long time no blog! it has been six whole months, and i have been feeling pretty guilty. i'll try to blog more regularly once school ends...
... and that is in just six days! just six more days, which will be stuffed with more projects and exams than we have had for the entire semester. plus a ton of yearbook signing. eeks!
on the bright side, i'll be out of school three days earlier than ella! teehee. one day for senior graduation, one day for my lunch and gym exams (which are nonexistent, as you can probably imagine), and one day for make-up exams.
so, last weekend was memorial day weekend and future shock DC danced at world of dance in brooklyn! here is our performance from saturday. i am to the far left for the first piece. :)
WOD 2011 was definitely one of my favorite shows. all the acts were awesome! on the RhythmAddictsTV youtube channel, you can watch videos of other groups that performed.
i got a red, retro-looking, t-shirt that says "5, 6, 7, 8." i guess it is sort of an inside joke for dancers... maybe? my family got dinner at an african festival near the venue, like last year.
sunday was our NYC tourist day. we took a ferry to liberty island and ellis island. it was packed on the liberty island ferry, but on the ellis island ferry, not so much. for some reason, tourists seem much more interested in a green 151-foot-tall statue than an immigration museum... strange people...
we also saw the off-broadway show, jump! the show was set in the home a family of martial arts experts. the cast was mainly professional korean gymnasts, so the stunts were awesome.
my favorite character was the son-in-law. not only did he have awesome abs... every time he took off his glasses, he would spasm strangely and become a crazy martial arts ninja!
wow. my last blog was on november 16, 2008. its been a while! i guess i am just feeling particularly inspired to blog today. the last day of school was on june 16th! "what time is it? summer time!" that's what we always say at my cousins' house. usually, what happens is, someone asks what time it is, and someone randomly says, "summer time!" but i guess now, it is actually true.
THE SHORT: january-february: all-county orchestra (i am going to write a separate blog about the whole process of it). mr herman and the pack of elephants in our orchestra. i think he needs some more encouraging analogies. april: trip to niagara falls during spring break. my sister loved the jacuzzi in the hotel room. may: east coast dance competition (ECDC). my sister managed to stay awake the whole time this time. june: trip to new york with my family to do a dance performance (world of dance, but really they just mean the hip hop world of dance), last day of school (yippee!), end of the year party after school on the last day
THE LONG:
niagara falls: over spring break, pull out the passports... my family took a road trip to canada! the hotel we chose was a really cool one, since it had a view of the falls. were were already really excited to stay there, but we were even more excited... when they told us our hotel room was getting updated for free!! it was suite! jacuzzi (with jets), the view, tv, it can't get any better than that. at night, the falls would change colors, it was like a giant nightlight! maple sugar candy is good, eh?
ECDC: in may, culture shock dc hosted the east coast dance competition 2009 at the warner theater. people come from all over to dance or compete at ecdc. this was mini shock dc's second year dancing at ecdc. this year we dressed up as dolls which came to life and of course, danced. i was cast as olive oyl. before that i'd never heard of olive oyl. talk about generation gap. olive oyl is from the cartoon popeye! the sailor man! we spent forever trying to find the right red sweater. right shape, right shade, right size. my mom sewed a white fringe onto the collar so that i looked exactly like olive oyl. she wants me to use the costume for halloween this year. not going to happen. no one would get it. other dolls included dora the explorer, diego, GI joe, GI jane, raggedy ann, cabbage patch dolls, my scene dolls, barbies and popeye.
new york: on june 13 and 14 we went to the big apple. mom calls it going back to my beginning. it was a music filled weekend. we stayed at the buckingham hotel in midtown, where, according to my dad, is where the queen of england stays when she's in town. ha ha. we walked to the world of dance at the roseland ballroom... and i performed with my dance group, mini shock DC! we learned all new dances for this performance... live! from new york! here is the youtube video of our number: . we opened for the beat freaks, boogie bots, ring masters, and iconic! they are all from mtv's americas best dance crew. yay! to add to our musical trip, we saw the musical "in the heights" (from a great height... since our seats were pretty high up).
