Laura’s place

Ninth day. Tuesday. Good news! I got my part changed! I am now Pig-Pen. You know, the dirty guy in the Peanuts comics. He’s cool. One of my scenes is like:

Red-Haired Girl, talking to Marcy and Peppermint Patty: Pig-Pen may be carrying the dust of ancient Babylon!

Pig-Pen: Sort of makes you want to treat me with more respect, doesn’t it?

Red-Haired Girl, handing me a mirror: Just look at yourself! You’re filthy!

Pig-Pen, looking in the mirror: On the contrary, I didn’t think I looked that good.

And it’s funny. Yeah.

When we got back home we swam a bit. Not much else happened. Again, a normal day.

The eighth day in MN was a Monday. Back to camp. It was a normal day, doing the normal things. After camp we finished Sweeny Todd. It had to be one of the grossest movies I’d ever seen in my entire life. Not gross like naked people gross or people slobbering all over other people’s faces gross. It was blood gross. Gory and gutty gross. Pretty much everyone died at the end except for three people. I’m not telling you who those three people were though. Mwa…ha…ha…ha…

Um…not much else happened. Normal day.

On the seventh day in Minnesota, Sunday, I got up relatively early to go with my grandparents to their church. The night before, grandma and I had practiced a couple hymns, me on guitar and grandma on flute, to play there. You see, I’m not a religious person and so I knew I would probably not have known what was going on…even if it was in English. The church my grandparents go to, or at least the service they attend, is all in Spanish. And I don’t speak Spanish.

When we got there we were early (because my grandparents had to be early. My grandma’s students were performing) and so I just got out my guitar, tuned it, and practiced. People started coming in and were like, “Buenos Dias” to my grandparents and eventually to me and when I looked blank they said to my grandparents, “No habla Espanol?” And they answered, “No.” And so they said “Good morning” to me instead.

It wasn’t too hard. I just stood up when everyone else stood up, sat down when everybody else sat down, moved my mouth so it looked like I was singing, etc. It was interesting though. It was only my second time going to church in Spanish…and probably only my fifth time actually going to church.

Outside the church my Aunty Jo and I saw a huge green…uh…I’m not sure what exactly it was. It looked like a dragonfly. Only HUGE. I thought it was fake at first, because it wasn’t moving, but when we poked it with a stick it flew away.

That night, my Uncle Luther and I went to see The Dark Night. It was pretty good. Very dark though. I wonder why… Anyway, I thought it was good. The Joker was very good. I mean, he was extremely evil, but the actor was good. I didn’t think Heath Ledger would be a good Joker. I mean…he starred in A Knight’s Tale and that’s, like, the complete opposite. One of the coolest parts (and probably most memorable) was the part when the Joker crashes this criminal leaders or whatever meeting and he sticks a pencil in the table and says, “I’ll show you a magic trick. See this pencil?” Then he slams the head of one of the criminal dudes onto the pencil and the pencil supposedly stuck in his head. “And now it’s gone!” It was pretty funny. The Joker’s so cool. But I think there were too many scenes where Harvey Dent used the coin. He had this coin his dad gave to him or something and it was heads on both sides. (Spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t read the rest of this paragraph!) It got slightly more suspenseful when half the coin got burned along with half of Harvey’s face, but I think he relied on it too much. He was like, “I’ll flip this coin. Heads, your son lives. Tails, I shoot his brains out.”

Yeah, It was a good movie. I liked it.

Sixth day in Minnesota. Saturday. My first day off since I got here! Wow, it was nice to finally RELAX! Or…sort of. I got up at about nine thirty to get to grandma’s flute choir at ten. From what I heard, they’re quite good. I didn’t get to hear much because I was busy chasing around the flute choir director’s two year old daughter. Jeez, that girl was HYPER. I was thinking, “Does her mom feed her coffee or something?” First thing she did was drag me upstairs to the “toy room”. There were lots of toys. And little kid books. I got in absolutely no reading time.

Then at about 12 o’ clock she dragged me downstairs again. She pulled over a little kid chair and grabbed her lunch box and was like, “Lunch! Lunch!” Pretty smart for a two-year-old. Right after that her mom, the director of the flute choir, gave me five dollars. I wanted to say no, but she insisted. I was like, “Oh. Okay.” And yes, I did want to say no. I know lots of people say, “Oh, she offered me a hundred bucks and I wanted to say no, but she insisted.” Actually there are three reasons I was going to say no. 1) Grandma had already promised me five bucks, 2) I didn’t need it (my dad gave me a hundred dollars for the trip and I STILL haven’t spent it. I will though…I will…once someone lets me), and 3) It’s just the nice thing to do. So I ended up making ten bucks.

