Corner View~Traditions

Since I was 6 1/2, Skylar and I have sang and played guitar at an ashram in front of a pretty big crowd every summer. We also liked to play for relatives and friends. Skylar stills plays the guitar, but I usually just sing. I sing for friends and relatives all the time whenever they come over. I love singing.  It gives me such a happy feeling that I never want to stop. It's the same feeling that I get right before I open my presents on my birthday.

Corner View~Improvising

Recently my dad has taught me to improvise with the scales on piano. It's basically like doing harmonies on the piano (for those of you folks who don't know what the heck I am talking about). For a while, okay maybe like 5 years, I was kind of out of my piano phase. But this harmonic scale has really gotten me back into it. It's beautiful. It's like an orchestra you can control with just a light touch of your finger.

Since I am an actress and a musician I'd like to also talk about another kind of improvisation. In acting improvisation is very important. If you mess up in front of a live audience you have to ad lib, which means to improvise. When you make a speech you should never memorize it, you should just memorize ideas.  You do this because if you memorize the speech and you forget it, it will be a disaster. If you just memorize ideas it will be like a conversation with the audience. I learned this today in home school.

Later, my peeps!

Corner View~Rain

 I didn't take these. I'm not that good of a photographer! (But hey, let me off the hook, I don't have my own camera!) When I get my own camera, I hope I can take great pictures too!

 

Taekwondo Update

One of the first posts I ever wrote was about Taekwondo. It's been about a year and a half since we started doing it. (Although we travel in the summer every year so I guess you could say we've been doing it for a year.) What is Taekwondo, you ask? It's the perfect sport that exercises the body and the mind. Or for you simpler folk, it's a martial art. Me, my 14 year old sister, Skylar, and my 7 year old brother, Shawn, all do hour and a half classes twice a week. My sister and I have been high blue belts for a while. We're getting ready to test for red belt in a couple weeks. My little brother just tested for his low blue belt. Although I didn't get to watch because I was on a trip with mom. :( [Although :) for the trip with mom.]
I was just practicing this morning. There are techniques and forms and Korean language. And the necessary knowledge keeps expanding for every belt. The belt order goes like this: White, yellow, orange, purple, green, blue, red, brown, candidate, black. Then there's black with up to nine stripes. And there are so much requirements for each stripe, that it counts as it's own belt. My main instructor/master, a black belt with six stripes, and her husband (yeah, that's right! She's a girl! girls rule!) run the dojang (translation: training hall). They're strict enough but hardly strict at all, compared to a lot of martial art teachers. In fact, they're super nice and not strict compared to anybody. With them in my life, I'm sure to achieve my black belt.

Corner View~Anything Goes

This is a great day to do anything goes because I just did a play tonight (definitely something worth writing about). It was called "Ernie's Incredible Illucinations" by Alan Ayckbourn.  It is a story about a boy who imagines things and they come true.  He goes with his parents to the doctor to get a diagnosis and tells him some very weird examples, which we had to act out.  Finally, to prove to the doctor that this is real, Ernie makes the doctor get caught in an illucination himself. 

I wasn't a main character but I did have one major monologue. Here it is (and this is without looking at my script just to show I know it). (I'm playing a barker at a fair.)

"Just about to start ladies and gentlemen! A heavy-weight boxing bout, featuring the one and only unofficial challenger for the heavy-weight championship of the world, kid Saracen. The kid will be fighting this afternoon for the very first time. A demonstration contest against the new sensation from Seattle, Eddie, 'Grinder' Edwards. In addition ladies and gentlemen, the kid is offering a hundred dollars - yes - a hundred dollars to any challeger who manages to last three three-minute rounds."

I had some other parts too, though. I had a great time, and almost the whole cast went and got ice cream, afterward. I made some new friends, within the cast. It was really fun, and I hope I get to do another play soon.

I honestly don't really like fall very much. First of all where we live the leaves don't even fall so we don't get to jump in leaves or anything. Second of all, fall is when I go back to school. Not that I don't like learning or the school year, but it's hard to go from fun summer days to extreme homework issues. I mean I barely had time to write the corner view today 'cause I had to finish up a report. (So that's why I'm doing this late. It ain't my fault, I didn't ask for extreme homework!) But I guess in some places the fall is pretty. Here it's a little cooler in the morning and we get more clouds, but that's all.

Corner View~Famous

This summer we went to LA. We went to the walk of fame on Hollywood Blvd. I was really excited because I was going to see Michael Jackson's star and Julie Andrews' star. Julie Andrews is one of my favorite actresses. She has inspired me. Here is a picture of me next to her star. I hope I get to be an actress someday and have my own star!