End of the First Semester

Well I’m sitting in the Syracuse Airport (typing in Word because the internet connection is having issues this morning) waiting for my flight out of here! I am flying to North Carolina to visit Dad and Caleb and attend Dad’s retirement ceremony in a week. Next Saturday, Caleb and I will be flying back to San Francisco in order to spend time with Mom. In early January I will be traveling down to Santa Barbara to attend the first couple rehearsals of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and then I fly back to Syracuse early in order to start working on the first show of the semester, Two Trains Running. Have I mentioned that I am going to be attached to 3 different shows next semester? Yes, you read that right. THREE SHOWS.  I will be the stage management intern for Two Trains Running, a costume dresser for Top Girls, and a follow spot operator for Violet. On top of that I have 19 credits and a job. I am going to be so busy next semester!

But yay my first semester at Syracuse is done! The last couple weeks have been a mixture of up and downs. The definite highlight was being able to go backstage and have a tour of the set of the touring company of WICKED!!!! One of the supporting leads is a SU Drama alum and so he gave me and a couple of my friends a tour of the set after the show. It was by far one of the coolest things I have ever done! The first thing we saw when we walked inside was the Oz head, and immediately I was overwhelmed with emotion and knew I was going to be having some of the best moments of my life. Then I realized that we were standing on the stage. The techie inside of me immediately got excited so I started looking everywhere, starting to piece together how they did all of the crazy things that happen in the show. The actor explained how some of the key moments in the show are done and explained how the stage is set up so that it is easy for understudies and new actors to be able to step into roles without too many problems. He showed us where all the props and costumes are (there is a dress in the show that is literally onstage for only 20 seconds and it cost $15,000!) and then spent 20 or so minutes just answering our questions and talking about what it is like to be on tour with such a well known show. We, of course, had to ask him which part of his education at SU was most beneficial to him (where we found out he had 2 of the teachers I had this past semester—weird to think about because he graduated 25 years ago) and if he had any advice on making it in this crazy business. I was so thankful that he was willing to take the time to talk to us and renew our faith and hopes that we will make it. He ended the tour by saying that we could find him on Facebook and that if he was ever involved in a show we wanted to work on, he would put in a good word for us! After the tour I was completely in shock that we had just that and I started crying (good crying of course) because it was exactly what I needed. Talking to someone who had been me 25 years earlier and is now touring with one of my favorite shows made all my dreams that much more real. It IS possible and I am determined to be successful in this business. It will happen for me. 

I also had my finals--which I don't even really consider them to be finals. I had a final project for theatre design, a paper for intro, and actual tests in stage management and theatre crafts. I feel pretty confident about all of them!

Anyway-it's time to board now! I'll resume writing when I return to Syracuse in January! <3

The Past 3 Weeks

Sorry everyone for the more and more delayed postings. As the semester is winding down, I'm finding myself with less and less free time. November has been a crazy month! After my last post, I had a week where I just spent my time trying to get caught up on all of the school work I had put off. Then Nov. 8-12 Mom and David were here in Syracuse visiting me. It was the little piece of home I needed to get me through until Thanksgiving break! I showed them around the city and we just hung out. It was relaxing and very much needed. Then they went back to Dublin and I had 3 days of school before I left for my whirlwind Thanksgiving trip. I left the Thursday before Thanksgiving and flew into Los Angeles, where I stayed with my best friend from high school, Tori, for a night. On Friday she and I did a little bit of sightseeing then I took the train up to Santa Barbara. I had dinner with my old roommate, and then stayed with my friend Katie until Monday morning. While I was there I got caught up with a lot of my friends and even got a small winter job (more on that later)! Monday morning I took the train up to the Bay Area where my friend Jessica picked me up and brought me to the house. Mom didn't know I was coming home for the holiday so when I walked through the door she was insanely shocked! I was equally shocked to see a new dog in the house (again-more on that later). On Tuesday evening I went to San Francisco with my friend Sonia to see my friend Dan perform in a show. After the show, Sonia and I met up with our friend Claire and we all went back to Dublin. Wednesday morning the whole gang got together for breakfast. A couple of the girls had appointments they had to go to so we made plans to go to the new outlet mall later that day (where I got 2 new shirts). Thursday was Thanksgiving. Friday morning I took Bart to SFO to catch a plane to Boston where I stayed with my friend Stephen and his family (it was A LOT cheaper to fly into Boston than Syracuse) and on Saturday he and I drove back to school WHERE IT WAS SNOWING! Me and my friends Sam and Nikole immediately played in the snow and that's what we did when we weren't doing homework on Sunday as well. Today was back to the normal school schedule and now I'm just focusing on not getting too overwhelmed with school work.