The rest of the day was spent sitting on my bed on my computer. For some reason, I forgot to post stuff. So here I am, on Thursday, trying to remember what happened.

Let’s see…the fifth day…it was a Friday…I don’t remember what happened. I have been busy and unable to post. Sorry. Oh yes! I was picked up today by my grandparents. We went to my Auntie Jo and Uncle Luther’s house and had a solar dinner! That means dinner that was solar cooked. In solar ovens. In the sun. Yeah. It was good!

Then grandma, grandpa, and I went to the park and heard a band play at the band shell. I forgot what they were called…they were good though. It was very…jazzy. All instrumental. Afterward we got ice cream. Both grandma and I got cookies and cream. We ordered smalls and when we got them the ice cream was about the size of a soft ball. I was like, “If this is a small, I would like to see what the large looks like.”

Today was the fourth day in Minnesota, the day we got our parts for the show. To be honest, I was extremely disappointed. Our show is “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and tell me if you’ve ever heard of this character: Shermy. Now who the heck is that? I’ve certainly never heard of her. She’s supposedly some neighbor of Charlie Brown. YEAH RIGHT. I mean, I NAILED the audition. I was one of, like, three people who memorized the entire monologue and I sang perfectly well. And yet, the people who forgot half their monologue got cast as Sally or Lucy or someone. Me? We’ve covered half the script and I have had one short line and two appearances. I’d even go for the non-talking “Little Red-Haired Girl” Charlie Brown likes. At least she gets more stage time.

All my friends got good parts. Anthony was cast as Schroeder and Jack as Linus. I think that’s awesome. They, too, did good in the audition and got the parts they deserved. The sad thing is about this show…there’s about twenty-three kids and the show is written for six characters. So the main characters have two or three people assigned and the lesser characters that the counselors put in are assigned one. I guess that’s the only good thing about the part I got. I’m unique.

On to happier subjects that have something to do with good civil rights. While Jack was at baseball practice, Anthony and I watched Blades of Glory. It. Was. Freaking. Hilarious!!! I almost wet my pants, I was laughing so hard. It had Will Ferrell (spelling?) and um…that guy from Napoleon Dynamite in it. So I knew it was probably going to be pretty funny. And it was!! Yeah…funny.

What else…what else…hm…I think that’s about it for today.

Today was the third day in Minnesota.

During the dance part of camp we learned choreography to a new song. We’re doing “The Baseball Game” as part of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and we were learning the moves to that. And oh my god that song is FAST. Seriously. There’s a lot of jazz squares in it and I’m cool with that because I MASTERED those in NCTC back in SF. But then there’s a lot of jumping too and I don’t like to jump much…But it was fun and the choreography is interesting.

We learned a new song called “Happiness”. It’s kind of funny. The first line is “Happiness…is…finding a pencil, pizza with sausage, telling the time.” There’s a lot of funny stuff.

We played another game today. It was called…uh…I forgot…But the person in the middle would point at someone and say something. Either “Elvis”, “Jello”, or “Charlie’s Angels” and that person in the middle would either play a pretend guitar, wiggle like jello, or hold a pretend gun above his or her head. The two on the either side would either bow down, pretend to be a bowl, or lean inward with pretend guns. It was pretty funny. It would go really fast and it got hard.

At lunch we learned a new game too. John, the “lunch dude”, taught it to us. It was all the boys, me, and two other girls. We invited some other girls to play but they were more interested in memorizing their monologues. Oh well, we’d thought, more fun for us. The game we learned was called Kung Fu Rock, Paper, Scissors. It is HILARIOUS! We stand in a circle with one person in the middle. That person is the challenger. And it’s not just with your hand. You hold your fists to the side of you (like you’re gripping the joysticks in a plane) for rock, hold your arms in an X in front of you for scissors, and hold your open palms forward for paper. For all of them you use “unnecessary noises” as Nigahiga puts it in How to be Ninja. First the challenger challenges someone in the circle. They stare down each other and then try to anticipate when the person will move. There’s no “Rock…Paper…SCISSORS!” or “Ro…sham…BO!” or anything. It’s like a surprise! When the challenger loses, he or she just moves on to another person. If they tie, the challenger and the challengee change places and the challengee becomes the challenger. If the challenger wins, the challengee has to perform a dramatic cheap kung fu movie death. It’s really funny.

