Oh dear… December 29, 2008

It would seem that I’ve been greatly neglecting my blog. 😦  Terribly sorry about that.   Let’s try to get you caught up…

On December 16, I woke up early to make it to my my IHON final at 8.  Although we weren’t actually taking a final, my professor was required to have a finals time, so we turned in an evaluation survey, talked about the course a bit, and then left.  At 1 that afternoon I had my Brit. Lit. final.  For that we had to write one outside essay and two in-class essays.  The outisde one asked us to come up with our own course title and explain how the authors we fit in would fit into that theme.  For the in-class essays, we had 8 choices total, 4 from each modernism and post-modernism, and had to choose 2 (one from each period) to write on.

December 17th was my French final.  This final was cumulative with an oral section, primarily fill-in-the-blanks, and a few where you were given two possibilities and you had to choose the right one.   Mom decided that, because there was so much snow, she would pick me up that night instead of the next morning, like we had planned.  The roads were pretty clear that evening and we were expecting a big storm over night, so we decided not to chance it.  On the way back, we decided to stop by the Supermall for dinner and a movie. 🙂  We saw The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (which mom kept mistakingly calling The Boy in the Silk Pajamas), which is about the son of a Nazi soldier who, while exploring the area around his house, comes across a concentration camp and befriends one of the Jewish boys.  Like all Holocaust movies, it was very sad but also very good.

December 19th I had been planning on hanging out with my friend Elaine, but, since there was so much snow, her parents didn’t want her to drive.  Sarah, however, had been home all week, and was tired of sitting around, so she braved the snow and came over and watched Get Smart.  It was quite amusing.  I especially liked the line “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” “I don’t know. Were you thinking ‘Holy $*#%! Holy $*#%! A swordfish almost went through my head?’ If so, then yes.” lol

December 23rd a bunch of my friends and I got together for our annual Christmas party/gift exchange.  This year we decided to do gifts white elephant style, just getting one and having each person select a present in turn.   Strangely, no one stole anyone else’s. lol  I ended up getting Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots!  Tee hee. 😛  I had played as a kid, but it really is quite fun. 😛 Tee hee.  Sarah got World Monopoly, where each of the properties are cities around the world and you have credit cards instead of the normal monopoly money.  It was nice to see everyone again and play games together. 🙂

Christmas this year was, for I believe the first time in my life, not at my grandparents’ cabin on Lake Roesiger! 😦  Because there was so much snow everywhere, and even more by the cabin, we decided it would be safer if we had Christmas at my grandparents’ house instead.  Mom, Dad, and I opened our presents from eachother at home Christmas morning, had ebelskivers for breakfast (yay!), then headed up.  Instead of having the typical massive heap of presents we normally have, my grandma decided to get a Wii for the cabin and have everyone contribute games for it.  We still had a few presents to distribute to each person (especially to my younger cousins), though.  My cousin Caleb didn’t really seem very excited about the idea of sharing the Wii controller with anyone else, so luckily someone got a second controller.  Caleb, like many children, isn’t very good at being still and, because Wii controllers are very sensitive to movement, he seemed to be having some trouble with the games.  It was fun, though.  I haven’t played since August when I visited Marie and Nick in Michigan.  Christmas dinner was our traditional Scandinavian dinner… Swedish meetballs, potato sausage, mashed potatos, lingonberries, beans, and, my favorite, the jello. 🙂  It’s really good.  The top and bottom layers are jello with fruit mixed in, and the middle layer is sour cream. Mmmm Yummy. ^_^

