Yale trip, day 2

Omg, you guys. I love, love, love, LOVE it here! Everything is so beautiful and collegiate! The buildings are all 300 years old and look like castles. The leaves are changing colors because New England has a legitimate fall season. And Dunkin Donuts exists here!

I want to move here. By "here" I mean probably any city in New England. This is my favorite kind of environment. I feel so comfortable here, and I've only been here for a day. I really like that you're not required to smile at every stranger you pass. I know, I say this stuff every time I get out of the south. I'm such a Yankee at heart. Would anyone be too sad if I never came home?

My only problem with this place is that it was already dark at 5 pm. Lame!

Anywho, we got to sleep late this morning, and it was wonderful! I ended up getting out of bed around 11, which was earlier than anyone else in my room. Once I finally coaxed Marissa out of the room, we did the obligatory Dunkin Donuts thing. We sat at the window bar so we could watch New Haven over coffee. It was so picturesque, and I wasn't even creeped out that passersby were watching me eat!

Next we had about 30 minutes to explore Yale, so explore we did! We walked through Cross Campus, and I was like a kid in a candy store. Everyone looked so smart! There were people sitting in circles on the lawn, just like you see in movies (or on Gilmore Girls, as the case may be). I was such a nerd. I took pictures of Yale kids while squealing, "Look at them, sitting around looking all smart, talking politics and shit!" Marissa tried to burst my bubble by claiming that they were probably just talking about Facebook, to which I replied, "Let me have my fantasy, damnit!!" :-P

Then it was time to rehearse with Camerata (my choir that was invited to sing here at the National Collegiate Choral Organization biennial conference) in Hendrie Hall, where the Yale Glee Club rehearses!! Again, I was a total fangirl, taking pictures of the hall and creepin' on the Asian kids with violin cases. The Glee Club has group pictures from every year on the walls of their rehearsal room, just like my other choir has. So cool! We rehearsed for 2 hours, and toward the end the president of NCCO came in and said we sounded wonderful and that he couldn't wait to hear our performance. Omg!

Marissa and I raided the Yale bookstore after the rehearsal. I bought myself a sweatshirt (as usual) and pajama pants, and I got shirts for Grant and Lane. Now, equipped with Yale campus maps like the tourists we wish we weren't, I think we're going to find some dinner and see some nerdy Yale sights. I'll finish blogging when we get back.

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Well, after sitting around for an hour trying to pick a place to eat, Marissa, Cara, and I settled on Ivy Noodle, a decently legit Asian noodle house. My vegetable fried rice was really good, but my shrimp dumpling noodle soup was a little strange. Then we decided we wanted some ice cream, so we let Marissa's blackberry lead us several blocks in the cold weather to an ice cream shop that no longer exists. We did find ice cream eventually, and I came out with a cone three times larger than I was expecting.

Then I got to go touch the toe!!! We looked like morons trying to open the gate into Old Campus. After we tried pulling on it to avail, a girl came up behind us and used her key card. Facepalm. Then, after checking the names on a few statues (which was tricky in the dark), we found Theodore Dwight Woolsey. I touched his shiny toe while Marissa took a picture, and it was a glorious moment in my life. We knew we looked super-touristy, so any time a student passed I turned to Marissa and said something like, "Yeah, that guy's class is sooooo hard! I haven't even started my paper yet." Bahahaha. Then it took us forever to find an exit gate that was actually unlocked. We were really smooth.

By the way, does anyone else think it's funny that Harvard's motto is "Veritas," while Yale's is "Lux et Veritas"? It's like, oh, you've got truth? Well, we've got light AND truth. Hah! Nothing like one-upping your rival using Latin.

Now I'm blogging alone in my hotel room wearing nothing but my new Yale sweatshirt and pajama pants while everyone else is in Costas' room watching Die Hard. And now I'm done blogging. See you tomorrow, I hope!

Yale trip, day 1

I'm here!!!! Ok, I haven't actually seen Yale yet, but I'm in New Haven.

