Laura’s place

Well, as usual, the summer just flew by. School starts tomorrow, Monday, August 24. Now I’m going to have to start getting out of bed before noon, do homework, pack lunches, and practice good hygiene, none of which I have been doing for the past two and a half months (except the fun stuff for UC Berkeley, of course). Now that the summer’s over, let’s recap:

My family and I went to the Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival up in Grass Valley and we had a blast. I attended the beginning mandolin classes and dad attended the beginning banjo classes. We camped out under the trees and met a nice family from…uh…Sacramento, I think. We got dirty and stayed up past midnight and got nice and sweaty in the heat. We also saw a lot of great bluegrass acts (as well as some not-so-great ones) and got some CDs. My dad and I also “discovered” for ourselves the hammer dulcimer, which is a very pretty string instrument that has many strings which you hit with a small wooden hammer. We’re in the process of convincing my mom to let us get one. The festival also got mom into the fiddle, which she picked up soon after we came back.

Then Kai and I both went to the Community Music Center music camp. I went for mandolin and he for guitar. We were in the same group, and our instructor was Darren, a classical and latin guitarist. We learned (he on the classical guitar and I on the mandolin) a couple jazz pieces, which was right up Kai’s alley because he just came back from a jazz camp up in Stockton. The songs we learned were “All the Things You Are” and “Green Dolphin Street,” both on which I played lead. I also got a chance to solo, which I don’t do often, because we all took turns soloing. Andrew, a classmate from school, was also there. He was also in our group and played drums. The camp was fun, but short (just a week!).

Then there was the Academic Talent Development Program (ATDP) at University of California, Berkeley, one of the most important events of the summer. It’s like summer school for 4.0 students. I took a semiweekly writing course. My teacher was Ms. Phung, who was both fun and concentrated on the work. She was the kind of teacher that could make work fun…well, usually. We read two books during the course: Peace Like a River by Lief Enger and The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. For Peace Like a River we focused on the writing strategies and styles (for which I am glad because I didn’t like the plot a whole lot), and for The Fellowship of the Ring we focused on plot, brainstorming, and character. We wrote an essay almost every class, and it was tough sometimes because I’m used to just cruising, but it wasn’t so hard I couldn’t do it. It challenged me, and got me thinking on an entirely new level, but it was doable and enjoyable. The other students were also nice and interesting, and a different crowd then what I’m used to, though not as diverse as the crowd at school. They all loved to read and write (of course), and I found I had a lot in common with almost all of them. We all exchanged email addresses and phone numbers at the end of the course, but I doubt I’ll keep in touch with more than one or two of them. I think we had too much in common. It just wasn’t as interesting and “new” to talk with them than with my friends at school.

We didn’t travel a whole lot this summer, but my mom, sister, and I accompanied my aunt Nic to Oregon for the Britt Festivals. Nic was playing bassoon in this festival and needed someone to babysit her five-month-old daughter Leona while she rehearsed. Leona is the most adorable little baby in the world! And I’m not just saying that because she’s my cousin. She’s very advanced for five months, and like all Kuster babies, big and “chunky.” She has rounder cheeks than most babies I’ve seen and almost completely bald still. She can crawl, though! At five months she can move around fast and sleep like a rock. She hardly ever cries and slept the entire six hour drive to Medford, Oregon. We took her on hikes in Oregon. We hiked this one trail through the Britt Gardens, a huge piece of land that belonged to this Britt guy. I think he was a photographer. Lilly really didn’t want to hike, but we dragged her along anyway. I think she began to like it when we saw two deer and their two fawns. However, she slid back into reluctance and tiredness when the deer ran away and we began climbing a steep hill. I was reading The Lord of the Rings at the time, so I bent down and said, “Come on, Mr. Frodo. I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” and I carried her all the way up the hill. After that she was in a better mood, because we started going downhill, and we began counting the black and orange beetles along the trail, including dead ones. We counted forty-one. We also saw these strange trees with peeling bark that looked like sunburned skin. We found out what kind of trees they were, but I forgot.

When we read The Fellowship of the Ring at UC Berkeley, I finished early, and began reading the rest of the series. When I finished that I invited Kai over and we watched all six director’s cuts of the Lord of the Rings movies. Altogether, it was supposed to be seventeen hours, exactly. Kai slept over the night before because we planned on starting at 4:30 in the morning so we could be done by 10 at night. But unfortunately, the alarm I set didn’t go off for some reason and we both woke up at about 7:00. But it worked out because Netflix.com screwed up and gave us “The Fellowship of the Ring: disk one” instead of “The Two Towers: disk one,” so we were without the first half of “The Two Towers,” so it instead took us twelve hours. But it was unfortunate we couldn’t watch the first half of “The Two Towers.” Oh well. We’ve both seen the non-director’s cut of the movies a trillion and one times and we know the story quite well.

My dad’s friend Peter from New York also came to visit briefly. We all (minus my sister) went to see “District 9,” the new sci-fi movie about aliens. It was SO GOOD. It was bloody and gory and thoroughly disgusting, but incredibly real, dramatic, and mindblowing. It’s about 10:00 pm, and there’s school tomorrow, so I have to wrap it up. I’ll have a full discription of what I thought of the movie later.
Peein’ in the Dark also got a start on recording our first album. It’s a Halloween album that was first proposed by my dad’s friend who we are performing with. The album will probably be called “Peein’ in the Dark and Don ‘of the Dead’ Shearer.” We plan to be performing in local venues this October.
Other than that, my summer was spent lying around making and watching youtube videos, reading fan fiction on my computer, playing my guitar and mandolin, and reading.

That was my summer. The most exciting day of school, besides the last, is the first. Because you find out who is in your class and who your teachers are and what your schedule is. I’m excited, but also a little disappointed summer was over so fast.

By the way, I may add photos of our trips once I get them from my mom.