Happy Birthday Hercules!

Happy 11th Birthday Hercules! You did it. Sorry about the whole moose costume thing...

The one where we get hit by a semi.

Sometimes my titles are erroneous.

This post, however, is an exception.

Friday, May 15th 2010.

After spending the night with some of the Camerata girls and fulfilling other traditions (rehearsal, breakfast, tattoos), the Sprague Camerata was on its way to OSU for another OSAA State Competition. Little did we know...3 miles from Corvallis, we would be hit by a semi. Apparently, school buses are bound by law to stop before a railroad crossing to open the bus door (yeah, I don't get it either). It always just seemed like protocol: the bus would stop and open the door...and everyone would laugh and wonder why we just stopped. Except this time, this semi-truck (shown below) was following too close, and decided it'd be a brilliant idea to hit

our school bus.

(Side note: you can see part of our bus on the side of the truck) Luckily the truck was able to swerve out of the way for the most part. So as much as some people wanted to blow the incident out of proportion (refer to title), the bus only just knicked the back, left corner of the bus.

When the crash was initially felt on the bus and the glass shattered (hitting the back of my neck, even at the middle of the bus), I was shocked/startled/surprised. Interestingly, I had Sasha (our leopard of a mascot) between my knees, which means that Sasha freaked out too:

Some of you may know that Sasha has an intimidating roar that shares when squeezed. Anyways, that was the gist of the crash. We were able to arrange our performance time to the last possible spot, and basically just lied on the floor and tried to recover until then (at OSU).

On stage, we performed the 3rd movement of the David Diamond Round for Strings, and the 4th and 5th movements of Dvorak's Serenade for Strings. The State rep, within itself, is an amazing feat for a public HS orchestra and we all felt super proud/excited to share our love of music with the audience and adjudicators. The performance itself seems like a blur to me now, but I almost always have fun performing on stage (given I'm prepared...which admittedly isn't all the time haha) and this time was no different. After the performance, it seemed as if everyone felt different parts were better or worse, but as a whole we felt pretty accomplished walking into and out of the sight reading room (just so I can document this: the sight reading piece of Alice and Wonderland was a ridiculous excuse of a piece). Okay so then we took pictures in concert attire...

and ate lunch, before coming back for round 2. Round 2= Symphony. Words can't explain how excited I was to perform and be done with "Symphony" for the rest of my life. I've always spoken so fondly of my experiences in different symphonies on my blog, but I guess I've never mentioned Sprague Symphony (the bane of my existence) so I'll take a second here to inform any ignorant passerbys. Even though you may be thinking about "what a wonderful opportunity" it is to be apart of a school symphony or how "great/exciting/fun/musical" your experience in the Sprague Symphony was, things have changed. In Symphony, you sit in 2.5 hour rehearsals every tuesday and 1.5 hour rehearsals every friday (who schedules rehearsals on fridays?!!!) watching the same sections attempt to play/learn their parts every week. At some point, your time becomes very valuable (namely around college apps, SAT, AP testing, american idol, etc) and you wonder why you are sitting and rotting in an absolutely useless rehearsal...that was symphony every week. *sigh* So the rant went longer than expected...but I'm glad it's out there. Carrying on...Symphony performed Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and 2 movements of Bizet's Carmen. I know this is terrible, but I couldn't help but celebrate between each piece (or even between each bar) that it would be the last time playing said section with said symphony forever. Much to everyone's surprise, the symphony actually performed better than it's ever sounded before (props...i guess). After the symphony performance and sightreading, the day was almost over...minus waiting for the awards ceremony.

To be continued...(Man I hate coming back to an unfinished blog...especially when it's "rehashing" in nature)...

Awards ceremony shouldn't be as big of a deal as it has been made over the years. In all actuality, State Orchestra Competition shouldn't be as big of a deal. Personally, I truly don't agree with competing in music or forming musical rivalries. Music should be a shared experience given from an honest and enjoyable place in your own heart. And there has to be something terribly wrong when you implement certain musical ideas in hopes of "accumulating points" rather than for the better expressive character or mood of the piece. Actually, this can be applied to most things in life (I think). Points suck. But I digress (hey, this is my blog after all). Anyways, everyone was hyped up for the awards ceremony. And lots of cheering, nervous emotion, and drumrolls later....we did it again! Sprague HS Camerata is the 2010 Champions in the String Orchestra Division. After everything that our orchestra had been through, I was so happy for everyone. We finally triumphed over our issues (spanning from musical opinions to extreme anger to uncooperative leadership...that's NICELY put...haha) and finished as deserving champions. While rival schools like to jab at us and say we only won due to our high sight reading scores, I think, while that may be true on paper, that we deserved it this year (more than last year). Our music was crazy hard. And we're just better. :) and humble.

I won't lie, orchestra this year has been tough sometimes. Sprague Camerata has undeniably turned the corner and changed into a new character and quasi type family (and I miss the old Cameratas that I've been apart of over the years), but I'll miss it. And Jenny (when you're out there creeper stalking my blog...aka your favorite page), I'm not going to miss you because you're frickin coming with me to college.

THE END.

happy may: things are wrapping up!

My lame title sums it up (which is I guess what titles are for...except great expectations...which IMO is neither great nor expectationable...yeah i made that up), things are wrapping up for this amazing, learning, and eventful senior year.

I don't know if I mentioned this in any of my posts from a long time ago, but I had been looking forward to/dreaming of May 1st for a ridiculously long time. May 1st is the officially official date of enrollment confirmation. I finally have a grasp of what's in store for me in the next 4 years! And May 1st also marks the day of Sprague Prom 2010 (i may add a picture a later).

I'm still in awe of the unspoken rule that has turned Prom into a 24 hour (and even 48 hours in some cases) event, but we participated regardless. Our group was really chill (Zach and I, Brandon and Caroline, Madison and Jared, Anders and Kaitlyn, and Alex and Emily). In the morning, we got picked up by "santa" aka anders for homemade breakfast (yummmy), and then headed off to the Oregon Zoo. It was a blast, but I have to admit I vowed never to go back to a zoo ever again (i couldn't help but feel incredibly sad for the captive animals...for what? human entertainment...no further comment). We had lunch and came back, got ready, and went to the dance (at the fairgrounds...curse you juniors...prom was better last year) in a limo. woooo. I've decided that the amount of fun had at Prom is inversely proportional to the amount of sleep/rest had (as most things are...). Wooo Prom.

Today (day after prom) also marked the end of my time in the Salem Youth Symphony. We performed Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, accompanied Andrew on Hadyn Cello Concerto in C major, and (1st, 2nd, 4th movements of) Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony. It was a valiant effort. haha. I'm so glad I did SYS this year and really enjoyed just having the opportunity to play such masterpieces, and I can't wait to be in the symphony at Notre Dame!

Follow up on that Marion-Polk Premed scholarship I was a finalist in: I showed up for an interview (relatively at ease) and it turned out to be one of the most frightening situations ever. Imagine a super long table (maybe two times my dining table) with 8 doctors (all male) sitting on one end. Now sit at the other end in a cold chair and answer questions. errrrm. yeah. All things considered, I actually felt really confident in the interview and felt like I was able to convey most of what I wanted (minus the fricking "what would you do if your bulimic friend confided in you?" question). In the end I won a $2K scholarship. WIN!

Alright, hopefully I add pictures later, but here's to probably the busiest may ever (and it's only been two days)! AP tests this week, State orchestra next week, and everything else awesome in between. ready set go!