Monday, July 31, 2006

alive

yes I am in fact still alive and kicking.
Though I found some interesting white spots in my throat so we'll see how long that lasts. The apperation of the white spots is particularily un-fortuitous becuase I have the staff solo competition finals tomorrow, so singing needs to happen.

Other than that things continue to be about the same working at camp. The weather is abysmally hot, which makes everyone alittle less enthusiastic about life.

I am reading the Master and Margerita which is wonderful. I highly recommend it if you want a completely crazy story line in which the devil screws over a number of unsuspecting people. Supurbly written...masterful.

Our new conductor for this second half of the summer is not nearly as good and the one that we had for the first, though it may just be that he was so wonderful that it is difficult to return to a conductor of normal aptitude.

I went to my aunt and uncle's for my last session break which was very relaxing. WE rented afew movies and I watched them on their couch in the evenings, that was amazingly what I wanted to do the most. I'm not a big movie person, I just really miss the fabulousness of couches.

Other than the past few days because of the weather and my apparant throat illness my voice has been doind very well and I've had some great lessons. What is with me and being sick in the summer? I guess my body is not a fan of the summer, or perhaps being away from home in the summer, even when I'm excersizing and doind all the things that keeps one well.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Summer camp

Daniel has pointed out that my blog is lonely: I would like to point out that this is the first time that I have had any access to the internet at all since arriving in michigan June 19.

I am working at a Fine arts camp. It is actually a pretty good experience. The first session is over, my kids were really good. There were of course a few minor things, but all things that were to be expected from 13 year olds that are not dissapointing at all.

I am singing in both the choir and the vocal ensemble. The choir conductor is wonderful. He really knows what he wants and how to get it out of everyone. It's just vvery nice to work with someone with so much experience. I took a voice lesson with this amazing mezzo who sang at the faculty show case. It was one of the most difficult lessons that I have taken in a long time. I really came back to my unit exhausted. It was pretty exciting. When I sang the way she was helping me to it was as if all of the sound coming out of my mouth was crashing into the sound that had just comeout a slit second before createing all sorts of overtones that made my voice seem bigger.

I tried to practi ce this yesterday but I had a difficult time. However I did that again today and had much more success.

We're on our ifrst session break, so yesterday we went down to Holland MI to see the dutch village it was pretty ok, but certainly not great. All the interesting things you could have gotten into for free and the ticket got you into mostly lame things.

That's ok though.

The girls that I directly work with in the unit are great. We really get along quite well despite the fact that we seem to all have quite different personalities. The time here only goes slowly when we arn't very busy, which is only on session break. I think that I may ask my uncle who lives south of here if I can spend the next session break there, such that I can be in a real house and eat real food.

That's about it, I'll probably not update for another 2 weeks, but maybe I'll get off camp sooner to see what is up with the world.