Sarah’s birthday was December 27, so we all went to the ice sking rink for a couple hours.  It was fun. 🙂  We were playing a poking game, though, passing a poke on to someone else when we came up to them.  It made me fall twice, though… 😦  Oh well.  The first time, Roxanne was trying to dodge my poke, but just as I poked her on the elbow, I ended up falling.  The second time I fell was in poking Adrienne.  After skating, we went back to Sarah’s house, worked on her puzzle for a bit as she opened presents, and played the new Cranium, which she got for her birthday.  It has new pieces a bunch of new cards, so that was exciting.  After I got home, Mom, Dad, and I went to see one of the other movies on our long list of movies to see: Slumdog Millionaire.  Now, when I first heard about the movie, I was kind of confused as to why my mother would want to see a movie with that title.  But it had outstanding reviews, so off we went.  I really had no idea what to expect from it, but it was really good.  It’s about the life of a boy, his brother, and a girl they befriend as they move from the slums of India they grew up in to adulthood, where the main character ends up on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.  The movie jumps between the present and the past, showing how various important events in his past led to his knowledge of the specific questions he was asked.

Yesterday, December 28, Mom, Sarah, and I went to see The Color Purple at the Paramount.  It was amazing. Sometimes touring casts can be a little underwhelming, but this cast was great.  Even with 3 understudies performing!  The Sound of Music was on last night, too. 🙂  High On A Hill Stood A Lonely Goatherd has always been a family favorite. 😛 Tee hee.  I also finished the fist CD of Rosetta Stone Italian, but the second one is at school, so I guess I’ll have to wait until I get back… 😦

Tonight I’m excited because Matt Varelia (Curly in Oklahoma this summer) and I are going to New Voices, which is a concert held a few times a year where local talent sing songs from new musicals.  We went to it in August, too, so hopefully we’ll make a tradition out of it. 🙂 (As long as he’s not back in Boston when the show is).

Well, I think that’s about everything interesting that’s happened here.  Might be missing a few things… <shrugs>

Snow! December 14, 2008

So… It’s snowing pretty hard right now. Big fluffy stuff that’s sticking! Fun stuff. But… I’m stuck inside writing my paper for Brit Lit and studying for my French final. 😦 Oh well… Back to work…

Juries December 13, 2008

Sorry I forgot to post this yesterday…

Juries are a chance for students taking private lessons to perform in front of an audience, or, rather, a pannel of three music faculty. We sing/play our instrument, and they give us feedback. It’s really very much like solo/ensemble contest or any other ajudication. Except that it’s not a contest… Anyway… My first one was harp at 9 in the morning (eww…) and they all said that I “have good stage presence.” lol Oh, really? I wonder why that is. 😛 Before I began the two people on the pannel who weren’t harpists (the third was my teacher) were saying how excited they were to start the day off by listening to harp music and how they wished that every day could begin that way. 🙂 My voice jury wasn’t until 2:28. When I sat down outside to wait for my turn, a girl came out and said how they didn’t smile at her at all. These are supposed to be fairly non-stressful and very encouraging things… Not intimidating with unfriendly faculty. When I went in they seemed to smile a bit, at least. Because I have an hour lesson, which is 2 credits, I had to sing two songs. I got to pick the first song I sang, and they they chose the second. I chose Das Veilchen by Mozart, which is my favorite song that I’ve learned, even though it’s in German… It’s about a little violet who falls in love with a shepherdess and longs to be with her. But then she steps on him and he dies… But, he is happy because he dies at her feet. 😛 Then I had Quia Respexit by Bach (for the Magnificat) and Tu Me Dirais by Chaminade (basically I would believe any lie or ridiculous thing you tell me becasue I love you, like Amy Addams in Enchanted for those of you who have seen it…). I REALLY wanted them to pick the Bach piece because I like it better, it’s less challenging for me, and it shows a different part of my voice. But, becuase none of the pannelists knew the Chaminade, they decided to “take a chance on it.” Was that really necessary? 😦 There are a lot of weird and big jumps (note-wise) in the song, it’s higher, and I had been having some problems with memorization, which is strange for me. It went ok… a had a few mistakes with the pitches, but part of that was also becuase I’m kind of sick and it’s harder to reach those notes. After I sang, they said nothing. No “good job,” no “nice voice,” nothing. They have to fill out comment sheets, which I got as soon as I was done, but is it really so hard to say somehthing afterwords? You have no idea how uncomfortable it is to just stand there after you’re done singing and just wait for them to hand you the sheet. 😦 Oh well. That’s over now.