This morning we left school on a chartered bus at 5:30 AM and drove 5 hours to Dallas. Then we waited 3 more hours before boarding a plane to Hartford, CT. I sat between two strange men who didn't talk to me much. I was ok with that. I wanted to sleep. Best part? We didn't crash! Haha. Have I mentioned how much I hate planes? I've flown a million times, and I know that plane crashes are relatively rare, but I'm still always surprised when I survive a flight. I guess I'm morbid like that.

Oh, and it took my right ear approximately four hours to pop once we landed. FML.

Anywho, when we arrived in Hartford it was around 5 PM, and it was already dark outside! What gives?! Stupid daily savings time! At this point we were all starving, but we still had an hour-long bus ride to New Haven. We drove, we checked in to the Omni, I changed into real pants, and some of us went to 50-cent wing night at Buffalo Wild Wings. 'Twas fun. Later we chilled at a bar and looked each other's names up on urbandictionary.com. "Lucy" was my favorite (unless retarded). Hah!

Well, this post was boring and chronological. That's probably how they're going to be while I'm here. Now I'm watching Family Guy. Oops, did it again. Alas.

See you tomorrow (unless I'm too sleepy)!

The time has come, my little friends.

This is it, kids. The moment you've all been waiting for.

I'M GOING TO YALE TOMORROW!!!!

We're boarding a bus at 5:30 in the mother-lovin' morning. I will be extremely cranky. I won't have gotten much sleep. I won't get much sleep on the plane, either. But none of that matters. I can't, can't, can't, CAN'T wait to get there!

I've been looking forward to this trip for seven months. I have so many exciting shenanigans planned. You just don't even know. I want to spend three billion hours exploring the library. I want to see creepy, taxidermized Handsome Dan. I WANT TO TOUCH THE TOE! Gilmore Girls? Anyone? Oh, and let's not forget about my super secret side trip of awesome! Mwahahaha.

Oh, plus I'm going to be singing for thousands of the nation's best music educators in one of the 9 best choirs in the nation. There's that too. :-P

Sometimes my major really gets me down. You all know that. Sometimes I really hate it. I'm not even sure I want to use this music degree in my real life. Even still, music always comes through for me. When absolutely nothing else in my life is certain, when I start to feel like all I do is wait around for something that will never happen, when everything (and/or everyone) disappoints me, music is always there. Some people drink when they get down. I prefer to listen to music I love and remind myself that I kick ass. :-)

Anywho, that's all the bloggin' you'll get out of me tonight. Please let me know if I ever get too vague and cryptic about my personal life around here. This is not, I repeat, NOT livejournal. I got a new blog for a reason. It's perfectly alright to say, "What the hell are you talking about in such and such sentence?"

I think I'm going to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich. I can do that now that Michael Aranda's "The Nonsense Song" taught me how. :-P I'll dropkick your face if you touch my pizza, suckaz.

Yeero Yeero indulgences this school year: 12
Pop-Tarts this school year: 10
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I'm hooooome.

I'm home from vacation! Actually, I'm not excited enough to use an exclamation point. It's more like, "I'm home from vacation."

It was a really great trip. The family started to make me a little claustrophobic after a week or so, but I had a blast overall. I met one of my REAL LIVE YOUTUBE FRIENDS, and that was pretty epic. It's nice to know that not every person on the internet wants to kill and/or rape me.

I don't feel like blogging about the whole trip right now. I'll try to do that soon. I'm just feeling horrendously crappy right now. I'm talking nausea, chills, dizziness, and one count of throwing up spaghetti into a Blockbuster toilet. Yeah, tonight was a super-fun night of work. Luckily David, my manager, is cool and let me not work too hard.