By the way, traveling nowadays sucks. There is no other way to put it. My flight to LA was cancelled as I was arriving at the airport because part of the engine was broken. They tried to make me wait for a flight at 6am on Friday but I knew there had to be a plane going to LA later in the day and they put me on that. Then my train from LA to Santa Barbara was an hour late. Then my luggage got lost going to Boston! Luckily I was able to get it back over the weekend, but it was still not ideal to not have any of my own clothes or toiletries when staying at someone else's house. Luckily Stephen's family were more than willing to lend me clothes and give me a new toothbrush.

Winter job: I was asked to be the dramaturg for a show called "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" (which is one of the funniest musicals I know of)! For those of you who don't know what a dramaturg is, they are responsible for doing all the research of a show and answering any questions about the facts/pronunciations/meanings of words in a show that actors may have. I think it will be a fun winter project for me since I won't be home long enough to have a real normal job.

New Puppy: Mom and the family adopted a new puppy named Genevieve. We call her Jenny for short. She looks like a large chiuaua and is one of the cutest things on the planet!

Anyway don't expect another post from me until the end of the semester. I know I won't have time to write! See you during winter break!

Syracuse Week 10

Wow...I can't believe I have already been in school for 10 weeks. This semester is absolutely flying by! I mean in 10 days I have to register for classes for NEXT semester. I can tell my time here is going to be over before I know it. After that, who knows what I'm going to do next? I essentially have 2 options post-undergrad school. I can continue on and get a Masters degree or I can enter the workforce.  I think I'm going to end up entering the workforce. I feel like the education, training and connections I will be receiving here at SU will set me up nicely (not to mention the close-knit family of other SU alums aka the Orange Mafia).

The biggest news at the moment is that I'm finally done with shows for the semester (or at least I'm not in rehearsal anymore!). This is the first time this has happened this semester since the 2nd day of school. I've essentially spent 10 weeks in rehearsal or performances. That is the LONGEST times I've spent consecutively working on shows (the longest before this has been right around 8 weeks). I'm still technically on a show (the children's tour of "One Thousand Cranes") but the only way I would still be working on that is if the stage manager is unable to go out on tour one morning. In fact, let me give you an update on the two shows.

