Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Swimming on the Soccer Field

The usual early morning run occurred again this morning. I saw a dragon and a direwolf but they flew and ran away when I approached to take their photo. It was raining so I was drenched by the time I came back, but because I can't take showers in California because of the drought, I enjoy all the water that I can feel on my skin here in Ithaca.

The morning before my class was filled with homework, studying, and practicing my painting presentation. Today's ranking for Cornell dorm rooms and their noise level would be a 0 out of 10. People are testing the fire alarms in Balch Hall which means your ears are either getting blown out by the shrieking of a rabid cat on fire, or you are getting incessantly distracted by the beeping of fire alarms about to explode. It was a great morning for recording how many words someone could read in a textbook before the noise of Hell sounded forth.

After attending the funeral of my eardrums this morning, I just barely had time to grab lunch before heading to debate class. Today was the big day of presenting the argument of why the painting that you selected on Friday was the best. My speech was eloquent and poetic and a joy to say. I'm not kidding, my speech was really good and I'm quite proud of it. It was a great three minutes of speaking this morning. You all should have been there.

After about half the class did their presentations, the class split up into two groups for a debate. I was finally part of one, and Soline and I were closing government on the resolution that non-violent offenders should not be jailed. Our arguments were solid and we refuted our opponents cases pretty well. At the end of the debate, we were second out of four (although a close first, as Rodney said...) which wasn't a bad outcome for the first actual debate I've spoken in.

After class, I returned to my dorm. This might sound boring and that first sentence was, but it's about to get really funny (if you like my kind of humor). I was reading through our textbook, and the specific chapter I'm reading is covering ambiguity in language. Not a very complicated subject. Anyway, there are example sentences at the end of the chapter where it asks you to identify the term or phrase that is ambiguous, and explain the possible meanings in each one. They're hilarious. I'll give you some examples:

1. Perplexed by the disappearance of his sister, Vincent stood at the edge of the lake and thought, "Phyllis is at the bottom of  this!"

2. Woman decapitated in freak accident before attending lecture.

3. Famous culinary columnist advises cooking party guests.

4. Campus police were requested to kick the fraternity members off the roof of the library.

Now I could go on but the blog would be very long. Instead I'll leave you with the joys of the English language at work in the world.

This was the dry part of the field.
The great thing that I love about my debate class is how it's giving me the information to actually identify and explain why something doesn't work, or doesn't make sense, or why something does, logically, make sense. Instead of just "feeling" my way around in conversations, I actually know and can define logic.

Now this evening is where things really got interesting. I went to soccer at 6:00 PM, as usual, and up until 7:20 PM it was all going great. At that point, the thunderclouds had gotten close enough to hear loudly, and the organizers of the activity called it quits. However, everyone continued to play "unofficially". I was on the field and I began to hear this interesting noise, like a waterfall that was really close by. About 30 seconds later, this noise turned out to be an absolute downpour or rain, so hard that you couldn't see and it hurt to open your eyes. Like absolute buckets of water coming down. Everyone started sprinting to bring their bags under the building overhang before they got completely drenched.

Once the bags were safe, about half the remaining group (including me) went back out in the rain to continue playing. It was madness. The rain was coming down so hard you couldn't see your teammates. As the game progressed, the field turned to a lake and no matter how hard you kicked the ball it would stop and start floating down the field. People were sliding about like they were on ice. Everyone was falling and dragging everyone else down with them. It was comical. 

After everyone got exhausted from running through water that covered the tops of their shoes, we called it quits for the day. However, before I left I had to take the classic running start and belly-slide down the field. It was totally worth the dirt and grass in my hair, shirt, and shorts. 

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