Camping and ACDA Conference in Long Beach and Good Grades

 Wow, it's been a whole month since I have written. A lot has happened.

Sarah and I went camping the 20th and 21st of February. We went to Lake Pleasant for one night. It is a place outside of Phoenix not too far from the Phoenix Arizona Temple. The lake is beautiful. The sign at the front of the park said not to use a fire, but we noticed many other people using a fire so we built our own. It was both Sarah and my first fire that we had ever made on our own and it was a smashing success, except that we only brought enough wood for a couple of hours. We won't make that mistake again. Sarah brought my guitar to my chagrin but later to my not-chagrin, because I brought it up to the campground and played all the music I remembered from my youth. When I say brought things up to our campground, our camp was on this mesa and our cars were parked a little bit down yonder. We had to trek all the things to our campsite. We made our food, it was some great greasy stuff. We also brought things for s'mores, but I forgot to grab the chocolate, as I was the one that was packing for the trip. We took walks and saw the beautiful sunset atmosphere. Lots of little tiny bugs.

The Winter Olympics had been going on so Sarah got me excited about a movie called Cool Runnings. You probably know it, but I had probably only seen the movie once in my life. We stuck it in the almost clear pocket of our tent and watched it downloaded from DisneyPlus (so we would save data). We also played a game. The next morning we ate and packed up our stuff and traveled to the banks of the lake (along with several other people. We went up a hill to another mesa and we brought our camping chairs and ate chips up on the hill that overlooked the lake. We also talked with Kirstin in a Polo, and it was very windy, but still fun. Sarah went into the water.

We then went to the nature center and enjoyed our time learning about the Desert Tortoise Campground and surrounding areas. We also played and had some fun on swings and slides in a really vamped up park. We saw a cactus arrangement that looked like a llama.

At the Chili's down the road, Sarah and I talked about the possibility of joining the American Choral Director's Association and go to a conference that was going to be in Long Beach at the beginning of March 2-5. I was kinda feeling a little bit hesitant about going, seeing as how that would be the end of my first Spring I term at Ottawa, and that we'd have choir performances soon afterward. But Sarah encouraged me, and we invited Forrest Chapin II (from Choir) to come to stay with us at Helen's house in Torrance (he was already going to go and had gotten an Air BnB which he cancelled).

Well, a couple weeks later, Sarah and I traveled to California for me to go to this conference. It was a really good time and I learned a lot and Long Beach Convention Center is beautiful. I was able to really get to know Forrest. He really encouraged me to continue doing what I was doing. He would hang out with his friend Abrahm, who is a co-conductor for the Arizona Saints Chorale (ASC). They were very chummy. We gave him several rides back to his apartment where he was staying. We also met the choir director of the Chandler Gilbert Community College. He seems like a great guy. There were 8 different performances of several different choirs in the area and out of the area and we went to about 5 or so of them (we skipped out on early morning ones). There were readings of choral works, and I felt really inspired by a class on having a children's community chorus. I will have to look into starting one. All in all, well worth my time.

The whole time I was in California, I was worried about my last assignment and last week in my two Ottawa classes. I had to write an 5-6 page paper about the culture of Japan and how it relates to school. I was so worried about it. It was all I could think about at times. Sarah arranged for me to go to the Japanese American National Museum so that I could get inspiration from it. In the end, I got a 99/100 on the paper and an 94% and 96% in both classes.

The concerts went well for MCC. I had felt anxious after a long, strenuous rehearsal and had to come home before the big concert. Although, singing jazz was good and it was nice to finally sing something without masks.

I am now in my second week of classes at Ottawa for Spring 2. I am taking Educational Psychology and The Exceptional Child. I have to get 15 hours of observation before the end of this eight weeks. I am in my Spring Break at MCC, which is nice.

We had the Cooks over on Sunday and had a nice chat.

Oh yes one more thing, on our way home from the conference in California, we were able to see my mom and my dad, and it was a nice conversation. So, hopefully things are reconciling. Aunt Ann isn't doing too well, though, which is a reason why we went to see my parents.