Today was the auditions for our parts. We said our monologues then sang the songs then danced. I have to say I didn’t do so well with the dancing, but I performed my monologue PERFECTLY and sang pretty well. I think I did pretty well. I hope I get cast as Lucy…

Anthony, Jack, and I got picked up by Aunty Charleen at 3 so Jack could go to his EMT appointment. He had to get this mucus gland or whatever removed from the inside of his lip. The doctor said he had a choice. He could leave it, but it would never go away. Unless he bit it off one day, but other than that it would never go away. He could come back another day to be uh…what do you call it? Be put under something so he was unconscious when they removed it. Or he could just get his lip numbed so they could remove it. He chose the last one. We got to watch while it was removed and it was pretty gruesome. There was blood EVERYWHERE. When the nurse occasionally had to change the cloth that was collecting the blood, you could see the blood running down his chin. Only a little. The cloth or whatever caught most of it. Then they had to stitch it up and now it’s a light blue-ish gray color.

We finished Braveheart today. Oh my god, that is one looooong freaking movie. It was almost three hours!! But I have to say it was one of the saddest movies I’ve seen in a long time. I didn’t cry, but I almost did. Sure, I felt sad for William Wallace, but it was those poor horses I was most concerned about. Those cruel humans ride them into battle and they get stabbed or hit or crushed by those things on chains and they don’t even know what’s going on! The only movie I cried in (besides Bridge to Terebithia) was Black Beauty. I’m very sensitive towards the deaths of horses. *cries*. Anyway…jeez there were a lot of a-holes in that movie. Those nobles were among the worst! Oh my god I wanted to just….argh! Such jerks! And that King Edward. Probably the worst of them all. I don’t know how those people could live with themselves. There was a part in the movie after a long and gory battle that the Scots lost, William Wallace stole a horse from an English dude and rode off after the king. Jack said in real life he was probably just running away from the battle. I think I agree with him. Movies always glorify people. He was probably just as much a jerk as the rest of them. But it was a good movie. According to Anthony, Jack, and Uncle Geoff, we’re going to watch Patriot next.

Yeah, yeah, today is actually the THIRD day here, but I missed posting yesterday. I’ll explain why.

Anyway, yesterday was pretty cool too. We did pretty much the same thing in the dance part, just improving what we’d learned already. And as usual, it was pretty tough. There’s this stretch where we hold our arms straight out in front and legs straight out in back and lift, keeping only your torso on the ground. It’s harder than it sounds. By ten minutes into the class my friends and I were breathing heavy and sweating. It was pretty hard work. And then we go into the real dancing. The music is pretty fast and the choreography is quick, but most of the other people seem to be getting it. I think it’s just because I’m not really a dancer and I’m not practiced. I bet if I practiced harder or had more of a history of dancing it would be easier.

The singing was fun. We did more of what we knew already and for the second day I have to say we weren’t bad. Um…not much more to say about this. All we did the next hour was practice what we knew…

We played more acting games in the third hour. We played a game called Taxi where there are four seats and a driver and one person takes on a habit or emotion (like itching or crying or something) and call the cab and get in. The habit or emotion is contagious and everyone else in the taxi starts doing what the other person was doing. One girl was sobbing uncontrolably and the taxi driver started sobbing as soon as she got in and said (while sobbing) “Where to?” and the girl said (while sobbing) “the cemetary.” The driver sobbed, “Why? Who died?” The girl sobbed, “My dog!” The driver sobbed, “No! Your dog died?” And it was pretty funny.

Lunch was cool too. Not much happened though. We played this game kind of like Sharks and Minnows. It was fun. It was mostly boys playing, with about four girls. Which was kind of sad. The other girls were having their own fun though. Playing with each other. Anyway, all of us were running around the lawn either with bare feet or in our socks. The grass wasn’t wet, but by the end of the lunch period my socks had grass stains.

Then we went back to the theater room and learned two more songs: “My Blanket and Me” and “Snoopy”, both with the Peanuts theme (well, duh, that’s what our play’s about!). Everyone loved both of them. “My Blanket and Me” is really cute. And I feel like “Snoopy” is almost talking about me. It describes me almost perfectly. It goes: “Pleasant day…pretty sky…life goes on…here I lie. Not bad. Not bad at all. Cozy home…board and bread…sturdy roof…beneath my head. Not bad. Not bad at all.”

