Charlie Loves Me

I went into my room after school today and started having a conversation with my cat, Charlie. I asked her how her day was and then tell her about my day and she sat there attentively and whenever I said anything, she would meow back. She then started attempting to open the door to get out of my bedroom so I said "what, you don't love me anymore?" She turned around and looked at me, and then walked back over to me and started to purr. Good girl, I love you too.

The Piano

The piano frustrates me. I feel like I never get better no matter how much I practice. I've always loved playing the piano and when I didn't have a piano teacher I would teach myself because I wanted to get better. I have had four piano teachers since I moved here. The first two were idiots and the third one was good but I really like the one I have now. However, I have a hard time practicing as much as I would like to because trying to play in a house with thirteen people is very annoying and loud. I listen to people in choir play the piano and they are amazing and then I feel like I can't even compare to them. I love playing the piano, I do it as much as possible and it's my favorite thing to do. So how come I'm not as good as those other people when I think I practice just as hard and love it just as much if not more. I swear I'm like that for everything: school, sports, piano. I will just never be as good as other people no matter how hard I try or how much I want it. Is it just in my genes to suck? I'm sick of feeling like I'm not good at anything. Especially the piano, my most favorite thing in the world. And anyone who tells me to stop comparing myself to other people can just shut up. I want to be as good as others so I can actually feel good about myself. I'm not trying to compete, I just want to be as good as everyone else. I want to feel like all my hours of practicing aren't being wasted. Honestly I'm really starting to hate the piano.

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High School and the Idiots Who Go There

I haven't posted in two months because I never have time and no one in my family really does it anymore and that was the whole reason I started my blog over two years ago. But I thought I'd throw in another post for the heck of it since I woke up at 8:30 this morning because I couldn't sleep. I never do that. And I don't have work for another two hours and I have nothing better to do.

So I started high school two weeks ago. And boy is it just magical. It's nice to be the youngest again, I was sick of being the oldest with a bunch of what seemed like little kids running through the halls and screaming and having enchiladas stuck in their braces and gasping and giving people dirty looks if they dare to say the "d-word," heaven forbid. So it is nice to finally have older people. But, they are still just as annoying.

All of them say that sophomores are annoying and stupid, yet have they taken a look at themselves? In a way, most of them are still just as stupid and annoying as the junior high kids, except they've learned how to dress, they can drive, they do drugs, they swear, and they make out in the middle of the hall. I think they boys are show-offs who do the stupidest stuff just to get a couple of laughs or a look from the cute girl. Girls always try to play around with the boys, squealing and stealing their backpack and then run away, laughing hysterically, hoping that all of the boys think that they are so cute and will ask them to homecoming. Really, it's kind of ridiculous. And then in the parking lot, they all drive like maniacs trying to impress their friends as they speed right past you as you're trying to back out and cut people off and drive 50 miles over the speed bumps because they're too cool for them or not ruining their tire's allignment. I am so impressed, I bow down to you oh so amazing daring drivers. I know my place now.

In my first period class, I have auto tech. There are 8 girls and 30 guys, and most of them think that they are so cool because they already know how to change a tire or change their oil. How can I possibly compete with them? And then the stupid boys in the back feel they need to have attention so they constantly throw out witty remarks in the hopes that we will all fall down laughing, while we all just roll our eyes as the teacher says something to totally diss them which makes us laugh. And then they asked the teacher if he ever did any drugs. He said yes, when he was young and stupid he did marijuana. Then all of the boys in the back said, "you're so lame! you only did marijuana!" No wonder they're so stupid, they're losing all of their brain cells trying to be cool by doing stupid, pointless drugs that will mess them up just so that they can be cool. Apparently marijuana isn't enough to be cool, but perhaps if you did a bit of meth and heroin, then you can possibly meet their "cool" standard. I'll be sure to take notes for if I ever want to go so low in the hopes of having stoners for friends (I do have a couple stoner friends, and they are indeed nice people. Some of them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're bad people.).

