Brave Girl at Heart

I am bursting with happiness today. I get sick often and easily. I am depressed when I'm sick. Therefore, I'm usually depressed. でも今日は元気だ!

There is nothing that happened in particular to make me feel this way, but I guess I'm happy because there's nothing that's going wrong. =) I'll start by telling you all about our play last Friday.

I guess I consider the play on Friday a success. *smiles* On that day, I woke up at 5:12AM. My dad was still home and he ended up driving me to school (so I didn't need to wake up so early after all, but oh well). I was the fourth to arrive, after Vincent, Janelle, and Tammy. Dang, these people get up early. I thought I'd be first. xD;

Anyway, we made a first run-through before school started and it was horrible. Disgusted with our performance on stage, Ms. Naks said, "What is that? This looks like the practice we had...two weeks ago. What is going on? What's up?"

Sam replied, "Um, um, I think it's morning sickness!"

Ms. Naks replied incredulously, "Do you even know what morning sickness is?"

"No."

"Good. I don't want you to know. Okay, moving on~"

I thought that was a funny conversation. Anyway, we didn't even have time to do much before our first performance started. Someone asked me if I was nervous. It is strange. I didn't feel anything.

We barely got any practice at all so I think everyone really panicked during the first performance. Many, including myself, messed up on our lines. We couldn't find certain props. I forgot to change my costume between acts. Halfway through the show, I felt that everything was wrong, wrong, wrong. The audience didn't help either. Not only did we mess up, we had a horrible audience.

If we think way back, we remember that this is a history class putting on a play. None of us were a part of the McKinley Theatre Group and some of us has never done acting on stage before (I haven't). It didn't make much sense for a history class to do a play, but it made sense for us to do a historical play. The class was divided into five groups with four persons in each group. We covered different parts of the world: Hawaii (because we live here), America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The theme was "Women in World History: Triumph & Tragedy". We wrote our own scripts, came up with our own props and costumes...everything was up to us. My group chose to do Europe and we focused on the European witch hunts and Florence Nightingale. Our first act was meant to be tragic, but we made it comedic so that we'd have something light to offer the audience. In this act, I was the mother of a child who accused said child's teacher to be a witch. This is followed with a hilarious chase scene (closely resembling Scooby-Doo) and then the execution. Kenneth and his dad created this amazing guillotine and we closed curtains before the "head" would roll out. (We had bought a styrofoam head from Party City). XD; Although our scenes were funny, there were some other acts in our play that were more dark and serious.

Misaki and Julia was in the Africa group and chose to bring some attention to what the women in Africa were going through (domestic violence and abuse). There was a scene where the husband physically abuses his wife and a raping scene (don't worry, the stage was dark). The audience proved to be very immature and laughed at parts of the play that shouldn't have been laughed at. They were disrespectful.

It was okay in the end, though. When we asked Ms. Naks for some feedback after the show, she bobbed her head and waved her fingers. She recieved mixed responses from the audience. One comment stuck to me like glue. "One person said, 'You know what? They were just talking so fast and I couldn't hear or understand them at all.'"

People only remember the bad, not the good. That was the only thing I remembered.

Our second performance started soon after. I did almost throw up the fattening pastries I had for breakfast but I swallowed it back in. It didn't help that I've had a sore throat for an entire week. I thought we did way better on the second performance (maybe it's just that I didn't mess up) but Hoang and Erica both thought the first performance was better (maybe because they messed up). But Ms. Naks response was good this time. The audience loved us. (And they were better this time too!) Sometimes I feel a sort of connection to Ms. Naks because everything she says is what I've been feeling inside. We have the same thoughts and opinions. I don't need to say anything because she understands.

Writing a script and creating a play, not to mention acting, is harder than it looks. The reason we went to camp was so that we could feel more comfortable around each other. Teamwork was essential then, and it was definitely needed to make the play work. Working together with twenty people is pretty difficult and it took us a long time to make things run smoothly. The acting was no problem. But there was so many things going behind the scene, things the audience have no idea we're going through unless they've been in a play themselves. However, Ms. Naks said that things ran quite smoothly the second time around and I'm glad of that. ^__^ We joked to Ms. Naks that she should tell the audience that we only practiced on stage twice, so that we'd sound more impressive and so if we messed up, it's not our fault. xD Ms. Naks simply rolled her eyes. Because of the good feedback, some started asking for more.

"Oh! And tell them donations are welcome."

"And standing ovations!"

Ms. Naks replied, "Okay, and pretty soon they're going to ask for your autographs!" XP

It's funny. I wasn't scared to go up on the Odyssey III and I wasn't nervous on stage at all. I would think it, but I didn't actually feel that way.

