The week started off great with a day off from school and a chance to get new glasses. I was tired of my old boring frames so I went a little over the top this time! I love them and they have my personality written all over them. What you can't tell from this picture is that the insides are all lime green. I LOVE them! I also had a super fun chance to train a baby chick. Jacqui is taking a class where they train chicks, rats, horses, and observe the growing of children. The chicks were so cute and fun to play with. Sometimes I wonder if I was meant to live on a farm in some small town. 

Sometimes I wonder just how many times one person can get hurt in one week. I can't tell you how many close calls I had this week. My first incident happened at 4 am on Monday morning. I was coming out of the bathroom and thought the wall was a little father away than it really was. I ran smack into the wall, leaving quite a large goose egg on my forehead. Then Tuesday rolled around, the bump went away but the bruise was still there. I got to sing in Devotional and was so excited to see some of my friends before it started. I went up to talk to them and realized it was time to be back stage. I said good bye and started down the stairs (keep in mind this was in the huge auditorium and about 5 minutes before devotional, meaning it was pretty full). I was running down the stairs as fast as I could to get back to the group. Not the best idea in heals! My shoe fell off, I slipped, my dress nearly went over my head, and I bounced right back up, found my shoe, and started to walk a way. I didn't want to turn around to see who saw it, but I did hear one guy say "Oh, nice recovery." I was so embarrassed. I got up to sing, forgot the words, and was just as red as could be. There is no way that with the bright green sweater I was wearing could be missed. The girl who fell was the girl who forgot her words... hum.... not the greatest impression. I guess it was more a week of embarrassing moments rather than accidents, I also ripped my pants, fell at swing dancing, hit a kid in the face while dancing, and tripped up the steps a good four times. Man I am just one graceful girl!

I have done quite a bit of performing this week. It started with Devotional on Tuesday. Besides all the embarrassing moments, it was really good. Vocal Union this semester is spectacular. All of the people in the group are such hard workers. We sang an arrangement that Sis. Brower wrote of I Stand All Amazed. It is so beautiful. I wish I had the amount of talent that lady has in her little finger. 

Another performance we had this week was the BYU-Idaho Barbershop Festival. It started out with a clinician workshop with Jim Dibussman (a nationally acclaimed Barbershop specialist). We hadn't really prepared ourselves as well as we would have liked, but we went in with smiling faces. We sang our song, and then he dug right in. We all needed to blend our sound to match the lead voice, work on our transitions, and remember what part of the song comes next. I don't think he was quite as happy with us as we would have liked, but we did our best for the time we had. We worked on it throughout the week, and then thought we were really ready for our audition. We sang in front of Jim, The guest group, Storm-front, Brother Brower, Sister Brower and the other adjudicators. We all walked up on stage, and froze. I can't recall ever being that nervous when singing. We stood like sticks and didn't put any feeling in the music at all. I noticed that I wasn't the only one who was acting odd. Everyone was shaking, notes were wrong, transitions were worse than they were a week earlier, and we looked scared out of our minds. This is super weird seeing as all four of us have been performing together for the past year and have never had this happen to us. When we finished our audition Sis. Brower came out to talk to us. She said we looked like little freshman auditioning for the first time. We were all so confused by what just happened. 

We had to wait to see what would happen with the show. An hour later they posted the list of

 who would be in which show. We made it into the second show. We decided to meet about 30 minutes before and try running through it again. It was still a little shaky, but we all looked really nice... At least we had that much going for us.  The group that was supposed to go before us wasn't ready so they bumped us up. We walked out on stage and all the nerves went away. We performed our little hearts out and had the time of our lives. We joked around, and all though the musicality might not be the best, we had fun and I know the audience enjoyed it. 

After the performance the bass from Storm-front came up to me and told me that they were impressed with our sound at the audition, but our performance just blew them all away. He said the lead voice was extremely polished and the group had the perfect blend of voices and was far beyond the "student level." I guess all those nerves and all the hard work pays off. We have now been asked to go perform at a regional workshop to help younger girls get quartets started at a high school level. I am so excited! This is so much fun. I have never done Barbershop before, but it is really fun. I'm glad I got into all of this before I finished my college career.

I got picked by the Public Relations Department, along with Eva, to be the official poster girl for our Vocal Union tour. I had to get all gussied up and go to the photo studio on the third floor of the library. I must say this was much different from the photo shoots I have been used to doing in our garage at home. I got dressed in the shirt they had picked out and stood on the X. Then I waited for them to tell me what to do. They asked me to sing the most energetic song I could and get into it as much as I could... this was a little weird to do knowing I was in the middle of the library, and without any accompaniment. I got a little embarrassed, but knew I had to get over it and started to sing Orange Colored Sky. I pretended no one was around and just started to wail. The song was over sooner than I knew, they picked a few good pictures, and I left. All that effort getting ready for a ten minute photo shoot... these pictures better turn out good!

Overall it was a good week. I enjoyed everything I did, and even pulled of an 80% on my Biology quiz. I have done some nice bonding with my new roommates, got a lot of practicing in, and enjoyed my time on the phone with Clint (seeing as it is fixed now!). Well, until next week.