hello....fyi everyone, I'm going to be gone all weekend. the fact that I won't be on the internet does not mean I am ignoring you. :)
it's my youth group snow reatreat. which won't have any snow, so actually it's a winter retreat.
I still haven't finished packing and I have to leave in an hour, so I'm gonna go now. have fun peoples.....it's FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!
life, lately, is:
School.
Piano.
School.
Piano.
Repeat.
but I mean, really, it's kind of fun. I have so many friends at school it's ridiculous. between Shakespeare (which is now a club every thursday!) and choir I'm always seeing somebody or hanging out with someone from school. not too many really close friendships, but it's nice to have some casual friends. I've always had close friendships, which I still treasure - but it's the casual friendships that make the daily grind somewhat fun, when your dearest friends are far away.
In short, I'm enjoying school slighly more than I used to. Though choir is getting a little stressful because of all the piano stuff I'm playing.
We had a student recital today and I played the Chopin waltz I played at my recital last year. It was....ok. Actually it went quite well, just in my mind it wasn't so good. I messed up a couple of easy parts, but nailed all the hard parts. So overall I felt pretty satisfied with the performance. I also accompanied a girl on an Italian aria, and it was beautiful! She asked me two days ago if I could do it, got me the music yesterday, and we ran through it about four times this morning during our free hour. It went extremely well and no one would have guessed we scraped it together last minute.
There were ten other performances besides mine - a few pianists (Chopin, Chopin, and Chopin - we know who is the best!), several vocalists (mostly from the jazz band, and they were are REALLY good), and a violinist. It lasted exactly 50 minutes, and we all had a good time. My mom felt the need to come, and my friend Becca came to earn extra credit for two seperate music classes, and my friend Tanya came because I usually work out with her at the same time so she came to the recital instead. Fun times.
I'm trying to figure out how to be less nervous. The only reason I made mistakes today was because I was nervous. I get shaky and my fingers go half-way numb. This makes it more than difficult to play, obviously. Before my May recital I need to play my pieces in front of some people, and try to at least make this better, if not get over it completely.
*sigh* Other than that, it's mostly piano, and occasionally church stuff. My mom says I'm practicing too much and I can't do this for the next three months. I say there's no way I'm gonna get Rhapsody in Blue down if I practice any less. We are at an impass. things may be rocky tomorrow.
This weekend is my youth group's snow retreat - there won't be any snow where we're going, so it became a winter retreat. If the weather is anything like it has been the past few weeks, we're gonna change the name to spring retreat. ;)
My worship leader is in charge of the whole thing. I find it humorous that we're supposed to be on worship this weekend, but he and I are both gone, and so is our guitarist. Then we discover that two of our vocalists will be gone as well. The other worship leader is going to take over and do some kind of awesome accoustic set - I'm slightly jealous. And actually, all the worship teams have been just incredible for the past several weeks. I praise God so much when I just think about the inredible talent He has placed within our church. We aren't a megachurch, yet we have three extremely gifted worship teams. I've been so blessed to be a part of one of them. Our music is online with the sermon every week now, and I like to just listen to some of it during my own quiet times with God during the week. This church is family to me.....
Roger (my worship leader) has been talking about the heart, nonstop, for the past two months. I'll make a post about that stuff soon....it could go on for a long time. :P
On the flipside of everything, my youth group is kind of falling apart. sort of. starting last week, we have now combined the jr. and sr. high youth groups into one big group. Roger couldn't keep leading us forever, which is really too bad because we were starting to come together and grow with him at the helm. but he is already so busy at the church, so the time had come (the walrus said) to move on and make changes.
again. more changes.
so now Sean, the jr. high leader, is the leader of all. I'm not sure yet how I'll like it. we do have a bigger, more skilled worship team now, which takes some of the stress off of me. but I need to give it some more time. I know right now everything in me is rebelling to the change aspect of it, but it may indeed turn out to be a good thing. it's just so hard to actively engage kids from 6th all the way through 12th grade. when you're only going to be around until June, you wonder if it's worth a lot of effort anymore? we'll see......week #2 is tomorrow night.
and Shakespeare Club is tomorrow too! I was totally right, it is keeping me sane this quarter. Although it takes up a couple of precious hours I already don't have on Thursday, it's a necessary thing. Laughter with friends is too important. Exit, pursued by a bear. And according to Nick, a bear makes a sound like a wookie (complete with demonstration). okay then.............
Oh yes. I am learning how to say no to things. I have successfully said no to two things that I could have squeezed in but wouldn't have done well at. My stress level, instead of rising, is somewhere between remaining static and dropping slightly. I'll feel better when Rhapsody pulls together a bit more, but for now, things are just ok.
My teacher wants me to play Bach. I think I'm going to tell her no. I can't handle Bach right now.
Alright. it is getting late, my body needs sleep. goodnight, my dear friends! I am busy, but I have not forgotten you. I love blogging. I love all of you. I will return soon.