The dress code at Viewmont isn't very strict, even though they tell you it is, so a lot of the girls have to dress like what I call "Lagoon girls" - girls who dress like sluts pretty much in the hopes of catching a couple of guy's eyes. Because that's all a guy wants isn't it, a girl who will dress slutty for them and then they've got the prize girl.

People also feel that others won't like them unless they use three different swear words in each sentence. It's probably because they've lost all of their brain cells from so many drugs that they can't think of any other possible words. I'll admit I sometimes swear, usually just under my breath though or when I'm super duper ultra angry. Everyone does it. But I don't feel the need to throw it into conversation for the heck of it or so that I'll impress the people I'm talking to because I actually said the word. I can just see my coolness meter going way up from that.

Another thing, is that people feel they need to display their love to the world, to prove that they are cool because they've got a hot person playing tonsel-hockey with them in the middle of the hall when you're trying to get to class. Seriously, get a room. No one wants to see that. Or when people just stand there and hug for a century. Let's move on people, I swear you'll see eachother after next class, can you handle a whole hour and twenty minutes apart? It's almost impossible to live that long without seeing each other, how do they sleep?? They have tough lives. I could care less when people give each other a quick hug or peck, that's cool I don't care. At least they make it brief yet they can still let each other know how much they love each other without overdoing it.

I think a lot of girls are ridiculous and liars when it comes to popularity. If you ask a girl to write or tell about herself, she'll say that she loves her best friends and would do anything for them. They love to have fun and goof around and hang all the time. They like to be super crazy and not care what other people think of them because they're just having fun, and that she's just your ordinarly girl trying to have fun in life because, hey it's short. She likes to just do her thing and not care about other people because she's herself no matter what. If all of those girls were stranded in a desert and were offered a bottle of water or instant popularity, at least half would turn down the water. They just say they don't care what other people think in the hopes that other people won't care, or will respect her, or will think she's cool. I can only name a couple people who actually don't care about other people. And those are some of the coolest people I know. And I'm not saying I'm some perfect girl who doesn't think that way. I do care what other people think, and sometimes I am a little inclined to show off. But I don't do it for popularity, I do it for friends. I don't care if I'm in the popular crowd at school or not. A lot of the people in that group are so sure of their own popularity and coolness that they are so annoying and exhausting to be around. I just want a lot of friends that I can have fun with and do crazy stuff with, I don't want to be part of that crowd. So when I'm offered the bottled water or popularity, I would probably take the water. But no promises, I'll have to see when I'm faced with that situation. If it was bottled water or a big, fun group of friends, I would happily turn down the water. Because I don't necessarily care about how popular I am and how many people know me, it's about how many fun friends I can have and that we like to be around each other, which I guess, is it's own kind of popularity.

Last thing I have an issue with, and I'll be brief, are girls shoes. I'd just like to say that the "Jesus shoes" and the shoes that are boots on the top but flip-flops on the bottom, are so ugly and hideous that I wonder why any girl in her right mind would wear them. The "Jesus shoes" aren't as bad as the "boot-flops" though. And the funny thing is, all of the popular girls wear them. Yuck.

Anyway, that's high school for you.

Moroni's Quest

This post is a little late, I went to youth conference last week and our youth conference this year was called "Moroni's Quest". It was a realy great experience and I'm glad my stake did it.

On Wednesday, July 23, at 8 in the morning, my sister Ashley, my cousin Skyler, and I went to the Stake center. We had to go in our costumes, which were like togas. Some of them were pretty cute and I actually thought it was pretty cool wearing them, other than they made us more hot (not in the good way). We checked in, got our bags, and then watched the first reenactments. All I knew about Moroni's Quest was that they did tons of reenactments from the Book of Mormon. So we started at the beginning with Nephi's family and Lehi (played by my friend, Ethan Drake). I was on stage for about twenty seconds wandering around because I was a Jerusalem woman. It was exciting.