Grandma Helga picked me up today, which explains why I didn’t post yesterday. I had forgotten my laptop at Anthony and Jack’s house…sadly. It was okay though because there was plenty to do. Grandma and I got ice cream on the way to Aunty Jo and Uncle Luther’s house. I think by the time I get back to San Francisco I’m going to be fat and spoiled. Not that I’m complaining. I like my life here. All…relaxation…aaaahhhhh…..Anyway. We had dinner of CHICKEN!!!! It was goooood. After that we tried to watch a movie on Netflix Instant Movie but it was doing the same thing that happened when we tried to watch Dr. Doolittle back in SF. So we just looked at pictures. That was cool too. Even if we did start a movie, we wouldn’t have been able to finish it. It was getting late. So much to do…so much to do…

Well, as some of you know, I just left for Minnesota yesterday morning to spend three weeks with my aunt, uncle, cousins, and their swimming pool. It took a looooong time to get here. The plane trip was okay, though, actually. I hoped I wouldn’t be sitting next to some disgusting or loud or weird person and I actually lucked out. I was sitting next to two guys (but I got the window seat!). And no, it’s not because they’re GUYS I thought I’d lucked out. That’s just gross. I’m not old enough for those thoughts. They seemed nice and they didn’t talk and laugh really loud like a lot of really annoying boys I know. In fact, after we got our plane trip snacks (that were for sale for $3) one offered me a cookie, so I returned the favor and offered him a red twisty thingee, whatever they’re called (yes, mom, I “purchased” a red twisty thingee on the flight. So THERE! I haven’t finished them though. And no, I didn’t waste three dollars either. The flight attendant, like, gave it to me for free. Just ’cause I’m loveable…and I was all by myself, but that’s beside the point).

Anyway, when I got to the airport in Minnesota, I had to wait for about fifteen minutes for my Uncle Geoff to show up. And no, it wasn’t because he was late. The whole family had been waiting downstairs by the baggage claims and then they were told I was still up by the gate and Geoff had to go through security and get a pass and all that shittakke mushrooms. So yeah, I got here, they picked me and my luggage up and we all went out for lunch at this restaurant relatively close to their house. I had a big bacon and white cheddar burger with fries for lunch. It was gooood.

You see, my cousins (Anthony and Jack) live in this big house in, like, the middle of nowhere. Well, no actually. Not the middle of NOWHERE. It’s like the suburbs, only…more so. It’s so past suburb-y that they have a pool and a tennis court and a huge grassy backyard and a big giant LAKE in their huge grassy backyard.There’s a ton of trees and I once saw a map of their neighborhood on Google earth and I could barely see the houses, there were so many trees. It’s, like…rich people city. Well…not city…

Anyway, the reason I’m really here is to go to this theater camp with Anthony and Jack. Today was the first day. It’s really busy, getting here at about 3 o’clock one day and getting up at seven to go to an all day theater camp that goes till 4. But it was fun.

We started the day first meeting the teachers of course. Then we were told what our production was going to be. It’s called “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”. I don’t know if it’s an actual…like…play or if the teachers just made it up because I’m not a Peanuts fanatic. The problem is…there were a lot more kids that showed up than the teachers expected (twenty two to be exact) and the show is only written for six parts. So more than one person is going to be each part. Some of the girls are okay with getting guy parts, like Charlie Brown and Linus and people, but some of them, like the “fashion queens” and such were horrified to find that they have as much chance of getting a guy part as…well, the guys. But I was okay with it.

The first thing we did was go upstairs and do the dance portion. And oh my god, I never realized dancing was SO HARD. I don’t really dance…actually, I don’t dance AT ALL. I’m not all that flexible and I slouch a lot. Some of the kids there had gotten dancing training and stuff and they were all doing the splits and stuff. It was kind of embarrassing…even though I wasn’t the only one there who couldn’t even touch their toes.

Then we went into the acting part. We didn’t do much acting because it’s only the first day and we’re still getting to know each other. So we did name games. It’s hard to memorize twenty two names, so it was pretty hard. Lots of names…lots of names… Some names were HARD. Like…ones I’d never heard before. Like…there’s this girl named Tamar (if that’s how you spell her name). It kind of reminded me of the Earthsea series. You know…the priestess of the Tombs of Atuan…Tenar…yeah. But there were some hard names out there.

