Fall Semester 2010...halfway done already?

I can't believe that in a couple of weeks, I'll already be halfway done my first semester as a junior!

Wow, that means I'll be a senior in less than a year and will need to start figuring out what to do next. It still feels like I just filled out my applications for college and now I have to start figuring out if I'm going to go to grad school or start working. It really does go by fast, doesn't it?

A couple of weeks before I started school, I dropped one of my classes to bring my credit load down to 16 (I haven't had a credit load this low since freshman year). I thought that I would be able to take it easy this semester since I'm still recovering from the 19-credit/sophomore portfolio shock. I couldn't be more wrong. Due to several of my classes, such as the switch from Schola Cantorum to Symphonic Choir and my music ed. classes becoming much more hands-on, I'm more stressed with 16 credits than I was with 19 credits and a portfolio. I need to stop thinking that I'm going to have an easy semester at WCC. Apparently, that's never going to happen...

Right when I started school, I already figured out that Symphonic Choir was going to be a HUGE commitment. The Saturday after we started school, we ended up having an 8 hour rehearsal to get ready for a weekend of concerts several weeks later. This brought me back to when I was in All State and All Eastern (we had several days worth of 8 hr rehearsals). After doing one 8 hour rehearsal in Symphonic, I don't know how the hell I did it for several days in high school without dying of exhaustion...

The gruesome Saturday rehearsal and several added hours during the week were worth it though. I performed on Friday and Saturday with the NJ Symphonic Orchestra at the NJPAC (also an All State memory)! We received huge standing ovations for each performance. I never had so much fun singing in a concert and I can't wait to sing Beethoven's 9th again at a United Nations conference (that will be aired in Asia!) in a couple of weeks!

As a junior music ed. major, this year I'll be stepping away from the research books and into the classroom to teach for the first time. I'm currently in Praxis in Secondary Music which is basically a student teaching in training course (in other words, I'm dipping my foot in the river instead of being thrown into it without swimmies). Since I'm in secondary music, I get to teach middle school first. I'm with two other classmates and when we observed a couple of weeks ago, we were scared that the kids were going to eat us alive (I was trying to get over the fear of several of the girls being taller than me...). However, they were really nice (and full of energy) and the teacher is going to be fun to work with. I will be teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade chorus and I already won over the girls for wearing a what they call an "extremely stylish shirt." Plus, after saying that I liked Spongebob, I was told to introduce myself to a teacher who has Spongebob posters all over the room. "She's in room 801. I think you two would get along very very well." I'll be starting to teach over there in a week. While I'm scared, I think I'm going to have a lot of fun.

How's the apartment? Well, it's definitely making me like WCC even more because it's quiet and I actually have some privacy now. Although, when school started, I could hear people singing downstairs but I eventually convinced myself that it was all in my head. After 2 years of hearing people blast high notes in my dorm room, I can still hear it in my head sometimes.

The apartment has also made me appreciate the little things more, like having a stove and oven, a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, and being able to call friends to kill bugs for me (there was a yellow jacket in my apartment a few days ago...and I was all alone.). Not having a washer and dryer is especially annoying because the closest laundromat is a 10-15 min walk away. I never thought that clothes were heavy, but by the time I managed to drag my clothes there and back, my arms were killing me (I never thought that I could get buff just by carrying my laundry). Not to mention in costs me between $5-$10 just to wash and dry my clothes.

I hope you're all doing well! Jess and Vinny, my mom and Becca told me about the wonderful news! Congratulations!!! I'm so happy for you!

Florence Voice Seminar

I know it's been a REALLY long time since I last posted a blog. This one is about my experience at the Florence Voice Seminar, which was from May 16-June 8. 3 weeks in the beautiful city of Florence with voice lessons, cultural tours, and gelato. :)

In terms of weather, mid May to early June was the besttime to go to Italy. However, I really wished that it started a few days later. May 16 was the day after I got out of school and boy was it frustrating for the parents and me to take everything out of my dorm and pack for Florence at the same time. Everything that was in my dorm ended up in a HUGE pile in the family room. I've heard my parents say, "It looks like a bomb exploded in here," before, but I think the pile in the family room beat out the piles inmy room. Suzy really seemed to like getting herself comfortable on my dirty clothes (or burying a biscuit underneath them). I got to see some pretty hilarious pictures of her in the pile when I came back.