last day of school: before the last day of school, middle school life is very traumatizing. exams. i was really freaked out by my first day of exams, where i had my two (most stressful) high school exams: my algebra exam, and my spanish exam. it turns out that they were both super easy, and that i was worrying for nothing. good thing i didn't study too much. :) at my school, the last day of school has no purpose at all. i always wonder why there is an extra day at the end of each school year where we do nothing. very boring. after the dismissal bell rang, it was so loud!! everywhere, people were screaming things like "freedom" or just randomly screaming. i think my hearing was slightly damaged. and emptying out the entire contents of my locker? into my backpack?? not easy to do. after school, i went to an end of the school party that two of my friends were having. they live across from each other, so it was pretty convenient. i went on the bus home with them, which was more like a circus than a bus. it was amazing how lenient the bus driver was about the "rules"... people were climbing over seats, doing flips, putting their legs out of the windows, running down the aisles... but i just stayed sitting in my seat, looking around me awkwardly. honestly, i've never been one to break the rules. at the party, we had water fights with water balloons and water guns. we ran around having a blast....... for about 2 minutes. that was when we realized we ran out of balloons. there were 10 water balloons. after that, we put a watermelon on the ground, and smashed it open with a baseball bat!! i had always wanted to do that; it is even more fun than it looks on TV. then we ate the pieces of watermelon. i decided to be bold and take one of the most ginormous pieces. i had to bury my face into it in order to get every single piece. by the time i was finished, my face was covered in watermelon, and i was walking around very very slowly.
sorry that i'm not keeping very up to date on my blogging... but for my birthday, on january 23, my family and i went to manhattan, new york, where i was born. we walked a lot and it was freezing cold which was a bad combination. my legs basically went numb if i walked for more than 7 blocks. the bagels at Ess-a Bagels were really yummy. we trekked 14 blocks each way from the hotel to get them. it was worth it though. weirdly, i felt VERY lucky to ride the subway, where my legs could thaw. but... in some of the subway stations, the escalators were broken, so we had to climb about 10 flight of stairs (over 100 steps, maybe 200). also in the subway station, that was much more dreadful, was a man who was playing violin to get some money. but it was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. after we passed, my mom whispered, "you're WAY better than he is." and i was like, "um, YA!" my dad and i saw the musical, "legally blonde." i thought the acting and dancing were really good but the songs weren't very original. most of the songs had "ooooh my god" in their lyrics. during this time, my mom and sister were at m and m world admiring m and m's dressed like the statue of liberty and saturday night fever's tony manero. there was even a scanner that told u what color m and m u are. when i was at the musical my mom and sister also went to the american girl doll store for the 2nd time that weekend.
we went to a store with gigantic stuffed animals and lots of candy called FAO Schwarz. there were really big pink stuffed dogs lined across the wall, twenty foot tall dragons and life-sized mythical creatures from the harry potter novels that were really freaky... to me at least (i'm easily scared.) there were also some people who were dancing on a keyboard mat. it was actually really impressive that they could jump on notes together, so from that you could tell that they had to be working for the store and weren't just kids playing for fun. for my birthday i got a 2nd DDR dance mat from my cousins. and i got a digital recorder from my parents. it's a really good gift for me because i can record how my violin and quartet sound.
i've been playing a lot of violin lately especially because i've been playing with a quartet for the solo and ensemble festival next month. the music on its own isn't difficult, but when we play as quartet it's hard to stay together because we play at different speeds on our own pieces. i cue the quartet, as to when to start playing, with the scroll of my violin. but not just that, but i get the "honor" of sniffing (loudly) a beat before we start because our cellist can't see me since my stand is in the way. my quartet is going to play minuetto by bach for the festival. so sometimes my mom and i say "you bach!" as a pun on "you rock!" i haven't decided yet what solo piece to play though. i'll probably do either a bach minuet in G or a baccarini piece.
i was really excited because i got to see obama speak at the comcast center, at the university of maryland on february 11, the day before the maryland primaries. my mom, my sister and i were walking down the line of people, and i was amazed at how long it went. every time we turned a corner, there were more people standing there. the line had to be about 2 miles, literally. it snaked from the comcast, over the hill, past the parking garage, across the footbridge and past the rec center. the line probably went further than that, but luckily we saw someone we knew waiting in line. she told us that the police officer told her she was at the halfway point. we stood with her for about 10 minutes, then we were able to return the favor by bringing her into the arena early when the officers let us bypass the line and go in a side door because our party had kids in it. we got pretty good seats where we could actually see his face. we waited in the arena for about 3 hours before obama actually came to speak. while we were waiting, about 2 hours before his speech, "cheerleaders" kept chanting and trying to get people to cheer. all fired up! ready to go! (it gets very annoying after a while). i think that obama's a good speaker and the speech was really inspiring. it was a great experience seeing him live and hearing him speak. i really like when he said "things now aren't how they have to be. it's time to turn the page." i hope he wins the most delegates so he can run in the presidential election. i like his message in how he wants to change things. if i was 18, i'd vote for barack obama.
we also saw the off-broadway show, jump! the show was set in the home a family of martial arts experts. the cast was mainly professional korean gymnasts, so the stunts were awesome.
