156 - Getting Packed

Our living room had a tornado go through it... oh no wait, that's just me trying to pack.  hah.

Love&Harmony,

Erin

155 - 2 Days

Well, it was two days ago when I took the picture *guilty face*.

These are our plane travel plans!

Love&Harmony,

Erin

155/6 - IOU

IOU day 155 and 156... Saturday and Sunday (today).  They will both be up tomorrow, I promise, and sorry for the delay!  Yesterday was spent busily shopping and finalizing, before running out to PLU for the music commencement concert.  I was also having a bugger of a time posting, so I gave up... heh.
Today I was gone with COW singing for commencement (the real deal at the Tacoma Dome).  I left home for PLU at 10:30AM and got back home from everything at 6:30... meh!  The rest of tonight has been packing, packing, packing, as tomorrow is, well IT!  :D  I'm a mix of excited and anxious and a little nervous.  My nerves were calmed tonight by my family, a piece of rhubarb pie (thanks mom!), and having the movie The Holiday on in the background.  It may be about Christmas, but it's good all year round - Jude Law, after all!  ;)

I will put up 155 and 156 tomorrow morning, and mayyyybe 157, although I think a picture at the airport will be more appropriate...
I will be taking pictures every day!  I will have twelve blogs to do when I get back, and they will be chock-full of stories!  I think I might try and journal every night with the intent of putting the notes up here (at least, some of them), so I don't completely lose my head trying to remember events.

SOOOO EXCITED!

Love&Harmony,
Erin

154 - Once Upon a Mattress

Sorry for the late post.  The drive on our home computer that lets us upload pictures directly from a camera card is malfunctioning, and I was too tired to try and deal with anymore technology last night...

Visited my old high school yesterday- going on 2 years of graduating from there... oh man, weird times.  Not that the visit was bad, but going back always makes me happy that I've moved on.  Gracious!

But the spring musical, Once Upon a Mattress, was fantastic!  I was not familiar with it at all, and it was highly hilarious and entertaining - I would expect nothing less of a KW musical.  :)



Love&Harmony,

Erin

153 - Haley

Spent most of today unpacking and most of this evening hanging out with Haley!  We did a lot of catching up and watched the first two episodes of Buffy season 7!!  (Yay, Netflix!)

We are planning on visiting our old choir teacher tomorrow, which means an early day for both of us.  Got to skip off to bed to get up at 6:15... how the heck did I do that for 4 years of my life?

Love&Harmony,

Erin

P.S.  Also, haircut today!  :)

152 - Moved Out!

All moved out - goodbye sophomore year of college!  I don't think I am mentally prepared to deal with that fact yet...  but thank goodness for a couple days of down time before EUROPE!!!  YAY!  (Steph and I may look sad in this picture, but we are really both looking forward to rooming together in Europe and in our apartment next year... :D)
It has been a fantastic year, full of making new friends, getting closer with old ones, and plenty of life lessons.  Big decisions were made and much fun was had.  I am excited for summer and what lies ahead in junior year (ACK!).  :)

Love&Harmony,

Erin

151 - Not Dead Yet

I feel almost dead but not quite...

luckily there are fun board activities to keep us even the littlest bit sane.  The one for the past couple of days has been "draw yourself as a robot!"  It's very exciting... and we are SO. DONE.

Just have to turn in my Jazz final tomorrow and go to my Ear Training appointment.  We also have choir, but hopefully that will be fun.  Then packing and out I go!  WOOHOO!!!

6, almost 5, days until Europe!

Love&Harmony,

Erin

150 - Getting Things Done

Yes this picture is terrible and late.  However, I am getting finals week DONE!!!  YES!

7 days to Europe... well, 6 if you consider that it is past midnight right now.  :)

Love&Harmony,

Erin

149 - G-4ce!

It was our final wing girls night out of the year *sniff sniff*.  We enjoyed dinner and a serenade (pictured above) at Reyna's, a family-owned Mexican restaurant on Garfield street.  We also decided that we will have monthly girls nights next year, titled G-4ce for "Girls, Games, Grub, and Gab."  :)

Now onto more cramming for finals!

Love&Harmony,

Erin

148 - The Full Monty

My paper is done - now I just have manageable final projects!  To celebrate, I went to The Full Monty tonight at PLU.  I'm so proud of my many talented friends!  It was a hoot... and a little revealing.  haha.  :)  Looking forward to the end of the school year and this was a good way to mark it!

