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. :)