Light/ The Holocaust and Humanity Project

Over the summer some friends in the ward contacted Sharon about going in together on season tickets for the Pittsburgh Ballet. The idea was that they would buy one set of season tickets and each person would choose one performance they wanted to see. It worked out that they all wanted to see different performances. We jumped on the opportunity to see Light / The Holocaust and Humanity Project. This ballet was created at Ballet Austin by the artistic director Stephen Mills.

Background: I guess the guy in charge of the Holocaust Museum in Pittsburgh and the director of the Pittsburgh Ballet talked about doing something around the Holocaust, one thing led to another and Stephen Mills from the Austin Ballet ended up coming and helping produce Light with the Pittsburgh Ballet. It makes sense to have a project like this in Pittsburgh where there is a fairly large Jewish community.

The Ballet: The ballet was divided in seven sections: Adam and Eve, Family, Target Behind Doors, Isolation and Degradation, Boxcar, Ashes, and Hush. Each section had its own piece of music and was contributed from five different composers. It was amazing how it came together and flowed.

Thoughts:

• I was thinking this could be really cool, or it would be really lame. Lucky for us, it was really cool.
• One thing that struck me as we were waiting for the program to start was that it really took a step back and started from the beginning creating the base that we are all brothers and sisters experiencing the World.
• The dancing was beautiful and very artistic.
• As the name suggests, light played a huge role and I really liked that. It was used not only to create mood, but added to the story serving as a driver to the plot as well as creating scenery.
• My favorite section was the ashes section. The choreography was beautifully danced, combined with a great score and dramatic lighting, it proved to be very moving.
• It was interesting that most of the sections were danced in customes that made the dancers appear nude. There was really only one section where they had clothes on, but at the end of that section they striped and the next section was danced as if they were in their undergarments. Some might find this distracting, but I thought it added to the dramatic effect and really helped focus attention on the human and suffering side of the holocaust.
• I really liked that no where in the ballet were the oppressors represented. None of the dancers were dressed in Nazi uniforms, swastikas, or anything else like that. It seemed to be more focused on the inner feelings and human sufferings experienced.

So, those are some of my thoughts. If this is ever performed in a ballet near you, I highly recommend it. I've embedded the ad PBT (Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre) had on youTube and a slideshow so you can get an idea of what it was like.

Fallingwater

Saturday was a beautiful day here in Pennsylvania. A bright blue sky and warmer than usual temperatures. It was a great day full of fun activities for us. This was one of our more eventful weekends as far as events worth reporting on. Read on for a full review of our happening weekend.

Magee-Womens Hospital
We had our official tour of the hospital where our little munchkin will most probably be born. (how is that for decisive?) I have to say I was impressed. The labor, delivery, recovery rooms were the most impressive. They were big. They not only had a bed, but they also had a bench/couch, chairs, and a whole lot of equipment hidden inside beautiful wooden cabinets. The interior decorating was almost nicer than our apartment. As we left the tour guide said we were headed to the post delivery suite. I was thinking if what we just saw was a room, the suite would have to be really nice. I was disappointed. It was little and didn't feel as homey, just more hospital like. The food is supposed to be great though. Anyway, it was great to get familiar with the hospital. The one big take away I got was I need to prepare for the post birth part. Car seats for the ride home, a doctor for the kid, and how to be a dad. I tend to be falling into school mode for that, meaning I'm planning on cramming between when finals get out and the birth of the baby.

Fallingwater
Wow. That is all I can say. I didn't realize just how close we are, just a short 1 hour drive, I think I will want to go again in the spring. The weather was amazing. We were able to walk comfortably through the nature trails on the grounds and see some good views of the house and observe how it blended into the surrounding environment. The tour of the inside was really fun too. It made me want to learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright. Apparently he hated clutter and designed his houses so it would be hard for his clients to fill his space with junk. He was also all about 'breaking out of the box'. I thought of the Pete Seeger song "Little Boxes".

pete seeger songs
Free Music | free Mp3

Anyway, most of the rooms had a part that opened up to the outdoors and made you forget you were in four walls. I especially liked the windows on the corners of the house that could open and the whole corner was open with an unobstructed view. Some other things I liked were the natural swimming pool at the guest house, the stairs that descended into the river, and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.'s bedroom on the 3rd floor. He placed his bed in the part of the floor with the most windows positioned so when you were laying in bed you were looking out a window into the forest.

