grades

got all A's for third quarter.

Seminar English teacher is suddenly SLAMMING us with homework....Biology is too...my Latin teacher left on maternity leave (and had her baby 3 days ago, BTW) and her substitute gives a little homework, which is more than SHE gave...

Anyways...it's gotten suddenly hotter here, time to break out the t-shirts and shorts!

ALLERGIES!!

during school today--

me-"ACHOO!!!.....................AAAAAAAAACCHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


grand pause.....


ten seconds later.

my teacher-"bless you."



...slow reaction time...? *in a sarcastic tone* nice to know I'm loved!

XD

New Orleans

Trip to New Orleans was pretty awesome! Went with my jazz band. New Orleans = birthplace of jazz.

We left on Monday at 8 PM...16 hour bus ride down there and got there at about 1 PM, chilled at the hotel for 3 and a half hours. Then we met in the lobby and walked around the French Quarter to dinner at Bubba Gumps and everyone was all excited because apparently Forrest Gump was filmed there but I've never seen the movie and when I told them that, they all freaked out and pretty much shunned me for the next five minutes. Anyway, the food was good. I was boring and had a cheeseburger, but it was a REALLY GOOD cheeseburger.

After dinner we went to Preservation Hall to listen to some jazz. I stood on a ledge in the back so I could actually see, which was pretty nice :D and the bass player totally lowered my self-esteem because he was really good and I could never ever play like that but I've only been playing for like, 2 months so I guess its not really the same, but whatever...

Then we went to Cafe du Monde's to eat beignets. They're like French donuts with powdered sugar on them. They tasted exactly like funnel cakes except more fried and oily.
went back to the hotel at about 10:30 and my roomies and I chilled until about 12:00. I slept on a cot because we had five people in our room--the only girl's room on the whole trip and the rest were all guys. Which was pretty nice, because then we didn't have to wait in line at the bathrooms and they did, for once.

Then on Wednesday, we went on a 1 and a half hour long walking tour of the French Quarter. The French Quarter was pretty cool because of the old buildings and the HUGE cathedral.

After that we went to Mardi Gras World because New Orleans is the birthplace of Mardi Gras. We saw where they make the huge floats for the parades and they were awesomeee! They make them out of syrofoam for the most part and spray paint them and They look really life-like.

Went on a Cajun Swamp Tour after that and saw a bunch of alligators and turtles and blue herons. Fed the alligators marshmallows. Saw a little gator and we named it Jeffy and fed it marshmallows and it pretty much waited for us to come back because we saw him again on the way back.

Went back to hotel to chill, then went to Palm Court Cafe and Jazz Band 1--I'm in Jazz Band 2--played about an hour of jazz at the restaurant and there was a crazy "drunk" lady there with an English accent who was the owner of the cafe. She was dancing (really badly, I might add) and she pretty much forced the girls in our group to dance with her. I feel so sorry for one the jazz member's little sister because the crazy lady just grabbed her and started dancing with her and she was looking at us with a "help, get me out of here" kind of face. And then we ate dinner there, went back to the hotel.

On Thursday we went to the World War 2 Museum and walked around for 2 hours and went to see a 4-D movie about WWII, then both bands performed in the atrium. Apparently almost no one in Jazz Band 1 knew I played bass. My solos actually weren't that bad, at least not as bad as in practice.

After that, we had free time for about 4 hours. My group and I wanted to go to Hard Rock Cafe to eat lunch, but none of the parent chaperones wanted to go with us so we had to go eat with them and we were pretty annoyed because we had about 10 chaperones and they all wanted to go eat at the same place...but we got over it :D and ate at another place. Then we went to the French Market and shopped for awhile. We spent like, half an hour at this sunglasses place because my group and the group behind us wanted to get sunglasses and tried on pretyt much every pair. The owners of the place spoke Chinese and I talked with them and one of them was from Singapore (I don't know why she spoke Chinese if she was from Singapore) and the other was from Taiwan....he got really excited when I said that that was where I was from too, then got mad because I couldn't understand what he was saying. He had a crazy accent! I swear, he is definitely not from Taiwan...

