Since it was already 6:30pm, and the show was scheduled to begin at 7:30, I hurried to the dining hall in order to get some food before sitting through the event that would hopefully improve my Thursday night. I met my girlfriend outside of her dorm and she gave me my ticket, which looked something like this:

The show was possible thanks to the effort of The Modlin Center for the Arts here at UR, and they’re constantly looking for artists that they can bring to campus. Before, I’ve seen Second City and Rockapella, both of which were very good, so I was excited bout this show as well.

When we got there, it was already a little late and the place was packed. It took place at the Alice Jepson Theatre, which is really big considering it has a balcony and all, but there were almost no seats left. I was extremely surprised by this, because I had never heard about Circo Aereo before, and they were having a show the next day too, so I wasn’t expecting to find that many people there.

Contrary to what happened at the Craig Karges show, I was decided to take pictures of the performance. I even had my camera ready, when I heard a deep voice through the speakers: “Out of respect to the artists, and in order to make sure the show isn’t disturbed in any way or fashion, please refrain from taking pictures or recording any part of this performance.”

I was definitely out of luck, and even more so after the show began. Most of their acts were really impressive, and though there were some parts I couldn’t understand at all, I just accounted that to the fact they’re foreign. Not to sound stereotypical or anything, it’s just that I’m sure they have a different perspective of what is considered artistic. I even stayed after the show for a Q&A session with them, and they seemed really nice people, haha. Still, they admitted that the styles are way different than what you would find here in the US. It also turns out they’re actually really famous, especially in Europe, and their performances are frequently requested, so I was happy I got to see them, and realized I’m extremely lucky to be at a place like UR, where we constantly get artists from all around the world to show us what they’re capable of doing. And even though there were some parts of the show that I couldn’t completely understand, the two hours went by fairly quickly, and I was able to say, at the end of the show, that my Thursday night had indeed improved.

Since the beginning of my freshmen year, I developed really good friendships with people in my leadership class, because we were all in a program called Spinning Your Web and got to live in the same floor. Most of them are still acquaintances, but only some of them are still close friends. If you’ve read posts from last year, you know one of my best friends, if not the best, I met thanks to that program.

My first interaction with his family was when I went home with him for Thanksgiving. Since there was no way I could go home, and there was no way I could stay on campus either, I ended up going to Baltimore, Maryland for the break. I had an amazing time there and all the family members really liked me. Unfortunately, after Thanksgiving break I didn’t have any other chances to see them.

For that reason, when my friend told me his family was coming over for the weekend, I was excited to see them. I spent Friday with my girlfriend’s parents and on Saturday I had lunch with my friend, his brother and his parents. We went to Carytown Burgers (a place you must definitely check out as soon as you’re in Richmond) and ended up staying there for over two hours, just chilling and catching up.

After that, we got back to campus and my friend wanted to show them his room, so we were all hanging out there, joking around and being silly. They really made me feel extremely comfortable over Thanksgiving that one time, and that didn’t change, so I was happy I was able to spend some time with them.

The relationship is so good, that they kept asking me when they would see me again, joking that since I got a girlfriend, I don’t have any time left for them. And, since I’ll be spending Thanksgiving break this year with my girlfriend and her family, the option of Winter break came up. Tickets to Peru are way too expensive during that time of the year, and I would only be staying for a couple of weeks, so I decided it wasn’t worth going back.

Consequently, I’ll be spending Christmas and New Year’s with my best friend and his family! I’m extremely excited about that, and I even have a couple of gifts for them already

I’m looking forward to the break, not only because it’ll mean that I won’t have any work to do for three weeks or so, but also because I know I’ll have a great time, and I’ll still be spending Christmas with people who I can considered my family =).

Fortunately, my girlfriend’s parents were also coming down, and I’ve developed a pretty good relationship with them, to the point where they always ask me to join them for dinner or other events. They arrived on campus at around 5pm, and announced they had tickets for Craig Karges, a really cool mentalist they had seen the previous year.