Candide
We were invited earlier this week by a couple in our ward to see the musical 'Candide'. Music by Leonard Bernstein, adapted from the book by Voltaire. I guess it is best described as a satire on the philosophies of optimism or the thought that this is the best of all worlds, created by a perfect God, and that everything that happens is the best of all possible things that could happen. There were some pretty funny parts. I found a good broadway version on youtube. You can watch the first part below. You probably want to fastforward to about 3 1/2 minutes in to get past the opening credits and overture.


The group that put on the version we saw is called Quantum Theatre. They are unique in that they don't have a regular theatre where they preform. Instead they move venues for every play they do, and they are usually in unusually places. We heard of them doing shows in cemeteries, out in the woods, and old warehouses. Last night they used an old abandoned car dealership building. They worked in a bunch of car props and references. It was fun. I liked the way they put the stage together. The orchestra (small) was in the middle of the stage like a 'pit crew' and all had on mechanic jumpers. I want to read the book now.

So that was our fun weekend. Now we are off to another fun and busy week. I will be doing some final round interviews and should be hearing back from some employers. Your prayers our welcomed.

Check out our photo album if you want more pictures.

Sharon update: entering November

Hi Family!

It's been another fun couple of weeks. Nothing super significant, mostly the everyday happy.

* Pregnancy: I'm starting to feel big and round. This weekend I kept bumping into things because I expect to fit into places that I no longer do. For Halloween I wore the same costume as last year. I was a pirate. Ah, the benefits of owner lots of clothes that were really loose to begin with. The only thing that didn't fit me, was a choker. My neck is getting fat! Oh well. I had an appointment with my midwife and everything seems to be going well. My blood tests came back normal, and everything is on target. The baby is a mover and shaker. I guess he or she still has enough room to do somersaults which is pretty fun.

* Anthony: Still in the waiting period of hearing back from potential employers. He has possibilities with Deloitte, IBM, GE, and E&Y. Keep us in your prayers. School keeps him busy, but he still makes lots of time to play with me.

* Play: We've enjoyed taking walks this beeaauuutiful autumn. Last weekend we soaked in all the colors on a great trail not far from our house. It feels like we live in such a community. We skipped an apple festival to go to a Library book and bake sale.

We took our friend, Gabe out for his birthday dinner at the best Indian restaurant I've ever been too. Mmmm. We'll take you there if you come visit us in Pittsburgh.

This Friday we left for D.C. right after I was done with work. We stayed with Mom and Dad who cut my hair, took us on a fun walking tour of Georgetown, and fed us good food. The highlight was going on a boat ride in a canal built in 1828. They changed the water level for us and pulled the boat/barge with mules. It was really cool. Then we were off to the temple, which was great as usual. We found out today in Stake conference that our temple district just got switched to the Columbus OH. But Mom and Dad make D.C. too appealing.

* Work: Work is going really well. This week is Dr. Seuss week. My kids make me laugh everyday. My energy level is kind of on the decline though. I found this last week that I start getting really tired at about 4:30, and hour before I'm done. So I think I'll have to start eating trail mix at 4:15 or something as a preventive measure.

Hope everything is going well with everyone!

Sharon

p.s. Has anyone ever taken fish oil pills? Ick. I force myself to take one every once in a while for those baby brain building omega-3s, but they make me taste fishiness for hours and hours afterwards. Have any tips?

Fall Fun

This fall has been rather enjoyable. This is the beautiful view on our back porch. Sharon has also written an update, so I will keep this short as we have a lot of overlap.

School: I survived the first half of the semester. I front loaded it, so I would have more time the last half to work on my capstone project. This has turned out to be a good thing because no one else on my team seems to have time to get things done, so it's good one of the six of us is thinking about it. That made it sound really bad, but it isn't that bad, it just feels that way some times. Tomorrow we have a major milestone due, that will be a good measure of how much effort everyone has been putting in. I've been enjoying my last classes, trying to get as much as I can out of school before I'm done.