One thing I have to mention, though, is OMG JERSEY BOYS! I saw Jersey Boys on Broadway last week, and I am completely obsessed. I've always like The Four Seasons, but now I can't get enough. The story is so exciting and emotional and sometimes hilarious, and this current cast is amazing. We bought the original Broadway cast album, and we were slightly disappointed that it wasn't as good as our cast. Jarrod Spector is the best Frankie I've heard (and believe me, I did a lot of YouTube research when I got home), and Sebastian Arcelus is great as Bob Gaudio (skip ahead to 3:40 in that video - the rest of that cast is not up to snuff). Also, Sebastian is incredibly attractive, in my wavy-haired-music-nerd-loving opinion.

YouTube really needs to get some more illegal Jersey Boys action goin' on. This is the only video I could find of the current cast, and the sound quality is pretty suckish. But it's the song I'm most obsessed with!!! Although I contend that big girls DO cry. Hello, period?

Also, singing along to the cast recording in my car has led to realize that my comfortable singing range is pretty much the same as Frankie Valli's. Is that....weird? Should I just call myself a countertenor?

Well, I set out to write a quick blog saying that I'm home and barfy, and look what happened. Jersey Boys took me away again. If you are in or around NYC anytime soon, you should go see it while this cast is still there. And I should sleep.

In closing, I'm going to steal something from Hayley just this once.

Sexy: Craig Ferguson, especially when he talks about guinea pigs.
Unsexy: Throwing up spaghetti into a Blockbuster toilet.

Hello, Blog. It's Thursday.

So now that I've had a little time to get out of my own head, I can tell you exactly how the Half-Blood Prince night went down.

Before Ben left for Germany, he gave me his Halloween costume Gryffindor robes. So I wore that, of course. I also wore my plaid skirt from my old school uniform with my "Voldemort Can't Stop Barack" shirt. I was working the schoolgirl vibe. I guess I was Ginny? Kind of. I don't really care about Ginny. Please don't kill me.

My brother and I got there a little over an hour early, and I'm pretty sure that everyone else was already there. I'd never seen so many people at a movie theater. EVER. This place is the second-biggest cinema in the city. It has 15 screens, and that night EVERY SINGLE SCREEN was showing Harry Potter. And they all sold out before the night even started!

A decent number of people dressed up. I was glad not to be the only one. The board that shows which movie is playing in which theatre, instead of just saying "Harry Potter" fifteen times, gave each screen a Hogwarts house name. Our tickets said we were in theater 8, which was a Ravenclaw. I know - fate, right? But we couldn't find good seats in there. We explored a few others before finding some pretty good seats in a Slytherin.

Then I got in line for candy and popcorn, and it took me FORTY MINUTES to get through the line. Holy poop. And then I had to give them $9 for my troubles. I stood in line for 40 minutes just to give them $9 in exchange for crappy junk food. I guess it was better than waiting in my seat for an hour. I'm glad I had the 40 minutes to spare.

A boy in Gryffindor robes approached me and asked if I would run into a Slytherin theater with him, shout "GRYFFINDOR RULES!!!" and run out. Sadly, I had to inform him that I'm a Ravenclaw, despite what my borrowed robes said.

Oh my gosh. I have red hair. I was wearing hand-me-down robes. I REALLY AM A WEASLEY!

Anyway, then we watched the movie, which was mostly enjoyable. Like me, most people weren't sure what to make of it when it ended. There was scattered, uneasy applause. Now I really do think that's it's one of the better films. I rank it right under 1 and 2. The first two will always be my favorites. I think they were wise to finally let another director do more than one film. There's something to be said from continuity as well as learning from your mistakes and improving. Yates definitely improved.

And then it took us 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot. That was awful.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm currently in a hotel room in Tennessee. I'm on vacation with the family. We're doing 2.5 weeks in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. We should be in Philly by tomorrow night. So excited!!!