After all that was over and they decided to go to the Promised Land, we all left and drove to our "Promised Land." It was about an hour drive, and when we got there we were put into tribes. There were 10 people in each tribe, and the only people I knew in mine were Parker Taggart and Ethan Drake. Ethan and I were laughing about the odds of us being put together in the same tribe. We then got a flag and had to come up with a name and decorate it. We had a red and black flag. We wanted to be called the Celestial-ites at first, and I, naturally, thought that that was a great idea. But since our flag was black and red, we thought that it wouldn't look too good. We decided to call ourselves the "Ites", and then they had me write "ni hao" which is Chinese for hello, and then this other word "yi" than means righteous. After that, we all had to hike to our campsite place which was really long and hot. I had forgotten to fill my waterbottle so I didn't have much fun. The place we stayed at was a huge field. There were two big sections cut off for the boys' and girls' tents which were already set up for us.

Througout the day, we had reenactments and then got together in our tribes to discuss them. The reenactments were pretty cool. The voices were pre recorded so we didn't have any problems with not being able to see people, not going along with the music, or people forgetting their lines. They had really cool background music and noise to go along with it. We also learned to fight and built a tower. We got styrofoam swords and card board shields and we had our first war. It was so much fun, we got to run at eachother and attack eachother and we were dead after a certain number of hits. I didn't help with the tower, I just gave morale support. At night we got to hang with our wards. After hanging with our wards for a while the first night, we got back together with our tribes and had to hold hands and walk, single file, up the mountain to get to the "Tree of Life". I held hands with Parker Taggart and Ethan. It was kinda weird holding hands with Parker since we've barely even talked before. We happen to have the same birthday though, we were born on the exact same day. We had fun though, Parker, Ethan, and this guy named Dillon, and I all talked the whole time and had a fabulous time. The "Tree of Life" was a big pine tree with big white Christmas lights all over it. It looked pretty cool from a distance.

The next day was the same with more reenactments and discussions and we did some fun activites. We also had a flour war. We were separated into two teams, and we stood at either side of the field. When the drums started beating, we all ran forward to grab the flour bombs (flour wrapped in nylon), and we started throwing them at each other. It was so much fun, other than it kinda hurt when they threw them too hard. Everyone got so dirty and it was gross breathing it in, but it was so much fun. Everyone looked wonderful after we were done. That night, we played games as a ward. While I was sleeping that night, I couldn't breathe so I spent about a half hour in the middle of the night searching for allergy medicine. I couldn't find any and I got really frustrated and was seriously going to refuse to go back to sleep because I wouldn't be able to breathe if I did. Thankfully, my friend Joye Fulks woke up and gave me some allergy medicine.

On Friday, we had more reenactments and tons more wars since we were in the war chapters part in our reenactments. For one of the wars, it was when the people had promised to not take up arms anymore and not fight in battle. They had all the leaders and the oldest person from each tribe go and be on that side. So, when we ran to them to kill them, they just laid on the ground and died. Apparently they were hoping we would feel bad and have compassion once we realized what they were doing, but we didn't. We ran up to all the people laying "dead" on the ground and kept on hitting the ones that would move. One guy in my ward ran up to them and started hitting them really hard and yelled "How do you like your covenants now?!" It was realy funny. During one of the reenactments, someone was on a tower preaching, and so my tribe and a couple others got to be part of it. A little bit before the reenactment started, we got to go backstage (I felt so cool being back there with all of the actors and costumes and shade. I felt very priviledged). We were each given some styrofoam painted rocks. So, when the guy got on top of the tower we made and started preaching, we got to stand up and start yelling at him and we started throwing rocks at him. It was fun. Also during another one of the reenactments, we were divided into poor and rich tribes. The rich tribes got to sit in the shade and got tons of oreos while us poor tribes had to sit in the sun and beg for an oreo. I was poor, so I stole an oreo from my rich friend, Kailey Madsen, and then I offered one of the people giving out oreos a tick tack, so he gave me one. It was really hot the whole time at Moroni's Quest, everyone the first day we drank 150 gallons of water altogether before lunch. We hated the sun, yet it was freezing at night. It was annoying. That night, we went on a faith walk with our tribes. After that, we did some other stuff that I'm not gonna talk about on here, but it was very cool. That night, me and Kailey Madsen were planning on sneaking out of our tents at 3:30 am to see the eclipse. So, I stole my sisters ipod from her while she was sleeping which was very scary and set the alarm. However, when it went off. I told Kailey it went off and she said "okay let's go" and then I said "okay" and then we both fell back asleep. I heard the eclipse wasn't that cool anyway.