They told me how amazing he was, but I’ve always been the type of person who has to see in order to believe, so we went to get dinner off campus and made sure we would be back on time for the show.

And with on time I actually meant half an hour early. We got AMAZING seats, almost right in front of the stage. And I was debating whether I should take out my camera or not. First of all, I wasn’t really sure if I would be allowed to take pictures or record a part of the presentation, I figured that wouldn’t be too good for him. Second, I was way too close to the stage, so he would probably see me taking the pictures (assuming I would’ve done it without being allowed to). But, most importantly, even if he hadn’t seen me taking the pictures, he would’ve still known just from picking up random brain waves, right?

Right…

So, I didn’t take any pictures of the show itself. But I did manage to take pictures of what they gave us at the show (after the show was over, of course!)

I don’t know if you can tell, cus I had to zoom the hell out of that thing, but the table isn’t touching the floor! It is therefore what I would like to call: a flying chair. Before his trick, he showed us how he had no possible way of holding the table. And, being right in front of him, I could see only his finger tips were touching it. Plus, a random person from the audience was helping him, so there was no way he could’ve “cheated.”

Of course, he’s an illusionist, and what he does is a “show” for a reason. But damn, I wish I could put on a show like that!

The funniest part was when one of my friends was selected to help him with one of his acts. He gave her a marker and a whiteboard and put her hand, together with the board, inside a bag so that no one else could see what she was writing (not even herself). At the same time, he asked a random guy to identify a bunch of celebrities just from pictures. The guy was doing really well, until Craig showed him only a glimpse of one of the pictures. The guy thought it was Marilyn Monroe, but when looking over the pictures, she wasn’t in any of them. All throughout, my friend had been scribbling around on the board, just letting go and not knowing what it would be. When Craig pulled out the board, she had written MARILYN on it. Not content with that, he took a sealed envelope he had given to a little kid (which was empty before being sealed) and pulled out the picture of Marilyn Monroe. Talk about being creepy…

Or totally AWESOME! It was by far one of the best illusionist acts I’ve seen life, and I was definitely happy my girlfriend’s parents got me tickets for it, haha. Maybe next year I’ll go again, and I’ll try to take pictures this time!

“Celebrate refreshed” the fact that the 2008 National Champions are the Richmond Spiders!

I just think it’s unbelieveable that Coca-Cola did this. Granted, they have a contract with UR in order to be the only providers of soft drinks and other beverages, but I still think it’s pretty cool to have coke cans celebrating the fact that we won the tournament.

6-pack of commemorative coke cans - $10      It’s a BIG deal!

For more information on this you can visit http://www.richmondspiders.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/080509aaa.html

As soon as I got here, the football season began, but I was still not that much into it, until I heard about how good we were. I went to a game against Georgetown and we won 40-0, but it wasn’t until we got to the quarterfinals that I truly became a fan. I woke up one saturday afternoon and turned on the tv to find the Spiders playing against a random team I had never heard of before. I could see some friends on the football field and thought that was the coolest thing ever, so I kept watching. And we won, qualifying to the semifinals of the NCAA Divsion I tournament.

The day of the game against Northern Iowa, I called 6 of my friends and we all watched the game in my room with 3 pizza boxes in front of us. It was an amazing game! Ended up winning 21-20 in the last minute of the game and advanced to the championship game.

We won that one too, against Montana, and became 2008 NCAA Division I National Champions! It was unbelieveable and surreal to be experiencing all of that excitement during my first year at UR, and it was enough for me to not want to miss a single game.

This year, the Spiders have continued to win. After the first two games, at Duke and at Delaware, it was time for our first game home against Hofstra, and I knew there was no way I could miss that game. I started taking pictures of the scoreboard everytime we scored, but after a while I realized that it was pointless.

This was the last picture I took, with two quarters to go!

We ended up winning the game 48-0. I think even the scorekeepers lost count after a while! But what I was able to get, right before leaving, was this amazing picture of Richmond’s PAT.

Can you see the football? The kick is up aaaand…IT’S GOOD!

The Spiders have now won 12 consecutive games, dating back from last season!