Then we did the singing part. We learned the song “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”. It’s hard because it’s REALLY HIGH. I was squeaking and so I brought it down an octave. Then it was a bit low, but it was better than super duper high. And some of the rhythm was pretty tough, but we got it. The teachers were really helpful.

It seems like the camp kids have already split up into little cliques. They don’t have names or anything like nerds, jocks, preps, emos, or anything. It’s just groups of people who happen to like each other. That’s how we all ate lunch. I, as usual, didn’t really get into any group, and didn’t hang with just one group except for during lunch. It was the “boy’s group”. It seems like all the boys have made friends and stuff, and since my cousins happen to be boys, I decided I’d stick with them for now. It worked too. The boys there are pretty cool. One of the teachers (the “lunch dude”) ate with us today. We sat in the shade on the grass and talked about the new Batman movie, how the Joker died from a drug overdose, other superhero movies, how the Green Lantern is the dumbest superhero ever, how the third Spider-Man movie was terrible beyond words, how Venom wasn’t shown enough in the third Spider-Man movie, how Carnage and Lady Carnage were created, how the old comics were SO much better than the new ones because the old ones actually focused on the story and not how hot all those superhero ladies are, and finally topped it off with a short grape battle and Duck, Duck, Gray duck. And believe it or not, I kept up considerably well with the conversation.

After lunch we split up into two groups. One group stayed downstairs and learned another song, and the other went upstairs to work on monologues. I stayed downstairs and we sang a song. It was REALLY HARD. The rhythm was confusing and the words were too. But I got it in the end. When we went upstairs we took turns saying our monologues (with the scripts of course). Our homework was to memorize whichever monologue we wanted and prepare to perform it on Wednesday, the day we audition for which part we get.

Anthony, Jack, and I were picked up by Grandma Helga and Grandpa Ted, my dad’s parents. On the ride back to Anthony and Jack’s house we talked about decoding the Gnommish on the bottom of the Artemis Fowl books. We also talked about our great-grandparents and other stuff, but that was the general conversation. When we got home we quick changed into our bathing suits and went into the pool first we played “catch” with the torpedoes which was fun. Sometimes we’d miss the torpedo and have to get it from the bottom of the pool, but it was fun. Then we played Marco Polo which was also fun. It was hilarious spraying whoever was it with the hose (which sprayed out ice-cold water) and then laughing at them.

Then we had dinner of hamburgers and corn on the cob. It was gooooood. We had come up with a plan for dinner during lunch. When Jack said “white elephant” we would wait five seconds then start sobbing. Fake sobbing of course, while just shoveling the food into our mouths like we were depressed or something. Uncle Geoff was looking at us like we were nuts.

Then Anthony and I watched Superhero Movie while Jack was at baseball practice. You know those movies that are really funny but terrible? That’s what Superhero Movie was. It was really funny, but it was just horrible. It probably only rated slightly higher than Epic Movie, which is the worst movie of all time. It was funny though. It was making fun of Spider-Man, which wasn’t the greatest movie either. But if I could rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being the worst movie EVER, I would give it a…1.5.

Then Jack came home, and Anthony went to his guitar lessons and Jack and I memorized our monologues and tested each other on it. I’ve memorized the whole thing already!!

We finished the day off with watching Braveheart. For something that was, like, ten years ago, it was pretty good. We only finished half of it though. But it was SO SAD. Oh my god, I felt like crying half the time. So much blood…blood…blood…But it was good. I remember that book I read a while ago, called “Now You See It…”. It’s this fantasy novel that’s really funny that has fairies and witches and stuff. Well, there’s this witch lady that can talk to animals, right? And the dog told her he was named Braveheart and the main character said, “That’s funny. You don’t look like Mel Gibson.” FUNNY.

Anyway…more updates on my trip tomorrow.

We invited my friend Kevin to come play with us at our music night. He plays the drums and PITD is lacking a drummer, so we thought it was awfully convenient. Sadly, he lives 45 minutes away and it would be hard for him to come to our music nights, which are usually during the week because we’re all busy on the weekends. Even sadly-er, none of us had a drum set and Kevin couldn’t bring his so we had to try and put something together. We thought we could use pots and pans and stuff, but we didn’t have the right kinds so we ended up just using a keyboard and turning it to the drums setting. But even thought the drums weren’t real, it was a MAJOR improvement!

We played “Hey, Joe” with the drums and it was ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS!! Kevin claimed he had made a lot of mistakes but I didn’t notice anything. It was incredible!!!