I have officially been 18 for one week now. my birthday was great.....I did have to go to school, but we drove up to Seattle at 11:00 and spent the whole afternoon at Pike Place Market: one of my favorite places on earth! I think we went to almost every shop there - just ignored the ones that I already knew weren't interesting. went to Starbucks of course. the used bookstore down on the third level (downstairs) is still my fave place and I could spend so much time in there! I have to ask the owner where he's from. he's the coolest, nicest guy EVER. great store, cheap books, lots of character.
we found the gum wall! and, of course, stuck gum on it - bought expressly for that purpose. actually, though we planned to look for it, we ran accross it early in the day, by accident. if you haven't been, GO.
we ate. a lot.....a lot a lot a lot. haha good food is just.....I don't know, I have a thing for really good food. maybe it's because my family has been on the tighter end of the budget scale for a long time, so it's really a treat to have stuff like a good French cheese, expensive seasonal fruits, etc. not saying it's a bad thing though - I like for it to be special and out-of-the-ordinary. actually, it made my birthday really special, because (without sounding gluttonous), good food is important to me. we went to this little French creperie for "lunch" and I got a strawberry/whipped cream/nutella/powdered sugar crepe which was Amazing. with a capital A. I though $10 was really expensive for a crepe, but the thing was massive and oh so good. worth $10 any day of the week.
we wandered around and took pics and basically did everything I wanted to do. when we'd seen everything and were starting to get a little fatigued, we packed up, and went to Naan 'n Curry (my fave Indian restaurant in Renton) for dinner. after buying a scratch ticket at the grocery store, because I'm 18 now so I can. :D Spent $1 and won $2......not so bad.
a couple of days ago I got a birthday letter from my good friend Kelsey who's off at school in MN. that made my day, because she's really special to me and it was so nice to hear from her. and you know how it is when you get all this attention and stuff on your birthday, and then like three days later you get a card and it's like leftover birthday happiness? It's just special.
so then I was really enchanted yesterday when my friend Tanya finally got the me card she's been trying to get to me all week! we usually work out twice a week and see each other in passing at other times, but for various reasons we weren't able to meet until yesterday. I opened the card when I got home....one of those musical cards. It plays that song:
You know you make me wanna.....SHOUT!
throw my hands up and.........SHOUT!
etc.
LOVE this song (at least, for a birthday card it's really fun), and several of my Shakespeare class friends (and my teacher) signed it and wrote notes. it was so sweet, and given that I had a rather lousy day yesterday, it really brought a smile to my face.
another funny thing - I found out last Wednesday that my Shakespeare teacher and I have the same birthday. I was so sad that I couldn't go to Shakespeare Club last week (since we were at Pike Place), because they were throwing a surprise party for Jen and it would have been so much fun to be there. :( but I did see her on Wednesday and we wished each other happy birthday, and she made a point of telling me that the two of us were born during the Aquarian week of Genius.
Genius, she said, repeating the word by itself for emphasis.
yet another great part of my birthday was getting my backpack!!!!!! the one I'm taking to Europe. it was my birthday gift from my grandparents.....I picked it out so I've known about it (and been counting down the days) since Thanksgiving. I've been really excited to see, realistically, just how much I can cram into it.
So I spent most of Monday working on my packing list for Europe. Now that I have my backpack, packing cubes, and quite a bit of the stuff I'm actually taking to Europe, I decided to try packing the thing and seeing how much stuff I needed to ditch. All over the internet, the main stuff I'm seeing is "lay out everything you need, put half of it away and pack the rest." Needless to say, not everything on my idealist, optimistic packing list fit conveniently into my backpack. Luckily, more than half of it does fit. After reading one girl's testimonial about wearing one pair of jeans for a whole month without washing them, I decided that I could indeed bring a pair of the cursedly heavy denim stuff, but cut back to only one other pair of pants - some capris. This gives me barely room for four T-shirts, 5 camis/tanks, and a sundress. And a sarong (you have no idea how insanely many things you can do with a sarong). The only thing I can't fit into the bag right now is a hoodie and a waterproof jacket. I do take heart, however, when I remember that I'll be wearing something that's currenly in the bag, leaving a little more space.
The only real problem I have then, is that the bag weighs 30 pounds and I need it to weigh something closer to 20. 25 would be manageable. I'm not sure yet where I'm going to squeeze stuff. Having a tent strapped to the bag and a sleeping bag stuffed in the bottom is my main problem, but there's really nothing I can do about those things; I do need them. We'll see what happens. For now, it's a start.
Ok, last thing and then I'm off. last night, after a really long day of school, working out, teaching all afternoon, rushing to finish massive amounts of art history, and trying to fit in dinner and an actual conversation with my dad, I then got to drive out to Enumclaw for a 9:00 PM worship practice. needless to say, I still had stuff to do and would much rather have gone to bed at this point than Enumclaw to practice for goodness knows how long.
BUT, I ended up having a really good time. It was just us instrumentalists, and actually our leader wasn't even there for most of it. what we really wanted to do was just go over certain songs, and bring lots and lots of ideas about what we could do....with transitions, with instrument parts, etc. we never have time to do this kind of stuff on Saturday because we're rushing just to pull everything together before the evening service. so having this extra time was, first of all, a great time to work on changing things up in our songs a bit. beyond that, it was nice for us to be able to play together and listen to each other a little bit - three weeks is a long time to not play with each other and then all of a sudden try and pull a service together in three hours. and it was all a lot less stressed than our normal practice, because we didn't have specific goals or time limits......just play and work on some ideas.
and I just love the guys I play with, so very much. I've said it before (and probably will again) - they are like uncles to me. really good uncles. we had a lot of fun hanging out, talking about music and other stuff, and just jamming together. it felt good. it was 11:00 when we left the church, but I felt a lot less exhausted and more peaceful than I had all day. relationships can be such wonderful, wonderful things.
