WARNING: I AM POSTING THIS WITH A LIMITED AMOUNT OF SLEEP. YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED.

Anyways, now that that’s over with, and I’ve been dizzified by the new WP new post page layout…The trip was amazingly fantabulously phenomenalorious! I’m going to try to include everything I can remember here, because the whole experience smells of college essay material to me…so bear with me if stuff seems completely irrelevant…although that could be due to the fact that we got back at after 4AM…(essentially, feel free to skip to the end with pictures, because this post is mainly for me to remember everything I can)

So basically, this trip served a dual purpose. One, for my teacher, Alice, to bring her advanced improvisation students and demonstrate some of her program and teaching techniques. Second, we were doing this at a free outreach program in Providence, RI for underprivileged kids which is run in part by her former student, Jessie.

We all showed up at the music school at around 8:30 Friday morning, insanely excited and high on adrenaline. We actually did get going by around 9:00, as planned. There was a moratorium on sugar for the ride down, instituted to prevent crashing before the concert that night. Plenty of sugar was snuck on or feebly justified, however – resulting in a rather hyper batch of teens and pre-teens on a pretty small tour bus for about seven hours…interesting times.

The concert that night went really well. All transitions were smooth, but more importantly, everyone played really well, and the audience got so into it! It was really cool, although we were all still feeling a bit awkward, being pretty much the only white people there and not knowing many people.

That night, my friend Clare, my teacher, her two kids, and I all stayed with Jessie, aka ‘Monty’ – we did manage to be asleep before midnight, which was mildly surprising. Her house was SO cool, too – she had a music room with foam and stuff all over the walls and ceiling, so it’s so dead that if you practice in there, you’d sound amazing anywhere else because you had to work really hard to get any kind of good sound. Pretty nifty.

Saturday. Everybody taught five classes, two in the morning and three in the afternoon, with a 1.5-hour lunch break. In the morning, Clare and I assisted my teacher with improv classes. These kids had barely ever improvised before, and trust me – it’s terrifying the first time you do it. But most of them got into it by the end, which was really cool to see.

During the lunch break, we finally had a chance to get to know some of the kids, many of whom were really cool. One guy showed us all these poems he had written, many about city violence and how sad it made him – amazing to see such a ‘tough guy’-looking kid have such a soft side. Then there was a five-year-old girl named Amy who basically attached herself to me and told me her life story, everything from her loose tooth to her family’s house burning down and somebody writing on the wall ‘I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.’ Talk about scary. And we all played cards together and got to talk until the pizza got there. It was seriously cool. Here’s Amy:

Is she not adorable?

In the afternoon, I assisted with two more improv classes and also helped teach a fiddle tune. Then we and a few of the kids from the program went out to dinner at this Asian place. I had chicken and broccoli with white rice, which was really good, but HUGE. I didn’t finish. After dinner, we were originally going to go to the zoo, but since it was raining, we went to United Skates of America, where I rollerskated for the first time in forever. It was weird, really different from rollerblading. Then we had an epic game of lasertag in which I came in second to last. It never ceases to amaze me how bad I am at any kind of game like that – lasertag, paintball, any similar videogame, etc. But it was really fun. However, all of us having fun resulted us leaving Providence not at 6:00ish, like we’d planned (which would result in us being home at the completely reasonable *eyeroll* time of 1:00AM), but instead around 9:00PM!

The ride home was the only unfantabulous part of the trip. I can’t fall asleep except on my stomach, so I was on the floor of the bus, but Alice’s son kept sitting right on top of me, and this other kid WOULDN’T SHUT UP. So I didn’t get much sleep on the bus ride. We all slept over at the school, so I got another maybe four hours there. But all in all, the sleep tally isn’t too high.

Seriously, though – the trip was amazing. If you’ve seen the movie Music of the Heart, it was serious deja vu to that.

In fiber-related news, my mom and I are both participating in the Earth Day Yarn Swap, and my buddy loved her package! I sent her some bamboo yarn, a pretty stitch marker, chocolate, and tea. Apparently, her daughter was also pleased:

I haven’t received my package yet, but I’m really excited! It’s my first swap, unless HAT ATTACK counts. But that’s just a hat. This is yummy yarn and goodies!

Ta ta for now, then. Keep your eyes open – a contest approaches, as soon as I get up the energy to write the post for it! While you wait, check out the fun contest here.