Dance Internship: June 14th (Day off!)

June 13th was my day off, so I made some awesome plans to go visit my Uncle & his family. They live about 1/2 an hour from where I am staying, so it wasn't too bad of a drive. I arrived at Tio Marcos' house at 12pm. My little baby cousins are so adorable.

They were jumping up and down, hanging all over me when I came in. Their names are: Aliza (6), Amelia (3), and Anita (1). They are all simply adorable little girls, with glossy black, bouncing curls, big brown eyes, and long black eyelashes that women all over the world would do anything to get. And on top of all that they have tireless energy!

I chatted with Tia Tami for a few minutes. The little girls were all ready for me to play with them- Amelia was carrying her collection of ducks around (her favorite toys), and telling me that the ducks were "dirty because Aliza touched them" and that we needed to give them a bath. Classic.

So, I told them to dress up in their favorite outfit and get their favorite toys ready to show to me. When I headed upstairs (after much urging from the girls to hurry and come ha ha), they were ecstatic. Amelia had her collection of rubber duckies to show to me, and her favorite stuffed bear (Woozy).

Aliza showed me her entire collection of stuffed animals, each of which had a name and a special interest or ability ("This is rainbow cat, when she jumps, she makes a rainbow" was my favorite description). She also showed me her favorite stuffed bear that she always snuggles with at bedtime.
Anita ran & got her "Rosy bear" to show it off and be like her sisters. She is too cute. Oh my goodness!

After this "show & tell" time, we gathered the rubber duckies, and each of us took turns scrubbing them with this special brush that Amelia has to wash them with. I wonder how many baths they get a day? :)
By the end, Amelia was satisfied that they were clean, although there were a few tears over who would get to bathe certain ducks (specifically the pink duck with the heart, that one was a favorite for sure).

At 2:30, I took Amelia & Aliza to the neighborhood pool. It was a gorgeous facility with a kiddie pool, and a regular sized pool with Olympic sized swimming lanes, a diving board, and a shallow end for kids.
We went back & forth between the kiddie pool and the kid's shallow end of the big pool. We had fun racing each other (Amelia went on my back & we raced against Aliza), playing with the ducks in the kiddie pool (even though another child "kidnapped" one, and didn't want to give it back; surprisingly, Amelia stayed calm through this ordeal). All in all, we stayed at the pool for 2 1/2 hours! The girls did great, but we took breaks throughout to have snacks/drinks. They did really well!

After we arrived back at Tio Marcos & Tia Tami's house, I needed a little bit of quiet time! I had a blast with the little girls, but I was pretty tired. I went out on the deck & journaled for a bit in the rain (I was under the shelter, but I watched the rain :). It was quite lovely.

We all went to IHOP for dinner- I ordered the international crepe passport- it was so delicious. Fresh fruit on top, bacon, eggs...coffee. Yummy! We had a nice time visiting with each other.

When we got home,  the girls prepared for bed. Aliza was really sad that I was leaving; I said good-bye twice, and then on the phone on the way to downtown to see the monuments with Tio M. We finally got the the monument I wanted to see at close to 11. Detours threw us off, so that was kind of disappointing. But they looked AMAZING at night. I did get some nice pictures, so that was great as well. Tio Marcos drove back with me to my apartment. He didn't want me going in alone at night. Which is good- I felt safer because he drove with me and walked me to my door. It tacked an additional half hour to his drive, but it was so appreciated! What a wonderful day my Monday was - the best day off ever!

~Lysandra

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

"Come to Me"

The questions that truly matter in life are remarkably few, and they are all answered by these words— “Come to Me.” Our Lord’s words are not, “Do this, or don’t do that,” but— “Come to me.” -Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest. 


Day 4 (June 10th, 2010) Summer Dance Internship


Day four of my internship didn't slow down that much more than Day 3. The only difference was I didn't have to run around as much, so that was good! Whew.
I woke up early (6am-ish) and attempted to start installation of microsoft office for my mac (yet again) to no avail. Then I wrote on my blog, and did some other misc. things, including getting ready for the day.  By 8:30am, I was ready to go! Mr. Chen tried to help me troubleshoot the Microsoft install, but he is not familiar with Mac computers, so he wasn't sure what the issue might be. I tried to get in touch with Microsoft for about half an hour (it's almost impossible to find a phone number on their site!). Finally, I got the number for customer service. It took awhile, but perseverance pays off! 


When I finally was being transferred to the technician who would be working on my case number, I said good-bye to the customer service rep who was opening my case, and automatically hung up the phone. *Sigh*...I called back, thankfully since I had a case number, it didn't take long to get back on the phone with the technician who walked me through the installation. After about another hour on the phone, it finally worked! YAY!


By 12pm, the software was completely installed. A morning basically spent on the phone, but it was totally worth it. I started working on a promotional brochure, and finished it up by 1:30pm. Not too shabby. I had lunch at around 1:30, and prepared to head to Trader Joe's to pick up some sweet snacks for the recital this Saturday. 


Trader Joe's was only about 10-15 minutes away. It was my first time going there, but some of my friends love it, so I was excited. I bought 4 packs of kettle corn, 4 bags of chocolate covered pretzels, 2 packs of granola bars, 4 bags of trail mix, a bag of peanut butter filled pretzel nubs, and a Trader Joe's reusable bag (it was red & really pretty!).  All that for around $50. SCORE!


I made it back to the Chen's house by 3:10. I had to make sure to be back by 3:30 to avoid the traffic jams that ensue when all the kids get out of school. I prepared to practice/work on my solo for about an hour. I practiced in the upper room until 4:30-ish. The Chen's were my audience-and they were so encouraging too! Fanny even videotaped me, which was awesome, since there isn't a mirror in the space (a good thing sometimes when you're rehearsing). 


At around 4:30, I had a conference call that lasted a little over half an hour. We had to leave at half past five to make it on time to a 6:30pm rehearsal (it's an hour away, with traffic). So I got all my things together, and we left. I had so much stuff to load into the car: purse, laptop/misc. bag, garment bag, plus the two bags of snacks for Saturday! lol.


We arrived at the practice on time. The first 20 minutes of practice, everyone prayer journals -very cool idea. When that portion ended, everyone circled up for prayers/praises, notes, and opening prayer. For the next half hour, everyone had a costume check/approval. While we were waiting, I played "Bow to your Sense" (also known as "Kung Fu") with the younger gals. After a few minutes, the younger girls worked on their West African dance. Once costume checks were over, the company started running through all of their pieces for Saturday. They put so much heart into all of it, I'm sure Saturday will be wonderful. 


We finally got home at 10:30pm. I was dead tired, but still had to mail off brochures to the copier for Saturday's recital. I finished up those items, and still ended up going to bed a lot later than I wanted to...but I'm glad I finished up those projects!


Today, I am going to attend a 3 hour (Yes, 3 hour!!! :D) Modern class with Ronya-Lee. Tonight, we have dress rehearsal at the venue we will be performing in this Saturday.


Adios Amigos!


Lysandra