Longans, Labanotation, and Hoolahoops

They doubled the freshies budget this year which means $150,000 more in fresh fruits and veges. What a strange place to try fruits I've never had before. I definitely had fun trying out these longans grown on tropical trees in China.

The outer peel is similar to that of an orange.

 

Then out pops this eyeballish fruit. It tastes like a musky grape and you have to chew the flesh off a large black pit.

They are called dragon's eyes in China and cat's eyes in Malaysia, but I thought they looked humanoid.

We've been practicing for the soiree which is December 12th. To help our group of 9 women remember all the moves, I wrote out directions and drew in some dance notation. Little did I know that there is actually a whole science on diagramming bodies in motion. It is called "labanotation" and it was authored by a Hungarian dance theorist, Rudolf Laban. How I found this out...we have a theater person from Chicago in shuttles.

 

Here we are at one of our practices. Somehow we have to figure out how to make saris that stay on our bodies while we dance a Bollywood number (Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire).

This is Miller trying out her sari.

 

I got a new roommate! Helen is also in shuttles. She lives up by the Flathead in Montana and she has kids the exact same age as Elizabeth and Ben. The footprints on her wall are from a fellow in New Zealand who wanted to have his feet planted in Antarctica. Helen plays the flute and she is also seems to be some sort of  hoolahooper extraordinaire. She brought two industrial grade hoolahoops to the shuttles pizza party and did some amazing moves. The rest of us gave the hoops a try as well. I was told that I looked like I was riding a bucking bronco - I couldn't seem to get the concept that slow swaying of the hips was more effective.

Jeff Daniels

Miller and Helen

Shuttle Bob

Lyle

and Jim. His hoolahooping should have been rated PG-13.

Megan - a graduate of the School of Journalism at the University of Montana in Missoula.

Bananagrams game

My good pal, Kelly, who will be finishing her doctoral thesis next year in Medieval Studies. She slaved away in the kitchen during the party like I did last year. In shuttles there is a saying: You don't volunteer - you are volunTOLD.

I have not heard from Scott since he got to AGAP, probably because the camp was basically buried in snow and every hour is most likely consumed with merely surviving out there. They have to do a weekly check-in with McMurdo and his boss tells me he has laryngitis. I wrote a long letter to him and sent it out with some of his staff, but it sure seems like he is unreachable and so very far distant. I miss him!