One Thousand Cranes: we are in performances now, which means every Tuesday and Thursday the cast and stage manager wake up early and go to whichever elementary or middle school is on the list for the day, set up the set, perform, take the set down, and drive back to SU. I haven't been able to go with them each morning as I have class at 10am on those days and I can't miss class that many times. My professor has said she will excuse me up to 3 times for the show in case of emergencies or opening and closing shows. And it's good she said that because the stage manager got sick. Last Wednesday she sent an email to the head of the SM program saying she wasn't feeling well and might not be able to go on tour the next morning, meaning I would have to go instead (which panicked me as it would be I would have to drive a 12 passenger van, and set up/control sound equipment I've never worked with before). Luckily she was feeling well enough to go the next morning, but there is a chance she will take a turn for the worse this week and I might have to go on tour for her. We are all sincerely hoping this will not be the case, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Seascape with Sharks and Dancer: we closed last night! Normally I would be sad that a show is over, but there was just so much stress associated with this particular show that I was excited for it to close. This past weekend was absolute chaos during the performances and I was kept on my toes (which is always exciting for an ASM). We had 3 performances and there was only 1 where we didn't have a  fairly major problem arise during the course of the performance. During our Friday night performance, the sound system stopped working (which we were able to fix after completely rebooting the system 30 seconds before the actors got onstage). We thought we were in the clear, and then the 2nd scene gave us a fun challenge. The actors eat an apple through the course of the 2nd scene (and make a lot of reference to the apple in their lines). Well towards the beginning of the scene, the apple was dropped and rolled OFF THE STAGE. The actress accidentally mentioned the apple after it had rolled off, forcing the actor to improvise a line about going into the kitchen to see if he could find another one. Well the "kitchen" is the room where I was stationed throughout the show and we didn't keep our apples in there so I didn't have one to give him. I ended up having to make up a line for him to say when he went back onstage! He repeated my line word for word and we were able to get through the rest of that performance without a problem. My stage manager thanked me at least 20 times for thinking fast on my feet and giving the actor something to say when he went back onstage. That was fun because I was forced to think fast on my feet and problem-solve in the moment. Then we had 2 shows yesterday. The first one we did had no problems arise so we thought we were going to be in the clear for the rest of the run. Oh boy were we wrong. During the last show (last night) our actress' contact lens fell out of her eye DURING the show. She told me about it when she came offstage for a costume change so I had to find it in the near dark during the next scene change. Luckily I was able to find it, soak it in water and give it back to the actress in order for her to perform the last half of the show with full vision (she was nearly blind without it). I've never encountered that problem before so needless to say, I was thinking fast on my feet, trying to figure out how/when I could get the contact lens back to the actress. It all worked out. After the show we took apart the set and now the show is officially done. Time for me to breathe.

I have about 4 weeks of classes left this semester and I don't think they are going to get any more interesting than they are right now, which is a shame. There is really only 1 class that I find semi-interesting anymore and that's because we are actually doing something in that class other than sitting and listening to the professor lecture at us for 80-110 minutes (depending on the class). Next semester promises to be a little more interesting. I will be taking 7 classes for a total of 19 credits. I'm hoping to take:
Theatre Lab
Intro the Theatre 2
Intro to Drafting
Intro to Design 2
Intro to Theatre Crafts 2
Performance Techniques
Projects in Touring: Communication

Like I said, those classes will probably be more interesting than the ones I'm in now.

And unfortunately, I must now continue on with my day and do homework and chores. Talk to you later!!!

HURRICANE SANDY and the Month of October

Hello everyone! I finally have time to write because my school got shut down until Wednesday due to Hurricane Sandy. She is supposed to make her way through Central New York so the city/university isn't taking any chances. I have only been home for about 7 hours and I am already bored. We aren't allowed to leave our building unless we are getting food from the dining center near the dorm. So I've been hanging out with my friends Sam and Nikole in their room. It's going to be a movie and hot chocolate kind of night, unless we lose power. In that case, we are screwed.

Anyways I should probably update you on everything that has happened this past month. The first weekend, Dad and Caleb came to visit for family weekend. It was really nice to have some family around for a few days. I showed them around the campus and city and we just spent time together.

The biggest event that has been happening this month is my work on my 2nd show of the semester, called "Seascape with Sharks and Dancer." It is a play that is really hard to describe but it is best described as a love story between two people who don't seem to be right for each other, but they make it work. It was a very emotional piece to be a part of but I am glad I got to work on it. We just had our opening weekend. It went very well. We have four more shows and then I will be done with shows for the semester! As much as I love theatre, I need a break from it. I am surviving on very little sleep and I can tell it is affecting me. But overall I am thrilled with the two shows I've been able to work on this semester.

School itself has been boring still. The only semi interesting class right now is my intro to design class because we are designing a show so that we can have an idea of what type of thought process goes into it. Granted, the play the professor chose is one that I despise completely, but it's fun to be able to do something other than just sit and listen to lectures. My other classes are still in lecture mode and I am completely over it. In my play analysis class I had to perform a couple weeks ago. I was Sister Aloyisius from Doubt (and if any of you haven't seen the movie or read the play--I would highly suggest it!). I am glad that is over.

