Hey, Look, A Blog Post!

Took the SAT today. I feel like I did pretty well, but I probably just jinxed it. It was LONG, and near the end of the test I was really starting to space out. It was the most ridiculous thing... you had to copy this statement that was basically like, "I certify that I am the person whose name appears on this test" only it was the LONGEST possible way of saying that, and we had to copy the whole thing in CURSIVE! Which I haven't used since third grade... apparently no one else had either, because it took pretty much everyone in the room like five minutes to copy the statement down. I hate pointless things like that... a signed statement is a signed statement, whether it's written in cursive or not! Besides, where do you draw the line... ? Suppose someone's cursive was just really bad, and it looked a lot like regular writing... are you going to punish them just for having crappy cursive handwriting?

My stomach hurts... probably because I ate a cupcake and a brownie and a huge cup of chili at Relay for Life, but it also might have to do with the fact that I'm sick. I'm sick because of the band trip... (OH MY GOSH, the band trip! I'll talk about that in more detail in a minute.) someone was sick when we left, and now probably literally like half the band is infected.

But it was SOOO worth it. We went to Vancouver and both bands and both jazz bands played in a heritage festival, and the next day we marched in a parade. It was raining... like the whole time. But we're BAND KIDS, and rain cannot stop band kids from having fun! The second night we went to an amusement park, which they shut down for all the bands (and orchestras and choirs) at the festival. They had an awards ceremony there, where they announced the results of our performances the day before, which had been adjudicated. I wasn't expecting us to win much, if anything at all... there were these Seattle schools that kept winning everything. There were different divisions, depending on how big your school is, and it was divided up, obviously, into band, orchestra, and choir. So there were lots of categories of awards. When they got to concert bands... WIND ENSEMBLE GOT SECOND PLACE! And then they got to jazz bands... and WE GOT FIRST PLACE!! And later on, jazz band got some kind of adjudicators' award for .... I'm pretty sure it was for scoring the highest out of ANY instrumental group there! Anddd, we got this OTHER award that had to do with our combined scores for all our groups.

And THEN. I thought they were pretty much finished with the awards, but then the announcer said that they had another award, and it was for individual students who they thought did particularly well in the performances. He was like, "if your name is called, please make your way to the front of the stage." He announced like four or five people. And then, "From [OUR SCHOOL] Jazz I, Clare [MY LAST NAME]"!!!!!!!!!! And THEN, "From [OUR SCHOOL AGAIN] Wind Ensemble, [Bailey______] and [Collin ______] (our drum majors!) " !!!!! I was standing with some of my friends, and I was like, shocked! So I went up there and stood on the stage, and they handed me this trophy, maybe like a foot tall, that has a wooden platform thing with a gold star. It's called a Maestro Award. :) There were eight or so of us altogether that got one, out of a whole bunch of bands and orchestras and choirs. :) I'm not trying to brag, but I've never won an award for something like that before!!

After the ceremony, my director came up and congratulated me, and he told me that the judges were really impressed with my piano solo at the beginning of one of the jazz band songs. They had told him this like five minutes before the ceremony, and had told him that Bailey and Collin and I were going to get awards. Bailey's and Collin's were for drum majoring in the parade, and I'm pretty sure Collin's was also for his trombone solo, in one of the tunes that was a trombone feature. We were all SO HAPPY :) I worked SO HARD on that solo.

:) Well, I better go to bed. I have lots of homework tomorrow.. ugh. I can't believe school is out in a week and a half!!