Tyler Peaster- Blog #6- Choir Camp Part 3

Hello, my fellow teenagers who I think are also technically eleventh graders at this point. I have never been able to get a concrete answer on if you are still in your previous grade or in the next grade during Summer Vacation. Maybe you are in neither? Who knows. For all I know some of you failed tenth grade. If so, rest in peace. I am going to dig into Choir Camp once again in this blog. In part 1, I talked about an overview of Choir Camp, in part 2, I went into detail on one of the shortest days of Choir Camp, Sunday. In this blog, I will talk about my first full day of Choir Camp, Monday (June 24th).

We started out the day by hearing a guy yell out in the hallway telling us to get up. He then comes inside our dorm to confirm we are awake. We then get ready and meet with our team in the lobby. The first period of the day is Mixed Choir. The first day we began sightreading and learning some of the beginning parts of our Mixed Choir songs. Our mixed choir songs were Ndikhokhele Bawd, San' Bonani Namhla Kudibene, and Akekho nfana nolesu. Everyone is in Mixed Choir. My favorite songs from Mixed Choir were Ndikhokhele Bawd and Akekho nfana nolesu. Later that day we had breakout sessions, short lessons teaching you about what you signed up to learn. I took the vocal jazz breakout session. I had fun, but I do not think my voice fits vocal jazz very well lol. we had a sort of competition where people would move on to the final round, I only made it that far because I was funny. Then, we had Show Choir. Most people are in Show Choir except for a few people who are in Chamber Choir or Jazz Choir. We began learning Eye of the Tiger and I Just Can't Wait to be King. Now, if you were a Soprano or Tenor, it was basically just a melody. However, if you were an Alto or Bass, you had to learn the lame part. I'm a bass. For people who haven't had Choir, sopranos are the girls who sing high, tenors are the boys who sing high. Altos are the girls who sing low, bass are the boys who sing low. So our version of the song was different, but was not hard to learn.

I'll finish up Monday and possibly began talking about Tuesday of Choir Camp in my next blog! Have a great summer!

Tyler Peaster- Blog #5- Choir Camp Part 2, and some random stuff

Hello, my fellow eleventh graders. (I think we are technically eleventh graders now). On my last blog, I talked about an overview of Choir Camp, but I'm going to go into more detail on this blog. I'm going to go day by day explaining what I did.

I arrived towards the end of Sunday (June 23rd), the first thing you do is collect your bag and keys, then you go to your dorm and unpack. We were in quads. Lucky for me, there are a lot fewer boys than girls in Choir Camp, which means I only had one roommate. The poor girls had four to a room. Our theme was "Safari". This means all of our songs are safari themed. Though, on Sunday we did not learn any songs. Our teams went into competitions, ranging from flipping cups to making towers from marshmallows and spaghetti noodles. We had a piece of our tower saved that we called Jorge. Jorge lived a short life as one of our members dropped him into a trashcan. After that, he became our mascot. Well, our official mascot was a panther. We were the black panthers. No, not the questionable political organization. (Good job on that name guys). After activities, we went to dinner. From what I hear, food is usually good at Choir Camp. However, the kitchen was being remodeled within ASU so we ate in an air-conditioned tent. They had hardly any selection, but it is still better than school lunch lol. Anyways, food isn't what's important about camp. I will talk more about Choir Camp in future blogs.

I play video games in spikes. I sometimes barely ever play, while other times I'm always playing. Recently Super Mario Maker 2 came out. All I have to say about that is, good luck getting me to do anything for a bit.

The other day I was playing Basketball and the basketball ricocheted and hit me in the face. I have braces, so it wasn't very pleasant. My face hurts.

I hope the rest of you all have a great summer and rest in peace to all of you who haven't started yet lol.

Tyler Peaster- Blog #4- Choir Camp Part 1 and Skating

You know, I'm not far from being a month behind on my blogs yet I'm still farther than the majority of students in our class. All you who haven't started, good luck because you finna have to put in some work. Anyways, what's up my dudes and dudettes, I hope you all are doing great. From June 23rd to the 27th, I was at Choir Camp. It was really cool, all based around, you guessed it, boxing! Obviously, I am kidding, it was a camp designed around choir. I was in Show choir, Mixed choir, and all males choir. We had to learn eight songs in three days along with various dances, which was difficult but fun. We were split into teams for team activities, and I was on the black team. Everyone except one of us was first-year campers. Even 2/3 of our team counselors were first-years. Yet, we still managed to get second place. We would've been first, but the orange team got more tickets, which you got tickets by being nice to other team's counselors. While it is sad I lost to a team directed by Ms.Wells, I am still very proud that us first years got second place. I will talk about more specific parts of Choir Camp in later blogs.

The day before Choir camp, I went to the skating rink for a friend's birthday party, I didn't know how to skate but some of my friends helped me (shoutouts to Austin). I got absolutely destroyed in air hockey and I lost whatever bit of pride remained in my sad, sad self. Also, the cheese sticks are not half bad at the skating rink.

To all of you that have not even started blogging yet, you need to start soon. It is not very hard, it is just time-consuming and gets boring if you are writing multiple blogs at once. Don't forget you have to write posts, write comments, and do the bookwork! I hope you all have a great summer that is already almost over. We are getting cheated, Summer vacation used to be longer.