Tonight is the President’s Concert, or Christmas Concert, part 4. This is the concert that all of the people who have donated a bunch of money to the school get invited to. And J.A.C. Redford, the man who wrote the piece that we’re doing 4 of the 5 movements of is going to be there. No pressure at all… And I’m pretty sure there are several people feeling sick. Including myself… My throat feels a litle sore, and my nose is runny/stuffy. Hopefully it will go well…

Surprise! December 11, 2008

Tonight I got a package from Mom! 😀 It had snowmen window stickies, a box with a little alpaca in it, an 84 pack of gel pens, and 24 pads of post-its! Tee hee. Apparently I was supposed to get it at the dorm Christmas party, but I wasn’t able to go because I had to get ready for a concert tonight.

Today was my last day of jazz. Some people had invited their friends to come watch, and we performed our pieces for them. Yay.

The concert tonight was for the people in the composition class to perform their compositions. Some of the songs were pretty cool (such as the one I was in… :)), but there were also several really, really long piano pieces. Like… 15 minutes long. 😦 And they would play several movements. Good for them, but really, it’s very hard to sit through that and stay engaged.

Juries tomorrow… Sleep time. 🙂 (I’ll explain juries in tomorrow’s post….)

Dead Week December 9, 2008

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a week… My schedule was packed with rehearsals, travel, performances, and homework.
On Friday, the choirs and orchestra left PLU at 9:30 and headed down to Portland. Sarah and I sat next to each other on the bus and we listened to David Austin’s A Christmas Carol on the way down. 🙂 I do love that musical… 😀 When we first got into the church and into position to rehearse, I was positioned directly behind the harp and couldn’t see the conductor at all. So… me and another girl who was being blocked were moved over a bit. We had a catered dinner with extremely good macaroni and cheese, huge cookies, and hilarious conversation. 😀 The concert went really well… my only complaint being my feet, which felt both numb and in more pain than I would like.

Saturday, Sarah and I went to Pita Pit for lunch (yay!) and then went to Wallgreens so that she could pick up Secret Santa gifts (I had already gotten mine… a wooden model plane thing, a Christmas Cookie Monster plushy with some cookies, and Junior Mints). We left for Seattle at around noon. This time when we were in our places I was blocked by the tallest girl in the choir… 😦 I spent most of that rehearsal standing half-way behind the girl next to me so that I could see the director… some of the time. Oi. Luckily, during the concert the girls moved over a bit, so I had a better view. Also, there was a part in the concert where we sang a song from the balcony, and, when we were rehearsing that, I had to switch places with the guy next to me because, you guessed it, I was blocked yet again. During the performance, the spacing somehow ended up different… so I was still blocked and had to stand on my tippy toes so that I could see my director. 😦 I don’t understand why I was always the one being blocked… There are other girls shorter than me, and they could see just fine! 😦 Anyway…. The concert in Seattle went really, really well.

On Sunday, everyone was dead… No one had any energy during rehearsal, and our voices were starting to feel the strain of so much singing. Sunday was our worst night. It was an ok performance, but was nothing compared to the other two performances. Also, since it was here, for some reasons we had dancers during some of the songs which, if they were really good and really confident, might have looked ok. But they weren’t. They didn’t seem to know what they were doing, their technique was bad, and they weren’t together. And then danced right in front of the choir, distracting us and the audience and blocking our view of the directors. For dinner, Mom and Dad took me to Outback. 😀 It made me so happy to have really, really good steak and broccoli. Most of the meat here isn’t so great… and the broccoli is never cooked right, which makes me sad, because I love broccoli. That night, at around 11, I found out that my IHON group project was supposed to be presented the following morning, so I wasn’t able to go to bed until 2 or so.