Pregnancy: Sharon is doing well. I am amazed at how easy she makes being pregnant look. I always thought women got moody and cranky when they were pregnant, but so far life has been good. That could change as we enter the 3rd trimester. Everyone has been asking for a belly shot, so we came up with this idea on our walk.

Jobs: Sharon gave a good update on this. The job hunt has been taking a lot of time, about the equivalent to a whole other class. It could have been worse if I were traveling for more interviews; fortunately few companies are flying candidates out for on-site interviews. I guess that comes with difficult economic times. If the executives can't get flown around, why new hires? It's looking like Pittsburgh, Connecticut, or Boston could be potential landing spots for us right now. I've been reading about Connecticut the most and liking the possibility, except for the cost of living.

Fun: We did our annual pumpkin carving. As we were leaving DC we found we found ourselves wondering if they would be smashed when we got home. We took that as an omen. When we got back, they were gone. Down the street a ways we found remnants of pumpkin, but there was no way of identifying if they were ours, just the circumstantial evidence.











In my opinion this fall has been much better than last fall. I don't know if last year my head was down more or what, but fall this year has been spectacular. We've been able to get out and enjoy it more too. There is a great park near our house that drops into a ravine so you can't hear or see much of civilization. It was nice walking along the path and enjoying the trees. It was a nice calm day with little gusts of wind that would come and blow through the trees knocking dozens of leaves off the branches. The leaves would then slowly and peacefully float down to the ground. It reminded me of watching snow fall in the lamp light in front of our house when I was growing up. It made me happy.

Going back to DC was nice. I really liked Georgetown. The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal ride was fun. I liked when they filled the lock to bring the boat up to the next level. It was cool that they still had the original tow paths and had mules to pull us along for most of the tour. I wish they did longer tours. I liked learning about the history of the canal too. We were lucky to catch it on the last weekend of the year. If anyone is in DC when it is running I commend it.

I'm looking forward to the next few weekends. We are going to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and a ballet called Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project. So we should have some good updates/reviews coming up soon.

For more fun photos you can see our online photo album.

Sharon Update - Fall

(Don't feel guilty for skimming! This has turned into a detaily journal entry type rambling)

Phew,
Pittsburgh is getting chilly. I'm sitting on the floor by our space heater with a scarf on. I've finally broken out my winter coat, which surprisingly still fits!

Today is a very laid back plan C: grocery shop, clean, carve pumpkins. Plan A was the temple, but the water pipes broke, and plan B was to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters and check out beautiful changing leaves, but we're expecting rain and maybe snow.

The past couple of weeks have been really great, with lots of blessings included.
* Anthony's been handling the stress of applying and interviewing for jobs very well. He turned down a second interview with Deutsche Bank to have first interviews with IBM and GE. He felt really good about his IBM interview, which selfishly made me a bit nervous since they warn that the job could potentially include travel 100% of the time. But!.. he's heard back from GE, has had a second screening interview with them, and will be flown to Connecticut for a third interview in early November. Yay! We're accepting prayers.
* Anthony's also been handling school stress well. I came home from work the other day to find all the laundry done and folded, and if he happens to be home, he tries to have dinner on by the time I get home. I married such a hunk.
* Prego: I'm feeling really good and getting big. I bought a couple of maternity dresses last week which helps me feel less frumpy. My energy level has been pretty good and yesterday I had another appointment with my midwife. He is so cool!, and answered all my many questions just as I was hoping he would.
* Work is going pretty well. We had performance reviews, and I got a raise! I wasn't expecting it in the least since I just made the transition to salary, and thought that would be considered a raise. Every little bit helps. One of my co-workers was...released?...fired? No-one really knows. But it's made this week a little stressful with a more difficult teacher to student ratio. I've kind of given up the hope of getting off work on time, but it's o.k. Coming up with lesson plans has been taking a lot of time, but it's pretty fun, and I figure I can keep all my ideas on file for fun family activities. Last week was "Staying Healthy" week. Ruben, my kids loved the Oral Hygiene song. I taught them the chorus, and then we danced around in a congo line.
* Church: we're staying busy as usual with our callings and are feeding the missionaries tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be able to get some of our recent convert friends over as well.
* Fun: Last week we finally made it to the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh's contemporary art museum. It was sweet! Very refreshing and thought provoking. It's been a while since I've immersed myself in modern art. It made me think of fun days as a security guard at BYU's museum of art. (Joan and Lynne, which reminds me. Shawn and Amy Moon who you worked with there, and married each other...are in our ward. Sheesh, it's taking me a year to remember to tell you that!)