While I've had several trips overseas before, this onewas fardifferent from the others. One thing that was different was that I didn't have to pack my suitcase every other day to move to a different place. I loved not having to constantly carry my suitcase on and off buses, plus I enjoyed walking around and gettingto know where things were in the city. It's a good thing that I got to know where things were in the city too because another thing that was different about this trip was that I was on my own most of the time. Each of us had our own schedules with lessons and coachings, so while our teachers andsupervisors were around to help when we needed them, we had to learn how to maneuver our way to certain parts of the city without them. Let's see...an American girl who only knows, "Hello," "Thank you," "Your welcome," and "Where's the bathroom?" in Italian walking around a foreign city byherself. Scary right?It was for me, at first, but then I figured out that as long as I could see the river (the Arno), I would be able to find my way back to the apartments. Plus, my newly invented language of Spatalian (a combination of Spanish and Italian words) along with pointing (whenever I was trying to tell the cashier what I wanted) got me through 3 weeks...somewhat...

The only bad thing that happened on this trip was getting sick. I remember Sam posting on my Facebook wall, "I guess your allergies were like, 'She's in Italy now...LET'S DO THIS!'" That pretty much sums up what happened. I started wheezing, completely lost my voice the next day, then spent the next week trying to recover enough to sing in the recital. However, with the help of my teacher (and telling me that I was going to be ableto sing for the recital when I lost all hope of that ever happening), I somehow managed to get it together to sing. Now, thanksto all of my teachers and coaches, my voice is better than it's ever been!

Suzy in my pile. :)

Breathtaking view of Florence!

Day trip to Pisa on our day off

Why hello, Tuscany! In my opinion, Tuscany is the most beautiful part of Italy. :)

Spring Semester update!

I can't believe it's been 3 months since I posted my last blog! I guess I didn't realize how busy I was until I saw how far behind I was with updates.

So this semester I've been attempting to tackle 19 credits (course overload) with my sophomore music ed. portfolio. Things seem to be going ok and all I had to do was give up the little free time that I had last semester! Oh well, taking 19 credits and some summer courses will free up my schedule (I will only have to take 14 credits per semester afterwards) and will allow me to jump ahead of some people so I can get into classes first. That's the horrible thing about going to a smaller school...there aren't enough teachers to make all classes available to everyone and many classes fill up fast.

This semester has also been filled with tours and performances. A few weeks before the semester started, I gave up the rest of my Winter Break to go on tour with the Bell Choir. The two-week tour took us to Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Out of the 14 days, we had 12 concerts. I think I gave my director gray hair with some of the things I did during several of them, like walking the wrong way when we were coming in or flipping one of my mallets off of the table, but all of our concerts went really well and we got standing ovations for all of them. :) Plus, I got to see a friend from my Sound of America trip whom I haven't seen in 4 years!

Schola Cantorum (sophomore choir) also has an annual tour every Spring Break, so I was on tour last Saturday through Wednesday with my sophomore class. We went to Virginia, North Carolina, back to Virginia, West Virginia, and spent a couple of hours in D.C. It was pretty slow the first few days, but once everything got going, it turned into an awesome trip! I feel so fortunate to be a part of a class like mine. Only my class would take something like a bus breaking down and turn it into a time to play Red Rover outside.

The first day wasn't the best day due to it being so windy and rainy. It was quite an adventure to walk 50 feet to the bus and load all of our stuff on it. It was also pretty funny to see that most of the guys (straight guys included) packed more than the girls. Considering how much guys complain about girls having too much stuff, seeing guys with larger suitcases was pretty entertaining for me.

There were two buses for us and I was on Bus 2 aka "The Sweet Bus." Unfortunately on Day 3, the bus broke down in the parking lot of the church that we all met at and after several hours of the repairman looking at it, we all took our suitcases out and piled onto the "The Sassy Bus" for the 3 hour drive back to Virginia. The next day, another bus came to replace the one that died and we were excited to see that it was larger (we had the smaller bus since we had fewer people on the bus), which meant that the 21 of us got two seats to ourselves. The people on the other bus weren't too happy about that, haha.

On these tours we were supposed to have home stays instead of hotels (to save money), but that wasn't the case for half of us. The last night, half of us were sitting around watching everyone else going with their home stay families and wondering where ours were. We found out later that we were staying in a hotel! When we got there, we dropped our stuff off and partied at Applebee's. Even though we had to get up at 5:30 the next day to leave at 6:30, it was worth hanging out for a couple of hours.

