A brief summary of my life

I decided I would tell you all a little bit about my life after talking to Nora and realizing she had no idea what Culver was.

School: I am taking 4.5 class this semester.

1) chant - love it, we get to chant a lot and the teacher is a crazy pants. He thinks we should be fluent in Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, Hebrew, etc. (http://music.nd.edu/faculty-and-staff/peter-jeffery/)

2) polyphony - love it, we get to sing polyphony a lot and the teacher is a crazy pants. He loves to discuss Renaissance polyphony conspiracies and he has a great sense of humor. And he is tall. (http://music.nd.edu/faculty-and-staff/alexander-blachly/)

3) voice lessons - love it, I don't know if you guys knew but I had serious voice issues last semester. I was sick a ton and my voice never seemed just right. It's getting a lot of better and I'm actually starting to enjoy singing again. My voice teacher is adorable. I have a big crush on him, even though he has a boyfriend. There's a lot of hands-on action in my lesson. It's exciting. I'm doing a recital on April 27th at 7 pm, I think it will be pretty good and you should all come! (http://www.stephenlancaster.net/Stephen_Lancaster/Home.html)

4) organ lessons - love it, I'm taking lessons with a 2nd year organ student Laura. She's a good friend and a great teacher.

5) master singers and recital choirs - tons of singing for conducting students who have to have conducting recitals. I have two recitals to sing in this weekend!

Placements: what enables me to pay for my housing/food/Cosmo/church major supplies

1) I provide the music for an 8 am Mass Monday-Friday. I have a different priest everyday and I love them all! And I have a pretty steady group of congregants and I've become friends with several of them. Good gig, but don't love waking up early every day.

2) I'm a music intern at the Culver Military Academy. This is a boarding military school (high schoolers) and I work with the singers and instrumentalists and do music for their Mass with them every Sunday (planning music, singing, directing, accompanying some of the time). It's interesting. They're all in uniforms and they process in with 4 huge flags and march. It's the most bizarre Mass ever. But I've made their music sooooo much better. I don't love this because I have to drive an hour to get their for a weekly rehearsal and Mass, but it could be a lot worse. And the kids are nice.

So that is what I spend most of my time doing. I have a lot more free time this semester than I did last semester. Mostly because I'm being smarter about the way I use my time. Oh! I also babysit 3 days a week. 10 year old twins: Kieran and Kate. They are really smart, sweet kids and I help them with their math homework and tell them funny jokes. And their house has awesome snack food!

Family: a few updates

1) Sarah is engaged and will be married in September of this year. I'm the maid of honor. His name is John and he is a good guy. Too soon in my opinion, but I think they will be very happy together for a very long time. Hopefully until one of them dies. And hopefully that won't be soon.

2) My dad lost his job. :( Lowes downsized and fired 1700 managers. Too bad they don't realize that my dad is better than 250% of the guys they could've fired. Please pray for him. He has many mouths to feed.

3) I got to go home 2 weekends ago and everyone seems happy and healthy and they're still a big happy family!

So, that is enough for now. I am mostly happy with life and feel incredibly blessed, though things aren't perfect. I do feel like I'm missing something, though. It's probably my MOMS. And maybe a DAD to call my own. :( But hopefully I will see some MOMS this weekend and next one too! Which puts a huge smile on my face. :)