Our last performance was the best. Coincidentally, our period 6 audience was the best. I peeked through the curtains and saw that the majority of my friends came during the last period (Tracy, Erica, Victoria, Janet, Chunnie, Yang, Joyce, etc.) After the show, I rushed out to greet some friends but only Janet waved and gave me thumbs up. "You guys were awesome!"

Yes, we were. =)

Busier than a Bee

Today was another exhausting day. I've never felt so drained and worn-out as I have been these past few days. I've never been so busy before in my life! I know I've said this before many times, but you can see that it is the truth this time considering that my last post was in April. It's almost 9:00pm and I haven't even touched my homework! Of course, I should be going over Section 15.1 because I have an early morning presentation in Chemistry EA tomorrow, but I don't feel like doing any studying at the moment. I wouldn't be able to concentrate anyway, so I'm not going to push myself over the edge like I did this past year.

It's been so long. What's new? Tsuda sensei, the student teacher for Japanese, is going to graduate so he will be leaving our class. I don't feel happiness or sadness by his absence (I know many are happy to see that he is gone) but I'd still like to wish him luck in the future. He is a strange guy, but he does seem to have a lot of passion and love for teaching about the Japanese language and culture. I respect him for that. Anyway, I should be happy because I have so much more than the required points (meaning I'm getting an A++)!

In the last week of April, I also met Dr. Randall Roth and Judge Samuel King, the authors of Broken Trust. It is a truly impressive book and I recommend it to everyone, whether they live in Hawaii or not. Although the book concerns itself with the Bishop Estate and the troubling political issues in Hawaii, the book is not only about the shameless abuse of a charitable trust. It speaks of corruption and what people did to stand up to what was wrong, even when all of the odds are against them. The authors are also very humble people (even with their high titles and accomplishments). I felt a bit intimidated but also very inspired. It makes me feel happy that people like them actually exist in this world. They've inspired me to want to go out there and make a difference in the world as well.

I also went to a Judo tournament on the last Saturday of April. The people there scared me, even the people yelling cheering from the bleachers. Who was I kidding when I said I wanted to join the judo team? One flip and I'm a goner.

Last weekend was hardly a break, either. I went to another doctor's appointment, went shopping and eating out with my sister, and attended the Spring Concert. Sunday was Mother's Day so I woke up extra early (even though I stayed up late the previous night) to bake my mommy a cake. I baked her favorite type of cake with plenty of eggs. It was my first time making Chinese sponge cake, but she liked it so I'm happy. =) I also finally bought myself a new digital camera!!! *throws confetti* Nothing went as planned, but I should stop being so spoiled and get over the fact that life never goes exactly the way you wanted it to (I'd be married to Junsu by now). I finally spent the money I've been saving since I was five years old. I only hope it won't break my heart like the last one. I still haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet and my sister's graduation is tomorrow. Dear god.

I had a huge math test on Monday. I was supposed to have studied over the weekend, but who had the time? I certainly didn't. I barely got any sleep the previous night so I was in no condition to take a stupid test. I don't know why, but I had a hard time falling asleep. It was horrible because I was so exhausted and tired, but my head wouldn't allow me the pleasure to take a break and rest! I think I only slept for four hours...I know there are some people who do that, and stay up until morning, but I'm not one of them. A girl needs her beauty sleep! You can imagine that I didn't do well on that test. I did the best I could, but my brain simply wasn't functioning well. If the test was on another day, I'm pretty sure I would pass with a higher score. I don't look forward to seeing what my percentage is in class tomorrow.

This week has been nothing but drama practice. I had the longest rehearsal today, from 12:00pm to 5:30pm~ish. I haven't really mentioned the play too much in this blog. This proves just how busy I was since it is THE play that has taken over my life these past few weeks. It is the only thing I have on my mind right now. After this Friday, everything will be over and I'll be back to having no life, but right now, the play is everything.

We finally did rehearsals in the auditorium today and it was really bad.

I'm not saying that we're the source of this horrible-ness, but we're simply not ready and the performance is on Friday. What we have so far is such...rough work. We definitely underestimated the amount of time we had and everything is rush, rush, rush. We barely got to use the stage for practice. Everything is last minute and I kept wishing we had more time.

...But I know these guys. Any other class wouldn't be able to pull it off, but I'm proud to say that this particular class is special, as cheesy as it sounds. *dodges rotten tomatoes* As crazy and busy and hectic and unorganized and screwy as we are now, I can honestly believe that we can do it. It's a critical time for everyone and yeah, of course, there are people biting each other's heads off but I know we all secretly love each other (right?!)

After camp, I can't help but think that everyone is capable of pulling miracles.