Last night we went out for a date. Which was really fun, since we've been so tired, most of our dates have consisted of grocery shopping, watching a movie at home, or babysitting for other people. We went to a cool restaurant called The Bangkok Balcony, and then Coldstone for dessert. I have to brag about our concoctions for a second just incase you are planning a trip to Cold Stone any time soon. 1: Pumpkin mixed with Cheesecake icecream with white chocolate, grahm cracker, and pecan mix-ins. 2: Fudge brownie batter ice cream with snickers, reeses pb cup, heath bar, and snickers. Woah. That may have been gilding the lily a bit, but how can you go wrong with gilding chocolate with more chocolate? Anyway, it was fun to dress up in jewelry and a little makeup....and apparently on rainy Friday nights, everyone else is staying in, which makes for quick service.

Alright. Love you guys!!!! We love you all, and think of you every day.
Sharon

Case Challenge

This weekend I was able to be a part of a really fun competition. One of the large consulting firms sponsored a case challenge competition at the Heinz College. This post is all about how the competition worked and how the team I was on did. I’ve written a lengthy reflection here, so if you just want to know how we did you can jump to the end.
The competition worked like this.

Thursday evening at about 6:00pm they issued the case. Teams have a little more than 36 hours to go through the case, figure out how they will approach it, and come up with a solution.
Saturday morning at 8:00 am teams must turn in electronic copy of their PowerPoint presentation that will be used for presenting to the judges.
Teams a randomly split up into 5 rooms, 5 teams each room. One at a time each team presents to a panel of judges (who were role playing people in the case), no other teams are present. The team has 20 minutes to present their solution and 10 minutes to answer questions, and defend their solution. This lasts until about noon Saturday.

After lunch, the 'Top 5' is announced, which is the best team from each room. Those teams receive a 'twist’ or new development in the scenario and had one hour to adjust their solution and presentation.
Each 'Top 5' team then presents their adapted solution to a new panel of judges, answers questions, and defends their new solution with the same time restrictions as the first round. Eliminated teams, and other top 5 teams who have already presented their solution can sit in on the presentation, but can't ask questions.

Finally, they pick the best team.

At each stage the team is evaluated on how they approached the problem, the solution, the presentation (the actual PowerPoint slides), presentation skills, and their ability and skill at answering questions and defending their choices.

This makes for a long 48 hours if you go all the way through the competition. The environment is very competitive as everyone is motivated by the prestige of winning a competition sponsored and judged by a high end consulting firm and also the lucrative prize of $500/team member for first place; $250/team member for second; $150/team member for third place, and a bunch of nice prizes for the fourth and fifth team.

They only accept 25 teams, each team with 4 members, into the competition. It is surprisingly difficult to get in because of the aforementioned incentives.

I was approached by one of my Indian friends to be a part of the team he was putting together. I was hesitant to accept since it was conference weekend. However, he is a great guy and we work well together, but don't have the chance to do so very often (we tried doing a coding competition last year that did not end up going so well). I also wanted the experience so I accepted. The other two team members I had never met before Thursday night. They were both great guys and we are all great friends now. We were one of the lucky teams that got in.

The case was a real life problem the firm had worked on with a few of the details changed. It involved a terrorist attack in the United States and the setting up of a new government agency. We were tasked with outlining and creating the plan to get the organization up and running quickly and efficiently taking into account a bunch of small details.

We didn't take the all nighter approach. Both nights we were done by about 11:00pm. We put in a lot of intense hours on Friday, but by 10:00 pm we were pretty much done. Saturday morning we made a few tweaks and turned it in. We were the last group to present in our room and weren't sure what to expect, they didn't have too many difficult questions for us.