The final day we stopped in D.C. for a couple of hours before heading home. While a couple of hours isn't nearly enough to see D.C., we were able to visit the Library of Congress. We had a personal tour of the music section and the people handling the books wanted to personally select books for us to see. The selections included original manuscripts of J.S. Bach, Brahms, Bernstein, and Gershwin!!! I think they knew that they made the right choices when all of us started hyperventilating over the selections, haha.

With the death of my grandpop and getting sick, this semester has definitely had its hardships. However, many good things have happened this semester as well. The tours were great for one thing, but after two years, I landed a summer job with a steady paycheck. It's been so hard trying to find a job due to going away to school at the end of the summer and the economy, but I finally found something! I also am thinking about getting a house with some of my awesome friends for next semester because I desperately want to get off campus. Finally, I'm going to Italy in less than 3 months! I raised $2000 from my recital and with the money I saved from working, I covered the whole tuition! Now I still don't have much money for food and airfare, but I can just get a tube and paddle my way across the Atlantic. Plus, who needs to eat for 3 weeks, right? As long as I have the money to stay in the apartments and take classes, that's all that matters. :)

My recital. Thanks to all who came and donated! :D

Bell Choir with Curious George at Universal Studios, Orlando!

Fort Lauderdale, Florida!

I wanted to put this picture up to give you an idea of what my home stays were like. This lady has an elevator in her house! Her excuse? "I'm old..."

Schola plays the human knot game!

The most random speed limit sign I've ever seen.

College roomies!

At Applebee's!

Bach's signature!

Original manuscript of "I Feel Pretty!" from "West Side Story"

This is what happens when everyone ends up on the same bus together...

Our bus leader gave us vitamins everyday, so we made up a song whenever he came around with vitamins. :)

I survived fall semester again!

Oh man...thank you God! Class-wise, fall semester was over yesterday. This whole week, I've been running around with 10+ extra hours of rehearsal for the annual Readings and Carols concerts as well as scrambling to get things done for all of my professors who show no mercy, lol. I had 5 hours of sleep (at the most) every night and had to skip a couple of lunches to get all this work done, but I no longer have to worry about getting papers done. Yeah, it's a great feeling. It will be an even better feeling when I'm done the final Readings and Carols concert (which is tonight) and get all of my finals done, but I'll take any relief that I can get right now :)

This week, I had my very first photo shoot for head shots. I found out that a photographer was coming to school with a student discount to get head shots and I decided to get some since I know I'm going to need them in the future. I'm interested in getting more involved in competitions/performances/workshops and I don't think a silly picture of me would be very appealing to the judges, though one would never know, lol. Anyway, the photo shoot was just as I expected...I was quiet and awkward, had no idea how to pose, and had some issues with taking "diva shots." Don't get me wrong, I had some really nice shots, but my laid-back poses were much better. I never thought of myself as much of a diva anyway, lol.

The student discount package also included a hair and makeup stylist. I absolutely loved what she did makeup-wise and I'm going to try to figure out what she did so I can do it again. I especially loved what she did hair-wise. For my whole life, I've been fighting my hair and trying to control the frizz. I've tried so many different kinds of gel and the frizz always won. However, on Thursday, the hair stylist got rid of the frizz and it stayed frizz free for the rest of the day...even with the strong winds. She did it with...a curling iron??? I could've just bought a curling iron??? Seriously, she curled my hair for about 5-10 minutes and it was frizz free for the rest of the day. Boy, do I feel dumb, lol.

This week I also made an interesting discovery. Ever since last Tuesday, I've been questioning whether or not I have perfect pitch. During my lesson, I was singing a piece and Julian didn't like the key I was singing in. He played a D on the piano and asked me to sing starting in that key. To my surprise, I looked down at the music and couldn't register the key change and I couldn't figure it out until he actually played the chord of the key he wanted me to sing in. He asked me if I had perfect pitch and I said, "no," but I started to question it later. I've showed many signs that there is some type of pitch thing going on. I hate hearing something in a different key than what's written, I can instantly tell when I'm singing sharp or flat, I can hear intervals better than I can see them, and if I hear something like a car horn, I can tell you what note it is. Also, in high school, when I practiced for auditions, I eventually was able to hum the starting pitch without a pitch pipe. My piano and theory professors both tested me and they both think that I either have latent perfect pitch or some type of long term relative pitch (which is basically the same thing as perfect pitch). I'm going to work to see if I can develop this more, but for now, I'm going to guess pitches to car horns and lawnmowers with some of my friends at school. Don't judge me...I'm not a dork. I'm just...special...yeah that's it. I'm special, lol.