On the last day, we had our last reenactment and battle. It was the one where all the Nephites died. I was a Lamanite, and we were give 50 (basically unlimited) hits while all the Nephites were given 2. My sister was a Nephite, and everyone in her tribe were standing back to back to protect themselves, so I ran up to her tribe and killed them all. It was great. After the last reenactment, we all got into cars and went home. I was kind of sad to go, but at the same time happy. I hadn't showered in 4 days as there were no showers there. I had my hair in a ponytail the whole time, I was burned, I had barely any make up on, I hadn't brushed my hair at all the whole time since it's just curly, and I was sick of using porta-potties. They were gross. It felt so good to get home and shower and do my hair. It was great. Also, the air conditioning was wonderful. I was so tired though, and didn't really get to make up for it.

I'm so glad I went on Moroni's Quest, I'd give more details but I didn't want to make it too long. It was really fun though, even if my post doesn't make it seem like it. There was so much hard work that went into it. They had people come the day before us to set up tents and the stage. People were planning this for over a year. They had to find a spot and set everything up. They spent $14000 on the whole thing, and $10000 of it was for food. They had people come to cook for us and feed 250 teenagers. They had a medical tents and people to go and constanty fill up water tanks which took an hour to fill up each one so that we would have water. A lady in my ward was in charge of making all of the costumes for the reenactments. They had to build the stage, props, set up rehearsals for people with parts, record voices, add music, have sound effects and make everything go smoothly. They had to plan out all the activities, buy snacks, set up generators so we would have electricity for the reenactments, arrange transportation, choose what stories to reenact, choose people to be tribal leaders and assign the youth to their tribes, keep the youth happy and entertained, take tons of pictures and record it, and just plan and prepare for so many things. It was amazing. They do this every 4 years and I'm sad I can't go next time, but I'm happy my little sister, Hannah, will be able to go. It was a great experience and it made the people in the Book of Mormon seem more like people. I've actually enjoyed reading it more, especially since I read 100 pages in two days to finish it by the end of the school year for seminary. I read it for a couple hours straight to finish, and it was really cool and I felt like I was actually reading a story instead of just zoning off as usual. It was a great experience, and I hope more stakes do it.

My Summer So Far

Okay I was trying to think of something interesting to blog about since I haven't blogged this month and I really don't want to, when my cousin, Skyler, mentioned the fact that I have 12 people living in my house. That is kind of interesting I guess. The week before the last day of school, my Aunt Wendy, Uncle William, and four of their kids, Skyler, Reagan and Rebecca, and Mckenna, all moved in. They moved in to the family room and Ashley's room and bathroom, Ashley moved upstairs into Hannah's room, and Hannah moved in with Emma in her room. I got to keep my room, but I reorganized it to make myself feel better. It took them a while to get settled in, and I certainly didn't envy their task of organizing the family room where their kids were sleeping when I saw that you couldn't even see the floor because there were so many boxes and furniture all over the place. They finally got settled, and I kind of like having them live with us. We have dinner every night now because we take turns making dinner and choice night is a bit hard with 12 different people trying to find food. The house certainly isn't cleaner, but I love having the extra help with cleaning every day. Who knew that the twins and Kenna could be so helpful? They also brought their shih-tzu, Ginger. I absolutely love Ginger.

