Days 5, 6, & 7

"There's a Purpose in Every Path you Take...A Reason Why You Live." -Patricia Hunter

Day 5, June 11th, 2010


Day 5 began quite early, as I prepared to head to take a 3-hr modern class with Ronya about 1/2 hr away from the Chen's house. I left their house at about 9:00, heading to class at 10am. Parking can be a pain, since there are meters everywhere unless you find a parking garage... :/

I arrived in the area at around 9:30, but had to circle around a few times thanks to all the one way streets. I finally parallel parked (sometimes a challenge for me, but I did it! lol...), then realized I didn't have any change for the meter. Luckily, there was a bank across the street. I went to get change, and the line wasn't really moving, but there was a lady putting change into one of those change counter machines.
I asked her for change, and quickly went to my car to put more money in the meter. I had already put $3 worth of quarters in when I realized there was a 1 hr. time limit (it "ate" $2 worth of quarters :/....) So that was a bummer. I made it to class by 10:05, with a quick Starbucks run right I went across the street.

The studio was in the lower level of an office/shopping center building. It had three separate studios, and the teacher was so professional. She knows her craft, that is for certain. Her visualizations were incredible. She gave me many helpful tips & corrections.

After the first hour, I ran to re-park my car. It took awhile to get there because I had to try and get directions to the parking garage (*sigh*). To my dismay, I had gotten a $40 ticket 2 MINUTES before I reached my car. Is that not ridiculous?!? I'm going to try to dispute it. I'm pretty sure they'll take it off, from what the lady at the dept. said when I called about it.

Anyways, I finally found a parking garage, but they didn't take a debit card. So I gave the teller $2, promised to come straight back to pay him the difference after I found an ATM, parked, ran to the ATM, and came back and payed the remaining $8 for parking. They had already started back from the break when I got back to class, but I tried to catch on. We did some fun across the floor combos.

After a little while, my knee & ankle started swelling pretty badly, so I had to take a break. Sometimes it's hard to gauge whether it is a serious injury, or something you can push through. It felt like I should take it easy, so I observed the second half of the class. Pretty awesome stuff. There was a girl who was 16 with incredible extension & maturity- she looked like she could be in her early to mid-twenties. It was  incredible.

After class, Ronya & I grabbed some lunch upstairs at a little deli, and chatted about the week so far, etc.  When we were done, she drove me to the parking garage (where I thought my car was...) It turned out to be on the next block. If I hadn't had my ATM receipt, I wouldn't have been able to find it, but the receipt had an address on it! Yay!

I headed to a copy store to have some print work that I had worked on produced for the show (brochures, a flyer insert for the program, etc.) It was supposed to be ready for pick up, since I had e-mailed it a head of time. But it was all wrong. I had to re-work it all (formatting was messed up), and worked on it for too long. It still ended up being messed up. Mrs. Pauline & Ronya told me that it was the copy shop's fault, since the gentleman "assisting me" (letting me do all the work and being no help whatsoever) did not know what he was doing with the print work.

Later, when I headed to the venue where we were performing, I burned the cd from the program order on the PDF of the program. It turned out to be the wrong order; the graphic designer messed it up by putting page two twice, and omitting page 1 altogether. What a headache! And when I finally thought I had fixed the problem, the cd didn't burn correctly & it wouldn't play. So the rehearsal was pretty rough because of the technical difficulties. However, everyone left with their chin up, knowing that Saturday would be much better.

Saturday, June 12th, 2010 Day 6
Saturday AM I woke up at 6:30 to prepare to head to Target & Barnes & Noble to work on the music. I bought CD-RW at Target, and worked for a couple hours cutting music & editing it all together. When I got back to the Chen's house (12pm), I had the girls listen to the music with me to check it. Turned out that Anthem of Praise was too short- it had a part two on a separate track that needed to be spliced into the same track with it. I had to burn it onto a disk & re-import back into iTunes in order to work around the track protection from iTunes. It took about half an hour for me to get it right. Then by 2pm, I had burned a master copy, and 3 back up cds for the show.  I literally held them until we arrived at the venue, that's how protective I was, but after all that time and effort, it makes sense!

Call time was 3pm, and we got there a little bit before 3. I ran through my solo on the stage at about 3:30, and helped everyone backstage with costumes, make-up, and hair. The show started at 5pm without a single mishap. Thank the Lord! The only things that were slightly off were: after Redemption Song, somebody dropped a hairnet and it stayed onstage for a dance, and when it was time for my solo, I thought it was still a few pieces away, and wasn't ready for a minute (ish) because I was trying to figure out who was supposed to be onstage! It was kinda funny. The finale, Anthem of Praise, was simply glorious. There was a pure joy in the room, and the company received a standing ovation.

Of course, for me, the work was far from over. I picked up the foyer, sold a book at the table, ran to find change for the person, and packed up a bunch of things backstage in order to leave in a timely manner. We were out before 8pm, which was great! On the drive home, I took a short nap. How wonderful!!!

When we got home, Fanny & I took a few pictures together with our make-up still on (I did her make-up, and she looked so pretty ^_^). Then I got ready to go eat dinner, and play some music with the Upper Room band. We ran a few songs, and I practiced "The Searching Song", since I am performing it on Wednesday. We finished up by about 10pm, then I shared a short message about dreams. I basically encouraged the kids that if they have dreams, they shouldn't just write them off and say it would be too hard, or list all the reasons they can't do it. God has given them their dreams, and they just need to seek Him about the steps to take to make it happen.

At 10:15, we all headed downstairs for some sweet snacks: watermelon and homemade cake with buttercream icing. The kids literally devoured the watermelon. One guy ate at least 3 pieces of cake- don't ask me how he stays so thin. It's crazy how fast a teen guy's metabolism works! Man. Everyone left by about 11:20pm, and I also headed down to bed. I was in bed by twelve, but I found out that the service I was going to was moved up (we were going to the 11am, now I had to be there at 8:30am)...

Sunday June 13th, 2010, Day 7
Woke up at the crack of dawn (well, Ronya called me at about 7, and that was when I woke up lol).
I packed everything for the picnic, and also for the service. It was a lovely service honoring the Senior class of 2010. They let them run the service, and it was quite entertaining. I really enjoyed it! Also met a lot of people, so that was fun too.

At 11:30, I left the church and went to Mrs. Pauline's house. We loaded up her car and went over to the park at 12:30. Everyone got there later than 2pm; they kind of trickled in. Olivia arrived with her 2 year old, William, in tow, and I happened to have some bubbles. He loved them- he even figured out how to blow a few! And Jenora, a member of the Jr. dance company, learned how to do a cartwheel in about 5 minutes of teaching her. She's a smart little girl! We also played volleyball (Jade & Jenora ran some drills with me :D), plus we ate some amazing Jamaican food and carrot cake- it was a blast!

We packed up by 6pm and headed to Mrs. Pauline's house. We took some photos, and unloaded everything. I left to the Chen's by about 6:30pm.  I took a nap from 7:30-9pm, and then I was wide awake! Not the best :/...But I got some things done, like thank you notes, photo uploads...so it was ok. Today, I am going to see my uncle and his family, go chill out at the pool, and sight seeing tonight! It
supposed to be beautiful at night. I'm stoked!

Until next time,

Lysandra