December 6-7

       I am amazed that I have been able to keep this blog up for this long. Knowing that people (or at least my family) are waiting to hear from me helps me to stay motivated. I'm looking forward to reading through all these posts years from now and reliving my epic adventures!
       Monday. The beginning of the end is starting to set in. I had my last voice lesson which went very well, thankfully. Gotta love ending on a good note (bah dum chee!). I think most of you reading this have never heard me sing like I do in voice lessons. My vocal alter ego likes the fancy stuff, but it doesn't have a place to share itself with anyone but voice teachers. Shoot, I don't know what to do with my music except to move forward, whatever that looks like. I've been moving forward in leaps and bounds over here, but we'll see what happens when I get home. That afternoon, I did some work in the music lab for a total of 4.5 hours (in two sessions = hard core) and then learned a song called "Wonderwall" by Oasis for The Evening Dish that evening. Ever since the idea of me singing on the radio began, my English friends have wanted me to do something by Oasis, so I finally did. It's a strange and pretty boring song, but I did it for my friends : ) Along with my last voice lesson, Monday brought my last radio show : ( Ahh, The Evening Dish, you have been great fun. I'm glad I had the opportunity to get involved in that.
       Tuesday, e-music class was cancelled, so I did some grocery and clothes shopping. I got a poofy snow jacket for only 9 pounds, some super thick tights, a long sleeved layering shirt, and some ingredients to make snickerdoodles! Apparently, snickerdoodles are strictly an American thing, so I decided that I needed to share the love with my English neighbors and the Wednesday night Bible study group. After I got back from my shopping spree and started setting things up the kitchen, I realized that I didn't have enough butter or sugar. Fail. I knocked on a number of doors and finally got all the ingredients I needed. Hooray for generous and available neighbors! In the middle of my cookie session, my friend Marta found me and asked if she and her tv classmates could interview me for one of their projects, and I said yes. She asked general questions about studying abroad, things that are different, stereotypes, etc. It was cool. When we were done, I went back to baking my delicious snickerdoodles. They turned out great. Mom, you would have loved them.
       At 3:30, I had choir rehearsal and then singers ensemble after that. Our performance is next week, so things are starting to buckle down. Remember the solo I wrote about? I sang it twice in rehearsal, and it went better than I expected, I would say. My heart was pounding and I could feel my face flushing a bit, but I stayed in perfect key (at the least the first time because the piano came in after me. The second time was completely a cappella for the whole choir so there was no way for me to tell how the pitch ended up.) Starting off a song all by yourself in a room full of other singers and eventually full of an audience is very nerve-racking, but it's a very healthy challenge for me. That song is the last one of the night, so we should all be able to relax a bit by then I hope, the audience included. Singers ensemble was productive, and we practiced our staging positions.
Alright, enough singing. Let's get to the food.
       My neighbors and I planned to have dinner together tonight because Alayna wanted to cook my a special chicken dish that was stuffed with some kind of cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. Oh yum. We all made an evening of it and contributed other stuff. I made a brown rice stir fry with prawns (Pepe, ok?), bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, and garlic, and the others put together more vegetables in addition to the chicken. We all sat in the stairwell because there isn't an official place where people can eat together in our hall (which is lame. I don't get it. No table, really???). I totally stuffed myself, but it was all so good! To top it all off, I brought out some snickerdoodles and we played "Guess Who" (like on the radio show for those who might have been listening on Monday) while we chomped on the cookies. Good fun. I will miss my neighbors : (
       Now, it's bedtime. I don't want to do homework right now.

Prayer Request of the Day: That I would power through all my assignments with great motivation. I'm ready for this school thing to be over already so I can get to travelling!