bowlathon

For some reason, I never ended up posting this, so here it is now! In all kinds of weird tenses because I wrote it…last April. As in 2013. I’m cool.

At the end of Endocrine, our school held a bowl-a-thon to raise money for the Talia Seidman Foundation, which helps kids who can’t go to school due to medical conditions by giving them ways to still participate in their education/still have the social experience as well. There was a prize for the best team costume, and since we finalized our “team” the other day (Monday), we brainstormed some ideas.

F: We’re dressing up as emo kids for this bowling thing we’re doing on Thursday. It’s gonna be wonderful. D:
N: lolwhaat.

Other ideas included 80’s-themed since Adam has enough of that to clothe us all, or just whatever sport we used to do…but Mike used to wrestle and didn’t want to spring that on people (“I would do that in a city where I knew I’d never see these people again. But I’m going to have to see everyone the next day, and I don’t think this town is ready for that yet.”)

Adam is a cyclist, so his clothing would be very much the same.

I’d basically have a choice between a leotard (I didn’t bring any of mine here because, let’s face it, what reason would there have been to bring it?) or uh, pole dance clothing, so how about no.

So we decided to be emo kids. (Mike’s idea.)

As it turned out, however, Mike decided to ditch our team to join another one. To be fair, he did call to ask if we’d mind, since the other team needed a 4th person to be considered a team, but we had a lot of fun giving them crap/trash-talking them when we got there.

M: Hey! I like the look!
F: Whatever, traitor.
M: But you said it’d be okay.
S: Hey, Judas. Was your team’s costume theme to dress up like douchebags?

It was highly amusing since our entire team consists of HBLers, which meant that a number of the people there basically never see us. There were definitely several people who gave us double/triple-takes. (I think they thought we dressed/acted like this on a regular basis.)

I wanted to document the fact that I managed to bowl a strike (two, actually, but one piece of pictorial evidence is enough) and the machine didn’t shut down on me. (True facts. The only other time I ever bowled a strike was in 2008, where the machine promptly decided that all was not right in the world and spontaneously murdered itself, thus taking with it the only evidence that proved that I was capable of bowling a strike.)

In case you couldn’t tell, we suck at bowling.

On the offchance that you need more proof, these are our final scores (somewhat blurry). Notice that my score is the highest and doesn’t even break 100. We’re awesome.

But you know what? None of that matters. We won the costume contest and got $50 to go stuff our faces with sushi (or whatever we wanted to order there). :D Mike’s team won for highest overall score (their team won bowling pins, so I’m pretty happy that we were rewarded more for creativity than for actual skill, haha).

Victory is sweet.

Apple Chips

Apparently, I never wrote about this even though it happened well before International Festival or Follies this year. D: Oops.

Each year, the Emergency Medicine club hosts a male pageant where 4 1st-year and 4 2nd-year contests compete to win the coveted title of Mr. WVSOM. There’s a group dance, an interview segment, as well as a talent portion. I get roped into everything the EM club does because all the officers are my closest friends, and I also volunteer to help with pretty much everything, so in this case, I was recruited (along with Monika, Elise and Lynnlee) to choreograph their group dance. Let’s be real though–aside from hula/Tahitian/salsa, I really cannot dance, so my role was mostly as the measure of whether or not they’d be able to learn it (aka if I couldn’t learn it, they probably couldn’t either), keeping their attention from wandering and teaching them steps.

We set the music to Kesha’s Timber and Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball just to make it extra-ridiculous.

We held practices with them and with a lot of effort from the four of us, managed to corral them into learning the entire dance, complete with personal touches from each of them. They were a hilarious and rowdy bunch, super fun to work with and all of us miss their crazy antics, so once the video comes out, we’re planning to all watch it together (while pigging out on food). :D

Lynnlee unfortunately got struck down by a stomach bug the day before and couldn’t make it to the actual event. :[

But here she is now! (…this is pretty much why no one else wants to be friends with us. It’s cool though, because we have each other.)