The semester feels like it is winding down for me. Honestly, I knew just getting through shows was going to be the hardest part. Now I'll actually have time to do normal things on a daily basis like eating, sleeping and doing homework before 2am. Next semester should be interesting though. I will be taking 19 credits, and all but 2 of the classes seem to be interesting. I will finally be able to start taking non-freshmen level courses, which will help as well. I hate being lumped with the freshmen.

Anyways I need to charge my computer before the power goes out! Keep us safe in your prayers and I'll let you know once the storm is over.

Syracuse Week 6-8 Part 1

Hi Everyone!

I'm still alive. I promise! I have been incredibly busy working on my show "Seascape with Sharks and Dancer" and by the time I get home at night I just fall asleep. This weekend I'll be able to write and catch you up on what's been going on in 'Cuse the past 3 weeks :)

Below is a sneak peek of one of the things that has happened...stay tuned!

Syracuse Week 5

Well this week has been an interesting mix of completely boring to fun I couldn't even imagine having.

It has been raining off and on all week, which was fun the first few days but now I'm at the point where the weather just needs to decide if it is going to be nice or rainy out so that I don't have to try to dress for a 20 degree weather change in one day.

Nothing too exhilarating happened in class this week. We are sorta getting ready for our midterms that are coming up in the next few weeks but all my professors are telling us not to stress about them. So I'm taking their advice and not stressing. Honestly I wasn't too concerned anyways since the material has pretty much all been review for me. 

Last night was one of the funnest nights I've had here in Syracuse. My friends Sam and Nikole and I all wanted to go out and have a girls night so we got on the bus and went to the mall for dinner and a movie. Our originally chosen restaurant (The Melting Pot-a fondue place) was booked for the night so we instead decided to go to a Hibachi place. The food tasted AMAZING! It was so nice to eat real meat and vegetables and not the junk they serve in the dining halls!

After dinner we went to go to "Pitch Perfect"-a movie about acapella groups on a college campus. The movie itself was just okay but watching my friends' reactions to it was highly entertaining. When the movie was about 20 minutes away from ending, we realized that we might not make the last bus going back to SU and none of our friends would be able to pick us up. So as soon as the movie was over, we started SPRINTING to the bus stop, which was 2 levels below us and on the other side of the mall. Needless to say we were getting some very strange looks from people as they saw 3 girls sprinting through the mall screaming about catching the bus. One of my friends ended up running head-on into a door which almost made us miss the bus because we were laughing so hard. But luckily we did make the bus (with about 1 minute to spare) and ended up creating a night that the 3 of us will never ever forget!

Well I'm off to do laundry and go see the first SU Drama show of the year "Merrily We Roll Along". After that I need to meet with my play analysis group to rehearse a scene from "Doubt" (I was cast as the main character). Next weekend I may not get a chance to write as it will be family weekend and Dad/Caleb will be visiting but I will do my best!

Syracuse Weeks 3 and 4

Hi Everyone! SO so sorry for not writing for a couple weeks. I have been in tech rehearsals for my show and literally have not had time to do anything that wasn't show related. That being said, I have had a mini break this week and on Friday I start working on my next show "Seascape" which will keep me busy until the beginning of November.

School is finally starting to get interesting...a bit. My intro to theatre class is probably my favorite so far because it is the only real class introducing materials and plays I haven't read before (or at least ones I'm actually interested in). We just finished reading a play called "Master Harold and the boys" which is about what it's like to live in South Africa as a white person while being friends with the native blacks. And tomorrow we are discussing a play called "Top Girls" which is all about what it means for women to be successful. They are very interesting reads and provide fun debates in class :)

In my play analysis class, we have read "Enemy of the People" and "Equus". Neither of those plays sparked my interest all that much but next week we are reading "Doubt" (which I have read before and absolutely loved!) I don't have all that much to report in any of the other classes.

