rickshaw-walla begs the question: are all these red lights just suggestions? ohhhh....it's gonna be ok/they know dead men can't pay!

I think I'm on the brink of something large/maybe like the breaking of a Dawn/or maybe like a match being lit/or the sinking of a ship/letting go gives a better grip

*jumps* PotC3 is out today!!!!!!!!!!! I'm just bummed because I have to wait for it. Mom is getting a haircut and I'm not going, so then she's running errands, de da de da de da.......last year was amazing, I was running around WalMart holding it as tightly as I possibly could, then I'd read the entire back (yes, that includes the stuff at the bottom with the actors and music composer and producer and director and other boring stuff), and then I'd look at the pics and hug it close again!!! today I have to wait. I'll probably call mom like ten times to see if she has it yet. I wonder what the cover looks like? I wonder what's on the 2-disc special edition? I wonder how much it is and if I have to pay for any of it hahaha.

Here is a list of the people from PotC I heart:

#1 - Norrington!!!! (oh btw does anyone know the abbreviation for Commodore? Cmmd? Isn't Cmd commander or something?)
#2 Hans Zimmer!!!
#3 Klaus Badelt!!!
#4 Jack and Will and the other losers - Norrington rocks oh yeah!
#5 Jerry Bruckheimer (come on NT2!!!)
#6 Jack the Monkey (he's amazing!)


It was really funny some time last month - we were watching this movie, from Netflix I think, don't remember what it was, but I'm like who did the music? It sounds like the same composer as Batman Begins. Who was that? *looks at movie case* Hans Zimmer... well I guess you learn something new every day huh? So who did this movie - was it Hans Zimmer? *toddles off to look it up* noooo.....Klaus Badelt!!!!

I just realized that may not be funny to really anyone except Anna ;) Basically, Klaus Badelt is the genius behind PotC music, he did the first movie and all the themes and stuff. Then he and Jerry Bruckheimer argued or something stupid (I guess all the great ones are finicky with each other - look at Howard Shore and PJ), so then Hans Zimmer did PotC 2 and 3. But Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer have worked very closely together so their music sounds similar. That's why it's funny that I thought it was one and it turned out to be the other.

I guess.

Oh, and in case you wanted to know - Hans Zimmer has done a lot of Disney stuff...Lion King etc. And he did Muppet Treasure Island which is amazing!!!! (one of my alltime favorite movies ha-ha). And Alan Menken is the other world's most amazing composer ever....Newsies, Little Mermaid, Pocohantas, Beauty and the Beast.

The discourse about PotC and music is now over. If you were ignoring all that, you can pay attention again now.



This has been a very good week! I keep meaning to post, but as soon as I sit down to write it my mind goes blank. It feels pretty good now though – as good as it ever does…

I'm part of a band! Okay…sort of. At youth group some kids from the school were taking pics for the yearbook and they needed a name for the worship team. So Alex and Anthony came up with something on the fly, which I think is very very good for just fifteen seconds of quick thinking. Our name is Called from the Wreckage. We don't play our own songs, so don't get all excited or anything.

:P

we have fun though.

we just got a ton of new songs that we're adding to our repertoire!!! Lots of Hillsong United, David Crowder Band, two from Leeland and four from Charlie Hall, that we got audio and sheet music for so that has been really exciting – I can't wait to do some new songs! so if you see a lot of new amazing song lyrics on here…that's most likely what it's from. Last Thursday was probably the most amazing night at youth group so far. We played one of our new songs, Song of the Redeemed, which is one of my new favorite songs. It had a prominent piano part but you're basically just holding the chords so it's really easy. It's a funny thing about youth group – I never really want to go when Thursday afternoon comes, I'm just so worn out from the rest of the day, but then the excitement just keeps building through practice and stuff until I get home and I'm so wide awake I stay up late cause I can't sleep. It's pretty amazing. Last Thursday we talked about spiritual warfare, and my youth leader brought up some interesting points about how we usually only think of it as being "out on the mission field" instead of everywhere, including right here at home. Like those days when you wake up "on the wrong side of the bed," or when someone says something that normally wouldn't bother you but might at one time. Why does it only bother you sometimes but not others? Not to be paranoied or to dismiss/justify when we're grumpy, but could that sometimes be oppression? maybe. anyway, it was a very powerful message, and right after that we got up to play.

Our acoustic guitarist/lead vocalist on one song is no where to be found. this is REALLY BAD. So Alex jumps from bass to guitar (he plays like every stringed instrument basically ha-ha) and now we have no bass – oh well. But there's no way we can do Take it All next without it. so I guess we'll just do two songs. I go to turn on my headphone monitors to find that the battery has died. just right then the battery, which was fine in practice, had to go and die. WHYYYY???????? So these monitors we're trying for the first week are not working so well.