Bryce Despain - 7 - Even More Nonsense

What is up my fellow peeps. I’m gonna be completely honest with all of you who read my blogs, if you’re tired of hearing about me working and stuff then don’t even read this. For one, all I do during the summer is work, so that is really all I have to talk about. I mean I know that since I talk about it every single blog it gets really repetitive, but hey, who cares because I’m still getting the blog done. I’m glad that I’m almost done with these blogs, it isn’t hard to do them at all, but it just takes some time. I haven’t made any comments yet on anyone’s blogs because they only have to be 100 words, which is easy to do so I’m saving them for last. I also haven’t started on the first part of the summer assignment, for one I don’t really know how to do it and two the pdf for that book is completely stupid, but that is what I’m gonna be using to complete it, so it’ll take some time for me to do. I think I might actually start on the comments and that soon, like maybe tomorrow, or I might put it off longer, because I’m a teenager and that’s what we do best. We teenagers love to procrastinate and wait to the last minute to do things because it is the best thing to do. Also, to the people who haven’t started on their summer assignments, you might wanna start soon because school is just a little over a month away and you’re running out of time fast, I mean today is already July 4th, so happy 4th everyone. 

Anyways let’s talk about how work has been going for me. So, I worked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and let me tell you, it was so hot out all three days. I got sunburned pretty bad on my shoulders, but it has already tanned so that is good I guess. That is pretty much all that has happened this week for me, so see everyone of you in my next blog. :) 

Beth 04 - I Hate My Knees

I'm back with another late post. I've accepted that I can't stay on schedule because life has been throwing me through all kinds of twists and turns.
In my last post, I mentioned that I dislocated my knee. No big deal, right? Wrong. I had an MRI done and it turns out that one of the ligaments or tendons that holds my knee in place is too weak to do that anymore. My orthopedist called and gave me the option to let him operate or to continue on living in fear that my knee isn't going to hold when I do any sort of physical activity. That might not seem like tough decision, but for someone, like me, who relies on physical activity to maintain good mental health, it is. Getting this surgery done would literally be five to six months of not getting to be active other than at my physical therapy sessions.
On top of that, I won't be able to participate in any sports this year at school... Well, maybe archery. But not bowling. As dumb as it probably sounds, I love bowling. I love the girls on my team, and I love how we always have each others' backs. It's Tiffany's senior year, too, so this was going to be the last season I was going to get with her. I also won't be able to run cross country this year, but that isn't a big loss to the team. I always came in close to last place at every meet anyway.
I chose to go ahead and get the surgery, and everyone keeps telling me that I made the right choice. I'm not so sure though. I've cried at least seven times over the thought of the next half of my year being spent dormant. I know I need this surgery, but I also need the distraction of physical activity. If any of you so choose to comment on this blog, let me know if you think I made the right decision. Give me tips on how to cope with not being able to participate in activities if you've been in a similar situation. Anything helps, really.
See ya later, dudes.

Tristan #2

So this week we decided that instead of going back out on the road this summer we are going to just stay close to home. This seemed to be the best decision due to the fact that the traveling has been hard on my grandparents. I also kinda wanted to be home for a while. It is fun to be in different states and meeting new people, but it is always nice to be home. On the forth we are gonna go to barrel race in Imboden. This will be the first race I have ran my own horse at in over two weeks. I’m kinda nervous due to the fact she is a lot different to control. Hopefully everything goes well. So we have two horse trailers. One is a big living quarters trailer while the other is just a two horse bumper pull. The bumper pull is a lot easier to pull. But the jack on it had stopped working and we have been just using the big trailer for small trips to the vet and stuff. Well after having to back up and continue to try to get out of the small get parking lot. I decided I wanted the bumper pull back. So we had the fixed this weekend, along with new wheel bearings, new floor, and new mats in it. I’m happy to have it back since I can actually pull it with my truck. Instead of the bigger truck. Anyway my time at home has been pretty boring. I’ve went to eat with a couple friends from different schools and stuff, but nothing big. Honestly I’m kinda glad it has been boring. Normally we have something to do everyday. It gets kinda old. My grandpa being the way he is he is making me get back on my school schedule. Well sleeping schedule. Little does he know when he leaves I go back to bed. Today I am riding with a little girl and helping her with her devil pony. She is all attitude. After all that her mom asked me to watch her for a little while so we are gonna go to the park and walk the dog for a little while. Anyway, have a great day!

Elle Servadio — Blog 5

This past weekend I went back to Jonesboro to watch my little sister’s tournament. Well, little did I know that my dad basically tricked me into coming, so I could help him coach. He was on call and had to leave twice, and the other coach wasn’t there at all until like six o’clock. I’ve helped my dad coach before, so I didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal. But coaching a travel ball team versus coaching a league ball team is a lot different, and I didn’t realize it. So much more goes into it. I guess I should’ve known because I played travel ball until last summer, but I didn’t. Coaching the girls was fun though. I expected them to be brats and not listen to me, but they weren’t like that at all. They cut up with me and listened to everything I said to them. Coaching this weekend made me realize that I want to be a softball coach. There was one point this weekend when the girls had a really bad inning. They had two runners on third and had no clue! I was yelling, dad was yelling, and all of the parents were yelling. The other team ended up scoring 9 runs off of errors because the girls just gave up. The game ended up being put on a lightening delay for an hour, so we sat in the dugout and talked. Dad said what he needed to say, and then he looked at me and said “you got anything to add Ella?’ I was kind of shocked because I didn’t expect to have to speak up, but I did. When I did, all of the girls really listened. Seeing them actually absorbing everything I said felt good, but it also made me feel old. I remember being their age, starting my first real travel team, and hearing those exact same words I was telling them. I can remember how much those same words impacted me and how I viewed playing. I changed the way I played, and I changed the way I practiced. I went from working at home maybe one day a week to every day. I just hope those words stick with at least one of those girls.