Finally, you should check out the SHVP channel this week if you don't usually. The theme this week is Mr. Withakay, and the boys have written some brilliantly hilarious songs about me. :-D

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Back in the USA

I haven't had this blog for very long, and I've already gotten out of the habit of writing in it. I suppose this is to be expected since I had no (free) internet for nearly two weeks. Also, these past two weeks have been so FANTASTIC that I just don't know how to talk about them. I guess I could just make a bulleted list of the greatest moments:

-Surviving a 12-hour flight from L.A. to Auckland, New Zealand
-Arriving in New Zealand so early in the morning that we get to watch the sun rise
-Avoiding taking pictures of myself the first day in Auckland since we had to go nearly 36 hours without a shower
-Having to dance with a creepy, unattractive guy at a pub so that he wouldn't creep on my super-hot married friend and get her in trouble
-Seeing South Pole penguins at an underground aquarium
-Getting in FREE to the Minus 5 Ice Lounge - a bar made entirely of ice! - which normally has a $35 cover
-Seeing sheep being shorn in Rotorua, NZ
-Seeing ridiculously huge geysers and live kiwi birds
-ZORBING!!!
-Christopher and I ditching our group when we landed in Australia and navigating Sydney on our own in search of Kinokuniya bookstore and JOHN GREEN!!!!
-Being the only Americans at John Green's Sydney event other than John and his wife
-Arriving super early and sitting on the second row!
-Meeting communitychannel Natalie Tran!!!
-Seeing/petting/feeding kangaroos and koalas!
-Going on a harbor cruise
-Working with Dr. Eric Nelson of Emory University
-My friend Ashley's boyfriend flew all the way to Sydney to propose to her!
-SINGING THE MOZART REQUIEM IN THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Being on the same plane as Bernadette Peters for the 13-hour flight from Sydney back to L.A.

It was such an amazing trip. I miss it. I'm still jet-lagged. I can't fall asleep until 5 AM, and sometimes I accidentally sleep all day.

On a sadder note, I had to say goodbye to one of my best friends in L.A. My friend Lindsey (whom you may have seen here) moved to Guam to be with her husband. He's in the Navy and was recently stationed there. They'll be in Guam for at least 3 years. I know that long-distance communication is easier now than ever, but she's SO far away! And with this next school year promising to be my busiest ever, I'm afraid I'll never get a chance to talk to her. Either way, I've started saving for a flight to Guam next summer.

On a happier note, I went to my first wizard rock show a few days ago! Justin Finch-Fletchley and the Sugar Quills, The Whomping Willows, and The Moaning Myrtles came to the library by my house. I finally met Lauren!!!! We hugged. We took pictures. It was so exciting. The audience was awkward for Ben and me (tons of kids and a few awkward adults), but the show was great!

Finally, this trip helped me to discover my "type." Turns out I like New Zealand-Asian guys with crazy hair who play the guitar and wear thick-framed glasses. It's really very simple.

I'm ending with a few of my favorite pictures:


























Heroes re-watching status: Season 1, Disc 5
Currently reading: Harry, A History by Melissa Anelli
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Other side of the world, here I come!

I've been working, which is exhausting.
I went shopping today, which was annoying but successful.
I have so much packing left to do.
My mom and brother are driving me up to school tomorrow, and IN THE MORNING I LEAVE FOR NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA!!!!!!

I'm so excited, but I'm also filled with a certain amount of dread. I HATE flying. Well, I enjoy being up in the air and all, but I'm slightly terrified of the idea of flight. I've been on a plane many times, and I still haven't gotten over it. No amount of comforting statistics can convince my brain that air travel is safe. Baaaaahhhh.

OK. I can do this. Once that 14-hour flight is over, I will be in a magical land that many Americans never get to see. I will be singing the Mozart Requiem in the Sydney Opera House. I will (hopefully) be seeing John Green at a bookstore in Sydney. It will be an AMAZING, once-in-a-lifetime trip. I can do this.

So this is probably my last blog post for a few weeks. To hold you over until I return, here's a video of me doing the Hoedown Throwdown. :-P

Bye guys! See you when I get back!

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Days 'til I head Down Under: ONE!!!