All I have to do is get through the next few weeks for finals and then I'm home free for winter break! I enjoyed this semester, but I'm so tired and worn out, lol. Can't wait!

My little makeover for head shots :D

Swine flu???

How is it that I am able to post two blogs two days in a row?  It's because I'm currently home sick and according to my doctor, I have the swine flu.  Joyous...

The regular and swine flu has been going around WCC like the "plague."  In fact, that's what we call a sickness that goes around the school since it's such a small school and all of us are in class and rehearsing together...the WCC Plague.  Anyway, it started with the Symphonic Choir (the choir that consists of juniors, seniors, and grad students that sing with the major orchestras) and it's been slowly coming down to the freshmen and sophomores.  I started feeling sick on Friday when I woke up and started having coughing fits.  Originally, I thought that the coughing fits were from my allergies as I had something similar several years ago at choir camp in which my allergies were the cause of it.

I felt worse on Saturday and I decided that the best thing for me to do was to go home just in case I had something contagious, especially since the sophomore choir concert is coming up (this Friday).  I didn't want to be the one responsible for the sophomore class dropping like flies the week of the concert.

Sunday night I felt really warm, but I assumed it was because I was covered in blankets and lying next to a heater (complete denial right?).  I ended up having a fever of 101 but I didn't admit it until later when I was lying in bed with the fan on full blast and still feeling like I stuck my head in an oven.

When I went to the doctor on Monday, I was expecting to hear that it was just my allergies or I developed an upper respiratory infection since all of my symptoms were in that area.  Instead, the doctor told me that I had the flu and more than likely it was the H1F1, meaning swine flu.  I was so shocked and in such disbelief I actually argued with him for a little bit, however he got me when he told me that along with my fever I had a runny nose and shortage of breath, which are also symptoms of the swine flu.  This stinks...I was a week away from the swine flu vaccine coming to the school.  So close...

Today, I feel much better and much of my energy came back, however there's one problem that's still in the way...my fever.  It's being such a pest.  It went down to a measly 100, but of course, that's still a fever and it's enough to keep me from going back.  So, I'm sitting here extremely annoyed that I feel better but my silly 100 degree fever is the one keeping me from going back, haha.  Oh, well, I guess I'll enjoy relaxing and sleeping in while it lasts... 

Halloween Weekend!

I didn't really get into Halloween that much, but after coming to WCC and seeing so many people getting into it, I couldn't help but get into it myself.  My girlfriends suggested that I should be a flapper to match my new haircut.  I originally wanted to get a dress that was similar to the flapper style so I could wear it again, but my mom found this great flapper costume that I just had to buy.  I also bought some long gloves and a red boa.  I loved wearing that costume and I'm sure everyone loved me too for getting feathers all over the hallway.  I didn't realize that my boa liked to shed...

After going to a potluck party that Friday night, I went with a couple of friends on Saturday afternoon to get some pizza and then we headed off to a corn maze about a 20 minute drive away.  There were 12 stations in the maze that we had to find and if we found all 12 of them, we would get free gourds....I'm sure you guys are in so much awe right now.  Anyway, when we first went into the maze we didn't bother to look at the map in the front (they don't give you maps but they have maps for you to look at at the entrances and at the stations just to show where you currently are) and we circled around for a 1/2 hour before finding ourselves back to the entrance.  Whoops, lol.  But after we decided to look at the maps, we marched through that muddy trail, through that windy maze, used objects besides the stations as points to show us where we are, such as the WaWa that was across the street, and found those 12 stations.  Yes, we won those gourds and only had some minor panic attacks along the way, such as when I dropped my card used to mark what stations we went to and couldn't find it for 5 seconds...that was terrible.

As soon as we got back to school, I packed up and went home for a day.  It was really nice to watch "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" with the family, though my mood was ruined when the Phillies lost (and my mood got even worse when they lost the whole thing).  Oh well, I still love them.

Now I'm counting down the days to Thanksgiving break!  For me, tomorrow afternoon will be 2 weeks and while it seems really close it's not coming fast enough...

   My flapper costume!

                                          

                                                

 

Entering the corn maze!

                                                  

Map of the maze

                                                  

We got all 12 of them (never mind 13-18...they weren't there)

                                                   

 Momma's going to be so proud of me!!!