We had our first show of "A Thousand Cranes" yesterday morning.We performed it twice (first time was for 6th graders and the second show was for 4th/5th graders). For those of you who don't know the story of "A Thousand Cranes", it is a true story about a Japanese girl named Sadako who gets Leukemia from the radiation poisoning of the Hiroshima bomb in WWII. She started to fold oragami paper cranes in the hope to reach 1000 as it is Japanese legend that folding a thousand will grant a person a wish. Sadako sadly dies before she is able to fold 1000. Her friends and classmates finish folding her cranes and now she is recognized as a symbol for peace and has monuments in Japan and Washington D.C. I was only there for the first show since I had to get to class, but my stage manager told me that during the second show, there was a blind boy and after the show his teacher asked if he could hold the props and oragami cranes to "see" what everyone was talking about during the show. When he held the paper cranes, his face lit up and everyone was so touched they started crying. There was also a girl in the audience who placed cranes at the monument in DC for her grandfather who fought in WWII and another student was a leukemia survivor.

It is for reasons like the above that I absolutely love theatre. I love how a simple show can affect and touch the lives of so many people with drastically different backgrounds. A show can unite an audience in a way that isn't possible in sports or seeing movies. Theatre brings to life REAL human emotions and allows the audience to connect to the characters they are seeing onstage. It allows us to know that there are people like us out there and that our problems are problems that everyone has. We can know there is always someone who will listen to us. It is the joy of bringing together a crowd of students for 30 minutes to teach them about peace. THAT is what makes me get up in the morning and deal with the long hours and all the other stress that comes with the job.

Hopefully there will be more to write this weekend. However I desperately need to go to sleep! Thanks for reading!

This is the "A Thousand Cranes" cast with the director and stage manager. Left to right: Sammy  (Father/Actor 1), Erin (Mother/Grandmother), Lauren (Director), Tyler (Kenji-Sadako's best friend), Betty (Sadako), and Kate (Stage Manager).

Syracuse Week 2

So as I sit here a little after noon on Sunday, extremely procrastinating, I figure now is as good a time as any to write the weekly blog!

This week honestly has been a little boring. I haven't done anything other than go to class, go to work, go to rehearsal, or do homework back at the dorm. Honestly I don't have time to do much else!

I am really loving my time here at Syracuse. Now that I finally have a grasp on my classes and how much work each of them requires, I am able to manage my time a bit better. Most of my homework is just reading plays and analyzing them...which I thoroughly enjoy when I'm not attempting to do it at 1am. My weekends are consequently on reserve for homework I can't finish during the week. Sounds not fun, right?

That's really all I can think of right now. Like I said, boring week. Time to go do my reading (My Fair Lady and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof)!


Below is a link to a website my classmates and I started of all the quotes our Intro to Theatre professor says in class. It's quite entertaining to hear some of this at 10 in the morning :P

Things Geri Says

Hopefully this upcoming week will bring some more exciting events to write about!

Syracuse Week 1

HOLY CRAP I LOVE THIS PLACE! No but seriously, I love it here at SU. All of my doubts and hesitations have completely been erased this past week. I have now been to all of my classes (even though my schedule might be changing---I'll explain later). By far my favorite teacher/class is Geri's intro to theatre class. On the second day of class she had all the stage managers and designers stand up in class and then told the performance majors that they had better be nice to and get to know us because unlike the performers, we aren't a dime a dozen and will probably get work right out of school and more than likely get the performers their first job. GLORIOUS MOMENT. All of the tech people were very happy she did that! None of the other classes are that interesting. Hopefully that'll change soon.

Quick explanation as to why my schedule might change--after sitting through my classes, I realized that I have taken these exact classes before at SBCC. They just didn't count them as transferrable classes because they had different NAMES. I'm going to talk to my advisor on Tuesday and explain I've taken these classes and hopefully I can take a class I haven't already taken.