We made the 'Top 5'. The hour we had to work on the twist was probably one of the fastest hours I have experienced in a long time, but our first solution was set up well for the twist so we felt good about our adapted solution. We were second to last to present, so the 3 other teams before us and a few other students were in on our presentation.

It was going well, until I got up to present my part. I was talking and suddenly my train of thought was interrupted mid-sentence and I lost what I was about to say. There was an awkward silence in the room. My mind switched to crisis mode, what was I trying to say, why couldn't I think of it. I glanced up at the slide behind me to try and get my thought back, no luck. Thoughts like, 'oh, no! I blew it for the team', and 'I can't believe this just happened' started going through my mind. I was able to keep my anxiety down and stay calm, and eventually started talking again picking up on the last point I remembered talking about, suddenly I remembered what I was going to say. I was so relieved. Even with my pause, which probably wasn't as long it felt, we finished in our 20 min. limit.

Naturally, the second round of judges had tougher questions and was a little more aggressive. We had prepared ourselves well and we all participated in the Q&A.

We had to sit through one presentation then wait for about 30 minutes while the judges debated the rankings. They then presented the solution the firm used on the actually engagement, which was much more detailed and comprehensive than what any of us had come up with.

They announced the winners from 5th to 1st. After the 5th and 4th positions were announced and our team hadn't been announced, we all looked at each other surprised. 3rd, still not us, my mind was going crazy and my heart starting to beat. 2nd, another team, we looked at each other with awe. 1st place... The Jaguars, our team.

Wow. What a rush and how exciting. None of us could believe it. The craziest thing about it all, and this would be true even if we hadn't won, I kind of liked the whole process and really enjoyed doing it.

Some thoughts I had. It really seemed to be more about how you thought about the problem and how you were able to present that, rather than what you came up with. I guess that’s how it is in the real world. It doesn't matter if you have the best solution in the world, if you can’t communicate it people won’t appreciate it and accept it, it won't get anywhere.

Caterpillars, crime and kicking - Sharon Update

Hi Family!
Happy Conference weekend!

*Work has been going really well. The week on Greek mythology turned out really fun. We counted how many snakes are on Medusa's head, and made cyclops eyes to wear on our foreheads. No parents have complained about nightmares...so that's a good thing. Next week is going to be based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which I wasn't to pumped about after 4 weeks of world-culturish type lessons. But now that I have it all together I'm really excited. We'll talk about butterfly life cycles and make antennas to wear as we fly around the room. We have a couple of new students from the toddler room...un-potty trained. Ah, preparation for parenthood. I'm also trying to help train a new assistant, who seems really cool, accept for when it feels I'm trying to do one on one projects, take kids to the potty, and resolve conflicts between 14 kids all at the same time. A conversation this week concluded that, if you see the autistic after-schooler kicking me in the stomach, that would be a good time to step in.

*School: Anthony seems to be doing really well. He's spending the weekend working on this Deloite competition with a group. It sounds challenging and fun.

*Job interviews: He's had a few set up, and it's weird to think how soon this transition from school to real life career will happen. Where will the wind take us?

*Fun: Last night I went with a friend from work to see a performance of Crime and Punishment. Wow! It's like 2 hours of punishment, with a few minutes of crime. It was very very well done with a small cast of 3, and brings up interesting insights on sin and repentance. This friend works in theater and has been really nice to get me (and Ant, accept this time) into 3-4 different plays for free. She's fun to hang out with, because religion in general is totally foreign to her. So she always has really fun questions about the church, the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity. Today, I'll go to a birthday party of one of my students in between sessions of conference. I'll be shocked if it's not Spiderman or Batman themed.

*Pregnancy: Woah, I'm getting fat. :) I can still fit into all of my pants...which I buy baggy to begin with. But on Sunday I realized that it's time to look beyond my closet for church clothes. I have a cool V.T. companion that lent me some cute clothes, so I'm good to go for another couple weeks. I'm thinking about being a pear for Halloween. It's been really fun to feel the baby kick. And I'm generally feeling really really well, accept for not wanting to wake up in the morning.

So that's life. We love you guys and hope all is well!
Sharon