My Grandma and Grandpa Stevens came home from their mission in Mongolia last Wednesday. They weren't supposed to come home until October, but Grandpa had a heart attack and the hospitals there weren't good and he was having a lot of chest pain. They came back to Utah and are staying with my aunt and uncle for a month while they do stuff to him at the hospital and he rests. I don't know what they're doing, something to do with a balloon I think. Anyway, the doctors know what they're doing. It was so nice to see them again after over a year, and a couple of nights ago, Ashley, four of my cousins, and I listened to Grandpa tell stories about Mongolia for an hour and it was really interesting.

It's been fun having more cousins at my house and I've been hanging out with some of my other cousins more. And I've been playing video games a lot more than usual, I played Guitar Hero 1, 2, and 3 with Skyler, and then I've been playing Medal of Honor a lot. That game is so fun. And a couple nights ago, I watched "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" with some of my cousins at the John and Marjorie's house. I used to love that movie when I was younger, and I still do. I forgot how weird it is though.

School ended a week and a half ago. Two days before the last day of school, we had field day which was tons of fun and I got dunked in the dunking booth. The day before the last day of school was 9th grade Lagoon day, so I went and hung out with Sammy and Ben. On the last day of school, I went to school, got my yearbook signed, opened up this trap door and got to go in the crawlspace under the seminary building, got my yearbook signed in Chinese by the Chinese teacher, and then hung out with Sammy. We went to Empire to eat Chinese food with some of our friends (I said "xie xie" to the Chinese waitress who replied "bu ke qi"!! It means "thank you" and "you're welcome". I felt proud.) Sammy and I then went back to her house for a while, then we went to my house, and then Ben came over, and then Ethan came over, and then Ethan went home, and then we went to a couple stores, and then we went back to my house, and then Sammy had to go home for something, and then Ben and I went over to Mike Evan's house, and then I went home. It was fun.

A week ago, Sammy left for Europe on the 9th grade trip. I was pretty sad. I hung out with Ben at Lagoon after work that day. Every day I send Sammy a 10 page long text message because she can't text me back. She was able to send me one text (which was actually 12 pages) at 2 in the morning, and a message on facebook. I've been pretty bored without her and I feel very unsocial at the moment because I don't usually hang out with anyone unless it's with Sammy and all of the people I hang out with with her are guys. So, I've just been working a lot.

I'm trying to work as much as possible since work is a little more bearable since I don't do games anymore and rides is better. I work 5 days this week. Ashley works a lot too. Last Friday and Saturday were really rainy at work though. I was working a water ride on Friday called Rattlesnake Rapids where you get really wet, and not too many people wanted to get even more wet when it was raining so I spent the whole day just talking with the 5 other people working the ride including a guy from Bulgaria. We were teaching him new words and asking him what songs or artists he knows ("oh yes, I know Lady Gaga"), and teaching him "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes". We had tons of fun, and now he's my friend on facebook. I had fun that day of work, and whenever someone did go on, we would just quickly put them in a boat and then keep on talking and the supervisor didn't even care. Saturday was miserable though, it was super windy and rainy, and when I was walking outside, I kept on almost falling over sometimes. It was really cold, and the park was a mess from leaves and branches and trash flying everywhere, and I spent two hours in the morning just sweeping over and over even though everything just kept on coming right back. I was sure they would close the park, but they didn't because there was a stupid dance competition. Like we care, let them do their dancing, they don't need rides to do it. I was mad that I had to stay there for seven hours on a kiddie land ride and I was freezing and upset. It was one of the worst days of work.

Anyway, that's been my summer so far. And sorry I don't post as much, it's just not as fun as it used to be I guess and I never feel like posting anymore. I need more exciting stuff to happen for me to post about then I would probably post more. Sorry if there are any mess ups, I hate editing my posts. Have a happy day everyone.

School and Hanging Out

I am so ready for school to be out. I only have this week and next week and then I'm done. Next week will be field day, 9th grade Lagoon day, and then everyone ditches on the last day of school anyway so next week won't really count. The thing that bugs me though is that some teachers are still piling us with homework which is quite irksome. I just want to be done with junior high for good, I'm sick of it. I feel so bad for Hannah because she has to go into junior high next year. I'll just say that junior high has been the worst three years of my life. I'm not saying that it was absolutely horrible, but I would never want to repeat it and I've done my time. I hated seventh grade, eighth grade was pretty cool, and ninth grade has been the best. I've made so many new friends this year, it's pretty crazy, especially since I had a really hard time making friends in seventh grade and eighth grade wasn't much better.

