Gratefulness

I just feel so happy and grateful today for all of the blessings I've received lately, and I just want to write a little bit and express myself. I'm so happy and excited to be back here at the conservatory...back with all my wonderful teachers, back in a place where I will be able to be totally immersed in music and be able to concentrate on my musical development for the next two years.  It's going to be amazing to be concentrating on my singing, and to have all the coaching and acting and language training that I've never been able to have before.

I'm so grateful, so so so grateful.

My room in San Francisco

Space is certainly the most valuable commodity in San Francisco... and for the price of a two or three-bedroom apartment that I could rent in Billings, Montana, I have this little room in San Francisco: 

It's comfortable enough... and very very close to the school (that's the best part!). I can walk to school in only five minutes or so.
  

The view out my window is to a tiny corridor on the inside of the building.  The room across from mine has been closed off with bricks.   That is fine with me;  the last time I lived in this building there was a guy living in the room right across from mine so I had to keep my drapes closed nearly all of the time. 

Here is a picture down the corridor:

Not much air comes in through there because the top of the corridor is actually closed off with a glass ceiling. 

And here is me in my new room. Notice the earrings, once again! :-)  I will get to put in a different around the middle of September.

Birthday Surprise!

Yesterday I had a wonderful birthday...which included getting poked by a lot needles!  After a ballet lesson in the morning, followed by lunch with my Mom and two friends from church, I went to get a tetanus shot in my right arm (which is very sore today!).  As soon as I got home that afternoon, my friend Stephanie called me and told me I needed to come over for "a thing".  

So I drove over to her house. Steph and her husband Rick took me to the mall...and we walked around for a bit looking for the place where "the thing" was (I had no idea what it was going to be).  Soon she turned into a little jewelry store called "Claire's", walked up to the counter, and said to the woman there, "This young lady is having a birthday today and she would probably like to get her ears pierced."  

"Stephanie!!" I gasped in surprise, and slapped her in the behind. 

 "What???" she said, "I thought you wanted to!"  

I had told Stephanie in some other conversation we had earlier this month that I had had my ears pierced as a child, but I ended up getting an infection/allergic reaction after I didn't take out a certain pair of earrings for a couple of months (I was nine!).  My ears actually grew around the backs of the earrings, and after discovering that I couldn't get my earrings out one day, my mom had to dig them out with a pin.  After the traumatic experience, I have not worn earrings ever since, and the holes in my ears closed up. So I told Steph that I had been thinking about getting them re-pierced for a long time, but never had the gumption to go and do it. 

So she helped me.  After walking around the store for a while saying things like, "Should I do it? I'm afraid! What if I cry?" (to which Stephanie replied, "I will hold your hand!"), I finally decided to go ahead with it. 

It actually didn't hurt nearly as badly as I remember it hurting the first time when I was nine (actually it hurt much less than the tetanus shot I had gotten earlier that morning!).  Maybe that was because I had my ears pierced before, so the cartilage was not as difficult to go through as it was the first time.  Or maybe because when you are only nine you are more sensitive to pain, who knows?  Anyway it wasn't bad at all. 

Tonight I made my Mom take a few pictures of me to show off the gold stud in my ear lobe (which I have to wear for the next six to eight weeks before I can change it!)

So here is my new ear.  Pretty?  

My birthday full of needles!  

  To finish off my birthday celebrations, today my sister Rachel took me shopping for a new pair of jeans, and tonight my family went out to dinner.

 So that was my wonderful birthday!