We start the first song and get a ton of feedback; it just doesn't sound very good or worshipful, considering we're all stressed out. At the end of it Joe runs in and jump onstage, and he and Alex quickly change instruments. Now the guitar is tuned really weird and you can hardly hear the bass, so the next song sounds really bad too. Our audience has gone well beyond restless and all we want to do is create an atmosphere of worship, but it seems like God decided not to show up.

Finally it's my turn to start Song of the Redeemed. and it ended up being the best of the three, though we made some mistakes. At the end, Joe falls over onto the floor (which he had done during practice as a joke) and we're all sitting there looking mortified that he actually did it in front of everyone, when he looks up and yells "I told you I was gonna do it!" and we all start laughing.

Then Roger (our church worship leader) walks in the door and is like, play that last song you just played again. Well we can't very well say no to Roger (that's hard for anyone to do!), and we do need the practice on that song, plus it's amazing and fun, so we played it again.

It was picture-perfect. I'm not sure how it got that way, but it turned out with pretty much no mistakes, I was playing half of it with my eyes closed and everyone was just worshipping God – the song sounded amazing but we finally let God come in and fill, which we should have been doing all along. At the end I went over to say hi to Roger and he gave me a big hug while I asked him, "isn't that the most amazing song ever?" It turns out he got the music for it that night and he wants to play it in church in a few weeks. Oh and the really weird/cool part was during our sound checks when my keyboard picked up some random radio signal from the outlet it was plugged into or something strange like that, and started playing this groovy music. that was, er, interesting but kind of funny once we got it fixed. I just start playing and all of a sudden Kelsey's like – do you guys hear that???


Kelsey is one friend at youth group who I am really getting close to. She's really nice and we have a lot in common – she wants to be a missionary, and has been to Romania. Her brother is going to the college I want to go to, and we spent a while talking about missions last week. I'm glad to be making some strong connections at youth group, because I've been there for a while but haven't had really close friends until now, the kind of people you would invite to your house. a few Sundays ago I spent the night at another friend's house with about four other kids from youth group and we got all of four hours of sleep, then I had to go to the football game that night and lose my voice…oh dear…hardships, right?

On Friday night we went bowling (some kids from our youth group) which was a blast! It was kind of strange because there were only two other girls, and I didn't know anyone very well except Tom….which is another story anyway. But I still had a lot of fun and bowled very well in my first game (135, ok so it's very well for me!) and okay in my other two games (right up around 100). We're planning to do it again too, and most of the people I know well said they would go next time – it was kind of short notice this time.




I can not wait for Christmas!!! I'm excited about Christmas and we're just barely past Thanksgiving!!! Learning Hindi with my friend Chelsea has been going very well, is an amazingly fast learner which makes it easy. I'm also trying to learn some of the local language for where we're going. :( I've gotten five days of piano practice in this week, I actually feel ready for the 4-H meeting tonight, my Christmas shopping list is pretty much done! oh yeah…money… it's really cool though, I might be getting a job cleaning at my dad's office a few times a month which would be really nice, just to have a little bit of income, like Christmas shopping and maybe some spending money for India too ;)

Sunday we started decorating the house for Christmas!!!!!!!!! this year we're decorating our tree Victorian-style, and for some obscure reason my mom won't let me put candles on it…… hmmm….. but really, I want to put little gingerbread men and cookies with candy windows and stuff on it, and she says no. she says she'll want to eat them, and it's a waste of ingredients. so I'm not very happy about that. And we can't buy little plastic gingerbread guys either because it's a waste of money. but anyway, it'll look alright without them I guess. It would look more Victorian with them.

Dad put the tree up in the morning because he woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep, so that was a surprise (good, bad, I'm not sure???) and we got the lights on it but not much else yesterday. For the first time ever we bought this cedar garland at Costco and put it on our stair and balcony railings, and put lights in it, and we're going to put our ornaments that don't really match the Victorian theme on that instead of the tree. The house smells great!! mmm…. Sometime this week if we're ever home we'll finish the decorating. Supposedly we were going to be home all day Sunday but then mom made plans for us to go over to someone from our church's house and play games and have dessert, etc. That's why we didn't finish the decorating, but we did have a really fun time at their house! We're both families of three so it worked out well to get together for that; otherwise games aren't usually as much fun. that was nice and we're planning to do it again.


How much snow did everyone get? We got like…well….okay so we got maybe a ¼ inch, which was gone as soon as it started raining. :( but it was good because we had to drive to Oregon for journalism training for India, and the weather was already bad enough. The training was pretty good….I'm still working on a special story about it to post soon, it's not quite ready yet – sorry. Since my mom is doing the administration stuff I got to sit in on her meeting with our team leader and learned some more of what my mom will be doing, which is good for me to understand.

This is tough – I want to tell you so much about the trip but I can't go into details on the blog for security reasons. I'll be e-mailing you guys from India so I can say a little more. :)



how is everyone?