I've hung out with so many new people this year (mainly guys), and even last Saturday I hung out with people I've never hung with before, or even thought I would ever hang out with for that matter. In seventh and eighth grade, I might hang out with Sariah every other weekend or something. Now I hang out every weekend no matter what. I started hanging out with Sammy a bit at the beginning of the year. I started hanging with her every weekend starting in January when she started going out with this guy and wanted me to come with. I've hung out with tons of new people - Ben, Mikey, Broc, Riley, Davis, Taylor Davis, Jesse Lou, Jake Porter, J.C., and of course Sammy! Last Friday, I hung out Marissa, Sariah, Ethan, Taylor, Sammy, Ben, Mikey, Chloe, and a bunch of other people at Marissa's house and we had tons of fun messing around. On Saturday, Sammy wanted to hang with this guy named Jake Porter (he has a HUGE house, we got lost haha), and Broc Dover and Jesse Lou hung out with us too and it was super fun. I was surprised Jesse hung out with us since I've never really talked to him but I've always thought he was cool. Jake Porter constantly has people over at his house and a bunch of guys just came and went whenever they wanted. Me and Sammy decided we wanted to hang out at his house more often since there seems to constantly be boys there. Anyway, the point of this long paragraph is that I've had fun hanging with a bunch of new people this year, even though they're mostly boys. I can't wait to make even more friends next year.

I'm excited for the summer and to hang out with a lot of people even though I'll have to work a lot (I had to work last Saturday) and Sammy will be gone for 31 days in June and July. High school will be a blast, and I'm kind of hoping no one asks me to any dances because I don't really want to go. Even though I absolutely love boys and am boy crazy, I don't want to date or go to dances. I just like hanging out. I'm not allowing anyone to hang at my house anymore though since Uncle William, Aunt Wendy, the Twins 'n' Kenna, and Skyler moved in with us. That's twelve people in my house. If they do come over, they have to stay on my roof or something. Anyway, that's my super fun post which I typed because I was so bored. Goodbye.

Bye Bye Birdie

This past week was the school musical. In case you haven't figured it out yet, we did "Bye Bye Birdie". It is my 7th period class. Tryouts to actually be in the class are in April every year, and then the class starts second semester. Three months ago in February, we had tryouts. I tried out for a girl named Ursula. She's a super hyper, crazy, hilarious girl who is the best friend of Kim MacAfee. Ursula is absolutely in love with Conrad Birdie. I don't have time to tell the story of Bye Bye Birdie, so I'll let you guys look it up on youtube or google it or something. Anyway, I tried out for Ursula. Even though I didn't get the part (I didn't expect to), I was absolutely thrilled to make call backs. To know that Ms. Swallow might even consider me for a main part was just amazing.

The main characters had to stay after school almost every day to get their blocking and start rehearsing every scene. It's a good thing I didn't get a main part because that would've totally messed with lacrosse (it's funny how I don't get to be in things I really wanted to, but it ends up being for the better. Like if I had made musical theater the year before or madrigals, I wouldn't be able to do a lot of the stuff I want to do). We've had choreography rehearsals every Monday during 7th period and going until about 4 pm to learn all of the dances. About three weeks ago, we went to the place where we would be performing for the first time. We usually perform at Rodgers Memorial Theater every year, but we couldn't this year because they're rebuilding it somewhere else. Our school stage was out of the question, it's so terrible. However, Bountiful Jr. High let us use their stage. They saved Swallow's life I think. So we got there and started rehearsing until about 5 or 6 each day. It used to take us three hours just to get through one of the acts. The set was a pain to get on and off and took up a lot of the time too.