Yesterday, we did our IHON presentation, which I thought went pretty well… and now I have nothing left to do for that class. I also met with my French group for yet another group project. (Have I mentioned that I hate group projects? Well, I do.) That night, I went to a string concert which, I believe, is my 6th concert, completing my concert attendance requirement. I liked a lot of the pieces that were performed, but it made me miss Ethel. 😦 Especially on the last song, which was a cello choir. After I got back to my room, I was hoping to go right to sleep, but my roommate and some of our friends were in the room… and didn’t end up leaving until 2. Then, when I was finally able to go to sleep, I couldn’t. 😦 I ended up just lying there until around 3…

Today, my group got out of jazz early, since we were already done with our dance and didn’t have anything else to work on. Tonight I had rehearsal for a student composer’s piece that I’m performing on Thursday. It sounds really cool, with lots of interesting intervals and chords. I’m singing 2nd alto for it, so it’s nice being able to use more of my low range than I do in chorale or my lessons. After rehearsal, Sarah and I went to the Holden Evening Prayer Service because we love it, and because we’re both really tired and stressed out. My throat has been hurting today, so after the service I decided to get some ice cream to try to soothe it a bit. 🙂 And now I must go back to my reading for Brit lit. And I should probably get started on my paper for that class… It’s the “outside” portion of our final… We also have to write another essay in class next week. 😦

Lighting of Red Square December 3, 2008

Tonight was the traditional lighting of Red Square here at school. They put up a tree (as you see above) and a garland across the front of Eastvold. There’s also a cross closer toward the UC and, over Harstad, there’s a “star of Bethlehem.” They had a lovely little service with the singing of Christmas carols and a little sermon and then they turned on all the lights. Now, when I saw the star over Harstad I turned to Sarah and commented on the irony of an all-girls’ dorm being the place where you will find Jesus (who is, as we know, a boy). 😛

I feel like I’ve had a pretty productive day today… I didn’t have IHON because we had a field trip which I decided not to take, since it would mean that I would miss my French class (which I have to miss on Friday due to the choir concert). So, instead of going to class, I went to the library and got a bunch of work done for my other classes. I’ve also been trying to work out how I’m going to fit in my classes for the next four years and see how many minors I’ll be able to fit in. 🙂

A restful week December 1, 2008

This has been a great break. 🙂 I really didn’t realize how much I needed one… On Wednesday, I had my IHON and French classes, and then packed up and went home. Well… went shopping and then went home. (Mom is super tiny now, so she needed some new pants that would fit her).

I spent Thanksgiving up at my grandparent’s log cabin on Lake Roesiger, which is north, near Monroe and Snohomish. We (my mom’s side of the family) had a nice traditional, non-traditional Thanksgiving meal and decorated the Christmas tree, since we all spend Christmas up there, too. (“traditional, non-traditional Thanksgiving meal”: My grandpa likes to experiment with things as he’s cooking, so it’s traditional in that we have the food item and he’s experimenting, non-traditional in that it’s never the same and well… doesn’t always work-out the way it was intended.)

On Friday, I went over to Kenna’s house and hung out with her, Sarah, Adrienne, Colin, Sid, Roxanne, Elaine, and Tuyen all day. 🙂 It was fun. We ate food, danced (or at least I did), played Catch Phrase, watched a couple movies, played volleyball (Colin and I, anyway), and talked about what we’ve been up to. It was so good to see everyone again! I’ve missed them. 😦

On Saturday, Grandpa and Eric came down to install new floors in the living room/music room. With so many dogs running around, not all of whom are potty-trained, the carpet in there was really disgusting.. But now we have a wood laminate floor that I really like. 🙂

When they were all done, and Mom and I had arranged the room to our liking, I pulled out my Christmas music and played for a really long time… I love Christmas music. 🙂 Yay!

Tonight, my choir and Choir of the West had our first rehearsal with the orchestra. It definitely got me back into work mode… Tomorrow we have rehearsal from 3:40-5:30 AND 7:15-9:45. Oofda! But… we have concerts Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and we want to make sure it’s the best concert it can be. 🙂