So what does this all have to do with banana chips, you ask? Everything!

A couple weeks ago, I got a card signed from all of them as well as a Macy’s gift certificate that enabled me to purchase a dehydrator (at long last!). <3 It was super sweet of them! So say hello to the newest addition to my kitchen contraption collection (it’s at the bottom)!

Apple Chips

Ingredients:
-1 golden delicious apple, sliced into thin pieces

Instructions:
1) Slice apples into thin pieces and assemble them evenly onto the dehydrator tray.
2) Plug in the dehydrator and let it do its thing for ~3.5 hours!

i’m famous!

Wayyyy back in the day (last year), I did a treat swap to send baked goods to organizations all over town, troops overseas, and throughout our school community.

They stuck me in the school newsletter!

…and this is entirely unrelated, but they’re currently giving out free TrackRs that you can attach to commonly misplaced items (e.g. keys, wallet, etc.)! As long as you haven’t lost your phone too, you can use the iPhone or Android app to find it again! :]

Follies 2014

I am officially done with all performance-related events for the year and can retire to my study hibernation! :O We managed to raise $3k for the club and for the Family Refuge Center! :] The Follies Bake Sale went really well too (the red velvet s’mores bars I made got cleaned out! :O )

The Vagal Tones! :D (I’m the space in between, hence the lack of letter [just in case you were wondering.])

Dress rehearsal was goin’ well.

My attempt at being artsy during dress rehearsal. :O

The Vagal Tones has opened for U2 (yes, you two sitting up there in the front) and graciously decided to halt their world tour in order to come perform in the coolest small town in the United States. Don’t feel too bad though, because their next intended destination, North Korea, banned them from appearing anyway for being too cool. The Vagal Tones are living out their rock star fantasies with this med school band. When they’re not saving babies and curing cancer, they like to wind down with a little music.

Bollywood Fusion!

When Farrah isn’t studying in a basement cell, being roped into every club activity or event known to mankind, cooking and/or eating every edible substance on sight, or volunteering at animal shelters, she likes to remind herself that once upon a time, she was somehow a music performance major. She will be playing (aka attempting not to butcher) Franz Liszt’s third concert etude, “Un Sospiro.”

An ‘aparima literally means “the kiss of hands,” and is a type of dance from the Tahitian and Cook islands that tells a story set to music and mimed by hand gestures. Ti Ti Raina will be performed tonight by the “Hulagans.”

Last year’s Follies!

International Festival 2014

We managed to raise even more than last year’s international festival! $5000 from the auctions alone! Auctioning off one of our male professors for board review sessions sparked an all-out war between two groups of girls (he has many female admirers). He went for $800. Twas an awesome idea and I’m super happy for the club. :D

We also auctioned off a dinner with one of our really attractive female professors, but since guys are hella cheap, that went for $150. $5k pays for 1/2 the amount of medications and supplies that we’d like to bring with us on the trip, so if anyone has anything they can spare…

Please donate here!

_{(Every bit helps!)}

For the occasion, I made three different dishes to represent 3 different countries (from right to  left).

• Thailand (Pineapple Fried Rice)
• Taiwan (Dan Dan Mian [擔擔麵])
• Japan (Onigiri/Omusubi)

They were all rather well-received and I ran out of food pretty quickly, although not quickly enough to be able to sample all the food from everyone else (sigh!).

Our Hula/Tahitian performance was right after the dinner/auction, so I just changed in advance.

As the Mr. WVSOM coaches, we grabbed an auction number so we could rack up the price on the carwash/BBQ package they were being auctioned off for. They went for $150.

Our fashion show cast. :o

Our Hula/Tahitian group! :]

(The tutorial for the belts can be found here!)

Bollywood Fusion group!

I’m waiting on the pictures taken by the photographer so I can add to my stash of “pictures where I’m not eating.” (That’s mainly all she has of me.)