Wednesday before last, we started staying after school until 9 pm. A bus would take us straight from 7th period to Bountiful every day and we were served dinner at 6. We soon got to the point where we could go through the whole musical two times a day and we started wearing our costumes and using mic's. It was tiring and my spiritual nourishment from seminary suffered from it because I fell asleep in seminary more than a couple of times. I would get home around 9:30 pm and I would still have to do my homework and chores. Last Monday was our final dress rehearsal before the show started. I straightened my hair for the musical, and we all got to wear tons of make up (the boys weren't happy).

On Tuesday we had our first show. It was the parent preview and our first time performing for more than ten people. It was really fun to go out there for the first song, Telephone Hour, and see all the people in the audience. I had to force myself not to stare at them and try to find people I knew. It was so weird hearing them actually clap and laugh. I didn't even know some parts were funny, and other parts I just heard so many times that it didn't even seem funny anymore so it was really cool hearing people react other than Ms. Swallow's hyena laugh.

Wednesday was really fun. We had such a good audience and they laughed at everything. Before each of our performances, the whole cast would go outside and someone would say a prayer and then we'd all do a cheer to get us pumped. The show went well, except for the fact that some of the mic's suck and keep on breaking off or making popping noises. They really irked us. On Thursday, the girl who played Kim MacAfee (Ashley Peterson) lost her voice. I thought her voice would just be a little raspy or something. No, raspy would've been great. When she sang her first solo, How Lovely to be a Woman, she could barely sing it. Her voice just sounded so bad, she couldn't hit most of the notes, her voice kept on breaking, and she sounded like she was trying not to cry. We didn't know what to do. All of us in the cast were in the hall outside of the stage, and most of us were just pacing with our hands over our mouths because we felt so bad for her but we didn't know what to do. Ashley kept on going, and she got a very loud applause at the end of her song. It totally downed our energy, and even though we did well with our singing and acting, we weren't very energetic because we were upset that Ashley was having trouble with her voice. During intermission, we all went outside and talked for a while and then we said another prayer. Us girls then went into our changing room and started singing our favorite song Be a Man from Mulan while this girl improvised it on the piano. We then performed our best second act, we had tons of energy and decided we weren't going to let anything get to us. During the show, a girl who plays Ursula had to sing her solo for her, and another girl sang her part in a song backstage. Her voice was a bit better Friday, and she sounded good on her solos. She just changed the notes and sang them down an octave or just talked them or changed the notes altogether to make it sound good with the music. We were so proud of her. A bunch of my friends and my family, my sister's boyfriend, Grandma Carol, and John, Marjorie, and Amanda all came. I was mad because the stupid mic's were being dumb again and the main guy's mic completely turned off during the second act so you could barely hear him during one of the best songs. Oh well. Saturday we had our two last shows, one at 3 pm and another at 7. Those two were our best performances. They switched the mic's around so the main guy's wasn't so glitchy. After the 3 pm show, they fed us food and I just stayed and hung out with the cast. Then we had our last performance which went really well. We had so much energy and we did such a great job. I had tons of fun. I was pretty sad when it was over. We then stayed until 10:30 taking down the set and cleaning up everything. We then went to one of the main character's (who happens to be the daughter of a former Miss America) house to hang out since our cast party wasn't until Monday. We had a fire outside and had s'mores and hot dogs without buns, played basketball, football, and later did truth or dare where I totally lost it and got hyper and did some really crazy stuff....

I'm sad the musical is over, but at the same time I'm excited to have my life back. It was fun, I just wish it could've lasted a little longer. It was super fun and I got an awesome jacket, a DVD, and a bunch of new friends from the show. I could've lived without having to go through the boys' changing room to get on stage and seeing my guy friends with no shirts or boxers though. I don't think they minded :) Now I'm working on getting the songs out of my head. Anyway, that's my story of Bye Bye Birdie. I congratulate anyone who actually read this whole thing. I just really enjoy typing and giving details, it takes me about 2-3 hours to write in my journal. Anyway, zai jian wo de peng you!