Love&Harmony,

Erin

147 - AHHH!

So close to finishing this paper on Into the Woods (sorry Kelsey, I am the jerk who has all of the other Sondheim books checked out from the library...)!!

Also so close to finishing my sophomore year of college and heading to Europe with COW!!

Can I just fast forward a week, please please, please?!  :)

Love&Harmony,

Erin

146 - In These Last Days

This is some of our Conducting lunch group.  It was our last session of Conducting 1 today - everyone did quite well on their finals and we are happy.  It has been a super fun semester with all of my friends in that class!  :)

Love&Harmony,

Erin

145 - Not Dead Yet!

We're not dead yet ... but we're close.  I just got back from the library, working on my Researching Music essay, and I crashed my friends' Jazz Theory study session.

Love&Harmony,

Erin

144 - Marzi

John came to visit us today!  He grew quite fond of the purple fuzzy pillow on our couch, so it has been named "Marzi" in his honor.  :)

It has been a long day, concluded with a LONG choir/orchestra concert... we are pooped.

Love&Harmony,

Erin

143 - FOURTEEN

Camels, you ask?  Unicorns, maybe?  Fourteen magic rainbow fairies?

NO.

(Can you sense that it is dead week?)

Fourteen days until Europe!!!  GAHHHH!!!  Just have to get through my researching music essay (progressing very slowly... but progressing nonetheless), my jury, finals, and performing for commencement weekend and I'm outta here!  That also means that sophomore year is almost over and that is just a scary thought. 

Love&Harmony,

Erin

P.S.  Irrelevant, but also scary - the most irritating cliffhanger ever for the season finale of Castle!  I admit that Steph is freaking out (or ... was) more than me, but it was intense and anxiety inducing.  How can they expect us to wait four months?!



142 - Board Activity!

Lame post title, but I don't really know what else to say.  Today was a sleep-in, sans makeup, do homework, grey kind of Sunday.  It was actually sort of nice!  Unfortunately I'm paying for my procrastination, but I'm dealing with it.  Consequences of my actions - oh, hello paper theme!  mehhh.

Love&Harmony,

Erin

141 - A Cappella Concert!

Taken with Steph's camera by a friend of ours, as I was onstage singing my heart out with HERmonic during the most significant part of my day!  :)  It was a great closing concert for the year! 

HERmonic sang: Firework, Will You Be There, Only Girl in the World, The SNL Lawrence Welk Skit, The Office Theme, Someone Like You, Keep You Close, and Dog Days Are Over.  We also did Bring Me to Life with PLUtonic and it was epic.  I was going to post the video, but it's a little big I think - the upload was taking a long time.  If you're intersted, check out my Facebook!

All in all, a great day in which I did no homework.  I'm going to read for a class now, but it's a novel, so it's actually kind of enjoyable.  :P

Love&Harmony,

Erin

140 - Be the Spark

As promised, an update!

So Friday, May 13th was Be the Spark, an event at the Tacoma Dome aimed at the wider Tacoma community all about firing people up to stand up against violence, poverty, hunger, and general social injustice.  The main speaker was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize for his part in ending apartheid in South Africa as well as his global efforts for peace over the past several decades.  He chose Tacoma as one of his last United States appearances and came out of retirement just to share Be the Spark with us!  He was hilarious and wise and inspired me to think about what I can do to make our world a better place.  I'm really feeling called to battling hunger and/or homelessness.  Right now I can't necessarily make changes in a huge way, but I'm filled with this feeling that someday I might be able to - it's a really exciting thing.  :)

HERmonic got to sing for the donor dinner that took place before the main event.  We performed Will You Be There and, right after Desmond Tutu spoke to the patrons, we sang Firework.  We were a foot away from him as he exited the stage and we entered!  So exciting!  Then we got to support PLUtonic and one of our own (who will be famous one day) Charlie Hermann at the main stage event - we were on the side, but really close to the stage, so it was a good view!  It was an amazing, amazing night!

Love&Harmony,

Erin



Love&Harmony,

Erin

139 - Respect

138 - Silly Heads

My roommate and I are silly heads... we take goofy pictures and procrastinate on homework.  I am going to have a lot to do in the next two days - oh well!



Love&Harmony,

Erin

137 - Oompa Loompa...