After that we went on the Natchez Steamboat Cruise and ate dinner on the boat. It was pretty fun and there was live jazz on the upper deck.
Had an hour of free time after that and then went back to the hotel...

On Friday we got up, ate breakfast, got on the bus, and drove 16 hours back home.

The End.

:D

yesss

leaving for the trip in ten minutes!!!! will post pictures when i get back

TRIP TIMEEEE!!!

Going on a trip with the school Jazz Band next week for spring break! I am SUPER EXCITED!! we're going to some cool places!!! we have to drive for 16 hours there and 16 hours back, but...oh well. Knowing us, we'll have tons of fun on the bus trip alone. Haha.

Oh and on the subject of Jazz Band, I have a weird blister formation on my right index finger from plucking the string bass. I had a blister on Monday from practice, then yesterday morning it turned into a callus and a new blister formed under it, then today's practice gave me a blister under that blister. so I can literally see the 3 layers of skin/blister. I think it's really cool, but my sister thinks it's nasty. XD

MPA

Our Music Performance Adjudication was today, got out of school for half the day and pretty much literally just got back...

Basically, three judges hear a band play a march and two other pieces and grade them on tone, balance, musicality, intonation, etc. and another judge in another room hears them sight-read a piece. Grading scale is 1=best and 5=poor. My band got straight 1's. :D ...after like, one month of insane hard work. way to go, guys!

bus ride there and back was interesting, I sat beside this senior flute player. When I met her I thought she was shy. Hehe not since All District weekend when I had to room with her...hoo boy, she is faaaaaarrr from shy :D from those 5 hours I sat next to her today and the other 2 hours we were waiting to play, there is an insane amount of new inside jokes......

Soreness

I am INSANELY sore from taekwondo yesterday. As in, I was going down the stairs this morning after I got up and I almost fell because my quads are like, dead stiff. and don't even get me started on carrying the laundry up the stairs, my shoulders are so sore I feel totally off balance (and then I fall over because I'm so sore I can't regain my balance after I lose it) :D

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*update* playing basketball is really hard when you can't raise your arms above your head. FYI.

Tomorrow

My sis has to take the SAT :D and I'm going to go see Alice in Wonderland. It looks kind of creepy/weird but good.

My printer just totally broke down.

All State Band

I made it :D 9th chair which isn't that bad but I'm kind of mad because I know I could have done sooooo much better.....for those music people--my scales were ok, but my Eb scale tongued was pretty crappy (by the way, they spelled "tongued" wrong on the sheet on the stand). and my G-scale wasn't that bad but I think they took off half a point because I played it 3 octaves instead of 2, which they aren't supposed to do, but whatever....my solo was ok, I was semi-sick earlier this week so I had a cough attack during the 32-notes part. My sight-reading was ok too, considering it was in 6/8 time and there were weird sixteenth note rhythms in it :\

anyway, that is the 1 minutes summary of my audition, if you could understand it :D

but yeah. yesterday, right after my audition, I went to taekwondo for the mandatory 5 hour class to test for my 3rd degree black belt, and it was boring as **** (fill in any 4 letter word you would like there). we went over the basics for 5 hours--it wouldn't have been as bad if I hadn't done the exact same thing at the 5 hour classes before testing for 1st degree and again at 2nd degree...but yeah, I felt special because I got to miss one hour of it because of auditions :D

Oh Shoot

All State Band auditions tomorrow....time to start freaking out :D

not really, I don't get nervous anymore. ever. which is good. I have a friend that hyperventilates when she auditions, which is bad...wind instruments don't sound good if you can't breathe. And I have another friend that starts crying because she's so scared.

but yeah, I was on strike from practicing the solo we have to play for auditions because I practiced it so much for All District audition in January and started practicing it only last week...so I wonder how that's gonna go tomorrow...