Tuesday night ballet- first Nutcracker rehearsel

Tuesday night I had an hour and a half ballet class, except that we started Nutcracker rehearsel, our big Christmas ballet show that we put on every year. So we had barre on pointe shoes for an hour then we started Nutcracker. We started with the Snow scene, which is really beautiful, there's a special formation to Snow that I've done for about 5 years now. And Sabrina our teacher put us in the V shape formation and I was last and put into the middle so that means that I am Snow Queen, it's a big role in the Nutcracker, so I'm psyched! Also it's my last year at my dance studio since I'm graduating this year. And then after ballet, I had jazz choreography for a half hour, Sabrina added on to our Fame dance, which I really need to practice, since it is extremely fast and complicated. And right now I'm not getting the hang of it. So that's a goal of mine right now, to get that dance down. And then after jazz the competition girls and I worked on our ballet piece for competition. We all forgot what we learned last week so we didn't get too far!

Second Greek club meeting

For the second meeting of Greek club, we started to learn the alphabet and how to pronounce all of the letters. Some of the letters look familiar since I took Latin and Science classes, some look familiar. Then others look simple but the pronounciation is totally different. So it started to be kind of difficult for me. So Lydia and Mr. Arcenas had all of us go up to the board and write down all of the letters and get used to writing them down. That pretty much took up all of our time.

Thursday and Friday dance

On Thursday night I had ballet for an hour and a half with a new teacher named Francesca and a half hour lyrical choreography class after. Ballet was really nice, I wore my new pointe shoes the entire time, which is really difficult and painful, but I stuck through it because I need to get used to wearing pointe shoes an entire class and break in new shoes. It was a really nicce technique class.
And then after ballet I stayed after for a half hour lyrical choreography with Francesca. Unfortunately I strained a muscle in my right leg randomly and I just watched everyone learn the choreography, and all I wanted to do was go home, my leg hurt so much!
And then on Friday starting at 4pm I had competition rehearsel for about 2 and a half hours, we worked on the schindler's list lyrical group dance that we started to learn last week. And also the Bollywood group dance.

Wednesday- Contemporary class

This Wednesday not as many girls came to class so it wasn't as crammed as last week, but it was still difficult to dance with so many girls in there. But it was a really nice class, half of the class is more advanced girls, and the other half are girls that haven't even danced before, very different from last year. We worked more on the dance that my friend Lorissa and I are performing for competition.

Tuesday night ballet

Tuesday night was ballet as usual for an hour and a half and then a half hour jazz choreography class. Ballet was great and tiring, we really worked on technique, I had just gotten new pointe shoes and sewed them an hour before class so they weren't broken in whatsoever and it's extrememly hard to work with new pointe shoes, so I didn't wear them the entire class.
Then after ballet with 5 other girls, I had jazz choreography and our teacher added on some very fast choreography, so we were all tired from that. Oh and also I forgot that after jazz the competition team was asked to stay after to work on a group ballet dance for about 20 minutes, we just went over what we'd learned over the summer and added on about 30 seconds of choreography.

Dance- First competition class

So on Friday, the 18th, I had competition rehearsel for dance 4-7 pm. I'm really excited since I haven't done competition for about 7 years, I wasn't really sure what to expect now. When I did do competition, we did a bunch of excercises, like jumps and turns, but we started choreography right away. We started to learn two group dances. And none of us learned anything about our solos yet, in competition everyone has a solo to their best dance style, so I'm guessing that mine will be a ballet or contemporary piece. We learned part of a group dance to music from Schindler's list, it's going to be really beautiful, and then we started to learn part of a Bollywood group dance, which is very cool, upbeat, it's going to be a lot of fun. I definitely think that competition is going to push me a lot this year, make me do certain things that I wouldn't try before.

First SOI meeting

On Thursday at lunch, I joined SOI, Sturgis Organic Initiative, which Jade Borgeson is in charge of, Mr. Steedman is the adult supervisor. I'm really excited to start this activity, we talked about or goals for the year, what we plan to do. We talked about doing a bakesale October 2, with organic baked snacks. We want to sell food at break to give some of the profits to local farmers. We also talked about speaking to restaurants or our school to be a sponsor. I told Jade that one of my sisters is in Israel right now working on an organic farm so that I could e-mail her about ideas, and she said that was great. So I think that we could a lot done this year.

First dance classes of year- getting back into shape

On Tuesday night, this week the 15, 16 and 17, was the first week of dance classes of the year. Tuesday night, I had an hour and a half of ballet, we worked on pointe at barre and then took off our pointe shoes for center and across the floor. I noticed that there were some new girls that moved up to our level, Intermidate Advanced. And then after ballet, I joined a new class,a half hour Jazz choreography class. I loved this choreography that Sabrina is teaching, it's very classical jazz from the new movie Fame. And then on Wednesday night, I had contemporary for an hour and a half with Miss Jen. There was 13 of us which is a lot for a relatively small studio. So we have to learn hwo to work with that small space we all have. The class was a lot like the one that I took over the summer. Britney and I, the only ones who took the similar contemporary class over the summer were a little ahead of everybody and we showed them the choreography that we learned.
And then on Thursday I had an hour and a half ballet class, not with Miss Sabrina, but with a new teacher named Francesca. She has a very different teaching style than Sabrina's and she's very strict, but I like her as a teacher. And then I joined a lyrical choreography class after that ballet class with Francesca. I really like this choreography too, Francesca is definately pushing us to do things that we haven't done before.

Greek Club- first meeting

For the first Greek club meeting last Thursday, we really didn't do much. Lydia Shannon, who is in charge of Greek club this year handed out the Greek alphabet and some declensions of verbs. But we decided to go over that next week. We all learned each other's names, Lydia told us what Greek club was all about, what they did in the past, we asked questions, Mr. Arcensas told us some basics about Greek. And next week we're working on learning the alphabet, and drawing it.

Reflection- Abbey Kelley Foster Charter School trip

Overall this trip to the Abbey Kelley Foster School was a big accomplishment, I felt like my peers and I were doing something important for these new IB students. I worked well with my other peers, we all worked together talking about our experiences junior year and I realized how much I had actually accomplished during the year. We had a chance to interact with the Abbey Kelly students, answer their questions, what they wanted to know about the IB. I didn't know how beneficial this experience would be to me and my peers, when Mr. Steedman e-mailed us for the oppurtunity. I was able to see that not all other schools have the advantages that Sturgis does, not all students get to receive this kind of education, so it was great to know that these students are going to be able to experience it now. The activity did meet my learning outcomes working collaboratively with others and developing new skills, however I think that this activity also met the 7th outcome, considered ethical implications. I decided to go on this field trip to help these new IB students and help on with thier education, my other peers and I worked well of each other and talked well, we didn't talk over each other or disagree, we all complimented each other. My goals were just about right, my goals for this actvity were to help out Sturgis and the Abbey Kelly School. The activity only lasted one day so no real overbearing difficulties came that I felt like I couldn't do it anymore, but overall I feel accomplished and I actually wish and I don't think that I'm alone in that we could all do it again.