Just a little up date

I realized that there have been a few major events that have happened within the past couple weeks.

January 13 and 14 I went down with my choir director Mr. Anderson and two other girls from my choir to Decora, Iowa to the Dorian Choir Festival. It is a festival that I have wanted to go to since I was in 9th grade. I entered the concert choir in 9th grade and that's where I found about about it. I had forgotten that my older sister had gone there too until this year. It was kind of interesting because I am one of the highest singing sopranos in my school choir, but Mr. Anderson put me on alto where I had to sing an F below the staff because I could hit it. The other altos that I sat by were pretty surprised when I told them that I am actually a soprano that can sing a high C. The whole experience of singing with 1379 other students was fun but I wouldn't want to do it again. A lot of the girls I met there seemed to be a little snotty.

We had the HVL One Act Festival that Triton hosts every year for the Hiawatha Valley League schools. This isn't a competition, per say, but you do have to be competitive. We have three judges that Mr. Scheiber hires and they are usually speech judges, state one act judges or former directors. The judges loved us this year. They said that our performance was state quality and that we performed at that rigor too. If a play is completely ready for competition and they don't need to work on much they get a "star performance" plaque. Triton had done it 15 years in a row!! That is the best record of all the schools in the HVL. The school closest to our record is Pine Island with 4, but they didn't get one this year. Last year they started to hand out All Conference Actor awards. At last years award ceremony they awarded two Thespians from each play, but this year they got really picky. They chose one from one play, two from another, but guess what happened next... they awarded the whole Triton cast the a certificate!! We were all so happy.

I had a friend from New Jersey come here for the weekend and she went to a college visit to Bethel and she fell in love with it like I did. She's going there with me next fall. It'll be really nice to already have a friend there. I'm very excited for this year to really get rolling.

New year; New adventures

The new year has come and along with that comes new adventures, new ideas, new heights and new relationships. In this new year ahead I will not only be graduating from high school, going off to college and discovering who I can be outside of my home. I said new relationships, and I'm sure you are wondering "What kind of new relationship is she talking about?" Well, for those of you who are familiar with the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I'm "going courtin', going courtin'." I was asked recently by Jonathan is he could court me. I, of course, accepted. I've never been courted before and he's never really courted anyone else before, but we are working together and making the most out of being 2,000 miles away from eachother. We keep in close contact with e-mails, IM (yahoo messenger) and phone calls. Got to love technology!

It's been a great week and a half break from school. It's given me time to relax, unwind and get to know Jonathan a lot more. It's pretty crazy how much we have found to have in common. Not by having the same taste in foods or colors, although we do have the same favorite ice cream flavors (cookies and cream; moose tracks), but we have what we are calling "kindred spirits." A lot of the time we will be trying to explain something and not being able to think of the right words that other people would be able to understand but for some reason we always seem to understand what the other one is talking about. We also found it funny how one time on the phone we both started yawning at the same time (I knew yawning was contagious, but isn't that only supposed to happen if you see the other person do it?). It's been really nice talking to him, and it will be hard to go back to school now and not have the opportunity all day. But summer is just a short time away, and we'll see eachother at conference in Wisconsin.

Happy New Year to you all, make it a great one. I know I will.