Blue skies, sunshine, and Willy Wonka sunglasses!!  :D  haha

Today started out grey and ended with a glorious bout of sunshine!  I wish I could say the same for my homework... I have a big project due soon that is making me anxious, mostly because I've had little time to think of it until now.  Not the best excuse in the world, but it's what I have to offer... Luckily, now I do have time to focus on it and hopefully my meeting with my prof tomorrow will help me figure it out and get me to a point where I can actually start writing!  *crosses fingers*

SOOO close to the end!  I can almost see it!



Love&Harmony,

Erin

136 - New Camera!

Just a quick post before bed... ignore my dirty mirror and look at my shiny new camera!  :D

Love&Harmony,

Erin

135 - Late Night

Tonight is going to be a late night.  Meh.

My head hurts and I want to sleep but things that got put off must now be done.  Grr argh.

Love&Harmony,

Erin

134 - My Best Friend's Wedding

Well, this isn't the one I wanted to use - it still won't load in the right direction - but this one will do.  :) 

I've known Hannah since the first day of 7th grade at Mattson Jr. High.  A lot has changed since then, but we've made it through it all.  I'm so excited for her and Justin to start the next phase of their lives together.  They are an amazing match and I can't wait to witness all of the blessings that are in store for them! 

 

Love&Harmony,
Erin

133 - Happiness Hit Her

... like a train on a track.  :)

Today was a very good Friday.  COW sang quite well in chapel, the opera list went up and everyone is happy, my piano lesson was awesome, my religion class was talkative, COW rehearsal for our concert tomorrow was productive, HERmonic sang really well, we got to sing "Bring Me to Life" with the boys, we got to hear them rock "One Day", and our rehearsal - even though it went late - was efficient and full of fun choreography!  And it was my mother's birthday today... and I am home for Hannah's wedding tomorrow!!!  Whee!



Love&Harmony,

Erin

132 - No Shoes

Today was officially "one day without shoes" at PLU and I did it!  This is from this evening when the clouds rolled in and let out a little bit of rain.  My feet are dirty and will probably hurt tomorrow, but overall it really wasn't that bad.  It was interesting realizing how sensitive our feet are - something we don't realize because they stay protected in shoes most of the time.  The strangest part in my opinion was the weird social feeling.  I was participating in something quite out of the norm.  There were other students doing it, but not that many and I got a couple of looks and questions.  But the whole idea is raising awareness, so it worked!

Love&Harmony,

Erin

131 - One Day

Tomorrow (er-today, I'm a tad late...) is PLU's One Day Without Shoes event.  I wasn't really sure about doing it, but after stopping by some of the musical kick-off that happened this evening, I will be joining fellow Lutes and going around without shoes for a day (minus flip-flops for eating areas that require footware).  The day is sponsored by TOMS shoes and is meant to raise awareness about the dangers/pains of walking without shoes and inspire people to help those without them.  It's an important social justice message and I'm excited to participate!

Love&Harmony,

Erin

130 - Productivity

Maybe this picture is sideways on purpose.  :)  We are being productive doing Jazz Theory and watching Improv-a-Ganza, Drew Carey's new show, based off of Whose Line.  We're getting a lot done.  :)

Love&Harmony,

Erin

129 - Mess

This is the reason I am writing my Music History essay on my bed and not at my desk... I'm really hoping for some free time at some point so I can clean - whodathunk?!

Love&Harmony,

Erin

128 - Trio Recital!

Our trio recital finally happened tonight!!!  I got to sing duets, trios, and solos with the lovely Emma Soares and Sorayah Surkatty this evening.  We've been hard at work putting it together for over a month and it paid off.  The room was full of good friends and family and they seemed to enjoy everything we did!

This isn't from today, but it's just here to commemorate the event. :)

This is today's pic - with my wonderful friends from my wing who all sat in the second row supporting us.  :)  I love love love these ladies!  Thank you so much for being such great people! 

Yay!  Now, onto everything I was putting off to work on recital stuff... uuuugh.

Love&Harmony,

Erin

P.S.  Osama bin Laden's death was announced during our concert.  I found out afterwards... it's a strange thing to me.  I understand why people are recognizing it as a good thing, but, as a friend of mine put it on facebook, "I feel weird celebrating death, no matter whose it is."  Just felt that a thought on that was necessary.