In addition to my 16 credit course load, I'm also going to be assistant stage managing 2 shows this semester (I'm in rehearsal for "One Thousand Cranes" already and will be doing "Seascape" a week after I finish with Cranes). I was talking to my stage manager and she said nobody ever gets to ASM two mainstage shows in one semester so I guess I'm extra special :) I was also elected the Stage Manager Representative for the newest group of SMs. That doesn't mean anything for me this semester, but next semester myself and the other freshmen reps will be in charge of writing the farewell skit to the seniors. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Oh and I got a job too! It's only a couple hours a week, but it's a work-study position in the production office at Syracuse Stage. Basically, it's wonderful because it establishes connections for me, not to mention that my job, classes and rehearsal space are all on the same block of Syracuse. So this means I'm pretty much going to live at Syracuse Stage...and I'm okay with that :P

That's a quick summary of this week. I'm going to love it here! Ta-ta for now!

(The above building is Crouse Hall---the main building for the College of Visual and Performing Arts. However my friend and I have named it Hogwarts.)

Gearing Up for School

Wow...I finally have a minute to sit down and rest! The last few days have been completely busy and crazy and fun!

On Thursday I officially had my drama department convocation and met the rest of the incoming drama students. Can I just say how awesome the rest of my classmates are? We are all from such different backgrounds it has been fun talking to everyone and discovering what their backstories are (we have a musical theatre major from SINGAPORE).

After we met everyone, the senior representatives took all 65 new students into one of the upstairs rehearsal rooms where we started rehearsing our skit for the welcome picnic for the drama students. It involved learning the lyrics and choreography to parodies of 6 different songs and then performing them for the returning sophomores, juniors and seniors in the department. It was a lot of sweat, grumbling, and repeated attempts to keep the attention of 65 excited students but it turned out really well! The returning students LOVED us and cheered wildly after we finished the skit!

Following our performances, we had to hold up index cards that had been given to us prior to the performance that had our names on 1 side and an address on the other side. The address on our card was the address of our Big (just like in the Greek system---we were all considered Littles and our Bigs were watching us). Then a mob of 200 excited returning drama students literally rushed us running around trying to find the index card that had their address on it, and consequentially, their little. My Big Bridget found me right away and lots of jumping and cheering ensued. After everyone had found their Big and Little, the Littles were whisked away to their Big's homes, where they fed us, decorated our white t-shirts, and dressed us for the opening night Drama Party (aka Opening Marathon). I was also informed at that point I had another Big named Alex. They are AMAZING! I am already super close to them and we spent all night talking and getting to know each other!

Today has been a day to recover from all the orientation events and to prep for classes starting tomorrow. Hopefully classes will be fine! My agenda for this week is as follows:

Monday: Intro to Theatre Design and another Orientation Event

Tuesday: Intro to Theatre, Intro to Theatre Crafts, and Intro to Play Analysis

Wednesday: Intro to Stage Management, Intro to Theatre Design, and Theatre Lab

Thursday: Intro to Theatre, Intro to Theatre Crafts, Intro to Play Analysis, and an Orientation Event

Friday: Orientation Events all day

Saturday: Football game against Northwestern

Feel free to let me know if you would like my school address or anything else!

Much Love from Syracuse!

Weekend in NYC/Orientation to SU

I'M FINALLY IN NEW YORK!!! Even now it is hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that it has actually happened.

The first few days I actually got to spend in New York City with my grandpa, godmother, and great-grandmother. It was absolutely AMAZING! It was great getting to spend some time with family members that I haven't seen in awhile and explore a city I've always wanted to go to! While we were there (Saturday night-Tuesday morning) I got to see/explore the following things:

Statue of Liberty (from the plane---even more beautiful from above!)
Times Square (our hotel was in Times Square so I spent a lot of time there)
St. Patrick's Cathedral (we attended Mass there on Sunday morning)
Rockefeller Center (where we met some of Grandpa's friends for lunch)
Broadway Show 1 (Jersey Boys---amazing!)
Central Park (via horse drawn carriage)
5th Ave
Plaza Hotel
Broadway Show 2 (Mamma Mia---FINALLY!)
Penn Station (where we caught the Amtrak train that took me to Syracuse and the family back home)

So we left NYC on Tuesday and after an hour delay, I arrived in Syracuse at 10:45pm EST on Tuesday night, got to my motel, temporarily freaked out about being alone in a new city until my mom and friends (and the movie Bridesmaids) calmed me down enough to be able to sleep.

