empty Bowls fundraiser on February 11th!


Today was also fun because a lot of my old classmates visited their alma mater! Catching up with various friends in between "serious business" was really nice.


Of course, there came a point when this "socializing" had to come to an end and it was time for some heavyweight setting up for Certamen. Signs and spreadsheets abounded as we ran around the building preparing for tomorrow's big event. (Stairwells also overflowed with beauty, as can be seen below.)


Wiped out from the running about, I met my girl Anne Marie for dinner at Panera. We had a lovely chat about what I should expect next year (Anne Marie is a sophomore at Harvard) and got to catch up on all the latest news in the Latin world. After dinner, we had dessert at my house before bidding one another a very temporary farewell (we will both be moderating at the Certamen tomorrow).


I can't wait!

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