                                                   

                      What a great day!!!

Half way done already?

I figured now would be a great time to finally post another blog since my voice lesson was cancelled and I have no classes for the rest of the day :D  I can't believe that I'm already halfway done this semester.  Time flies when you're having fun...and when you don't have much time to sit still for a while.

So many things have happened this past month and a half.  I got an on campus job and so I'm now working for Westminster's Performance Management.  I'm usually either an usher or stage manager for the concerts/recitals on campus, but other times I will be found working in the box office selling tickets or editing programs.  What's great about this job is that it basically revolves around my schedule.  I can look at the concert dates and tell my boss which days I can make and which days I can't, which is such a great thing since my availability varies.  The first time I started working was actually on Sunday when I was stage managing a faculty recital and I realized how awesome it is to get paid to make faces and dance backstage with the performers waiting to go on.  However, I don't think the next time I work will be as much fun.  I'm working in the box office on Saturday and Saturday is the day of chaos when the holiday tickets go on sale for WCC/Rider students and since it's only a three-hour event, it's going to be madness.

I know I said in my last blog that I liked the material in my Historiography class.  Well, I should've waited a little longer before I told you that because I no longer like it, lol.  There's just too much material to remember.  Hearing the professor saying, "Ok, you need to study your notes and then reread pages 2-158 for your midterm," isn't exactly the thing that I wanted to hear, especially since the flash cards that I made solely from the notes were a little less than an inch thick when I stacked them up...and the flash cards were made of printing paper, not the thick index cards.  Not only that, but I also had to memorize 50 chants and who wrote them (I really hate that because that's information that I shouldn't have to memorize.  I can look that up if I really want to...)I studied for at least 12 hours for the midterm and I still struggled on it.  As of right now, I don't care what grade I get, as long as it's passing so I can get out of it.  

My piano lessons are going really well and my professor is telling me to start picking out some accompaniments to learn starting either the end of this semester or the beginning of next semester.  He thinks that I'm ready to start learning how to accompany singers, especially since I will be doing that either in a classroom with a choir or giving private voice lessons to a student.  To all of the voice majors, naturally the best book for me to choose for accompaniments would be the 24 Italian Songs and Arias since it's used so often, so I will be learning a couple of pieces from that.

I don't have any education classes this semester (I figured I'd take a break after nearly killing myself over the summer with my Critical Pedagogy class), but I have been going to several Saturday seminars.  The one that I particularly loved was the one last week with elementary teacher, Phil Greco.  For the past year, I've only heard about Critical Pedagogy from the books that I've read and the lectures about it in class, but this was the very first time I got to see it put into practice.  As a student, I was having so much fun that I didn't notice that the seminar was 3 hours long.  Instead of simply learning notation or giving a lecture, he gave us a project to do, which was to create our own video game and making a soundtrack using the instruments provided.  This allowed us to use what we already know from home to put into use in class and then he gave us ideas to help us along.  For the music teachers who learned Critical Pedagogy, he also satisfied all 4 learning styles and as a student, since he took attention towards the way I learn best, I was more than happy to work with him when he was teaching using the other 3 learning styles.  It was amazing!  Also, for the music teachers, his website is www.portraitsofpractice.com.  He has video clips of projects he has done with his students, such as where his students got to pick a song and show the expression through movement.  The kid in the video demonstrated expression using a scarf and at the age of 7, picked the overture to Mozart's Magic Flute...yeah I already know he's going to be like me when he's older, which is really scary.

Something really strange happened during my voice lessons last week.  I always hum before I start singing, and I had really weird hiccups while I was humming.  They didn't hurt and it felt like I could go higher, so I talked to Julian about it and we decided to explore it.  When I started singing, I ended up hitting a Gb; the one an octave above the one sitting on the treble staff.  That never happened before, and it was a shock to not only me, but to Julian as well.  Also, I'm starting to be able to sing my scales much faster and with better agility.  He told me today that he almost called in another voice teacher, who's a dramatic coloratura, to observe last week when all of this was happening.  I don't know what this means, whether I'm a coloratura or not, but either way, I'm having so much fun singing my scales and warmups really fast...well, except for when I end up going out of control because I get too excited, lol.

I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures this time.  I had a video that I wanted to show you of me playing one of my piano pieces, but it won't upload :(  Oh well, I'll have plenty of pictures next time.