Wednesday morning I got up and was able to check into my dorm room at Syracuse! I'm on the 3rd floor of a building that has no elevator (and as accident prone as I am, I'm slightly concerned about this). Since my roommate was at the international student orientation all day, I spent the day unpacking, rearranging furniture, and meeting the few people who also checked in on Wednesday. Overall, it was a rather boring day.

Today (well technically yesterday since I'm writing this at 12:45am) was really fun! I spent the morning  wandering around the main part of campus (called North Campus) with my roommate and started to figure out where the important buildings were (my classes, bookstore, library, etc). By time we were done with that and back to our dorm, a whole bunch of other students had moved in so I spent a lot of time saying "Hi, I'm Cynthia. I'm a theatre major who lives down the hall!" That was fun. There is a really interesting mix of people on my floor. At 5 we had a floor-meeting where the RA explained all the rules and we went around and said our names and majors. Then we had like 30 minutes to just hangout before the next planned activity. In those 30 minutes, I discovered I live next door to a musical theatre major (!) and a girl down the hall who is a theatre minor is from SAN JOSE! Since we are the only people on our floor even remotely interested in theatre, the three of us clicked immediately. After just hanging out for a bit, we went to the Transfer Student BBQ, where we could eat and talk (which we did a lot of). Following that all the incoming students went to a program called "There's More to My Story" where student speakers talked about how they got to SU and gave us all advice on how to make the most of our years at SU. After that, there was an event called "Home to the Dome" where all the new students went to the football stadium (called the Carrier Dome) where we were taught all the various cheers and whatnot for the football games (Yes-I was in a football stadium by choice--imagine that). The most ironic moment of my life occurred there: the transfer students in the classes 2014 and 2015 made up the 6 in the 2016 class picture....obviously that was not thought through at all.

Then AFTER THAT, we all headed back to our dorms and there was a block party for the Skyhall 1 and 2 dorm buildings. Pizza and drink were provided as long as we agreed to talk to at least 3 people we hadn't met yet (obviously no problem for the 3 theatre geeks that we are!) It was a lot of fun to meet a bunch of other transfers and whatnot. 

Tomorrow I start all my drama orientation stuff/activities. I'll hopefully be able to update you before school starts about all that.

Much love from Syracuse!

2 Days to Go

Holy crap. I leave for Syracuse in 2 days. It just hit me today. I have already packed my bedding and other basic things I will need and shipped them to school so that they will be there when I arrive. My task of tomorrow is to wash all my clothes, sort them (what goes in the suitcases, what gets shipped and what gets donated) and pack as much as possible so that I can spend Friday saying goodbye to all the people I need to see. Hopefully I'll remember to get pics of my attempts at packing so you all can see how much stuff I have with me! Next post will be from NEW YORK!!!

The Countdown Begins!

Hello all readers! Welcome to my blog about my exciting move across the country to attend Syracuse University! I leave for New York in 18 days and words cannot express how ready I am for this. Not only is this an opportunity to get miles (2,797 miles closer to be exact), but I get to be a part of one of the top 3 stage management programs in the nation! My dreams are truly starting to become true!

Anyways I have gotten my rooming assignment and I will be staying in the transfer dorm rooms with a sociology major transfer from Beijing! Needless to say, she and I are going to have an interesting time learning to live with a person from an entirely different culture!

And my classes are AWESOME! I have finished all of the academic work I need so that I only have to take theatre arts classes my entire stay at Syracuse. This semester I will be taking Intro to Theatre Design, Intro to Theatre, Intro to Theatre Crafts, Intro to Play Analysis, Intro to Stage Management, and Theatre Lab. I know I am going to be incredibly busy but I am so looking forward to it!

Time to start packing and figuring out what is going to NY with me! More from NY!