A Summer's Breeze.

And with the old Pomp & Circumstance rings a timeless truth:

Change is on the horizon, as quickly as the sun rises & sets.

And Change can be good.

Yesterday calls to me with its sweet voice of memories.

For Summer blends together with delightful days smelling of home and home-cooking.

An early flower blooms in the morning mist before the sun melts the glistening dew.

A batch of roses shake off their sparkling coats and ready themselves for the day.

Fog in the morning precedes a breakthrough of blue sky and sleek Spring sunshine,

As through God stirred the sky like stirring the foam of his morning cup of cocoa,

until streaks of the steaming drink peek through and swirl along with the fluffy clouds of cream.

So midmorning swirls along.

Madeleine L'Engle when I awake.

Breakfast with my family, my early batch of roses.

Bible Study with my Father and his Son, delving into a pool of wisdom once mysterious,

now free and unfailing in its messages of love and faith and hope.

Piano unlocks a portion of my soul as Moonlight Sonata becomes easier to play.

A violin from my family line gets a new E- string and an eager new student.

Glee never fails to entertain.

The afternoon slips lazily by as we speak with old friends at Rogue Wilderness.

Evening approaches, as does a family's hunger for The Mediterranean.

Home-Schoolers get a graduation too; what a blessed event full of new songs swelling to the melody of change.

14 graduates; 13 of them in speech and debate. Their speeches rang with confidence, wit, and hilarity! Tears for some diffused tenderness across the room.

Pictures, hugs, and conversations of the future exchanged-- leaving everyone joyful and breathless.

What a blessed day!

The next day beckons...

A Beginners Book for Violin for an eager little blossom who wakes before the sun peeks through the fog.

P90X is in the works. She just got the disks today.

Current Biblical Favorites:

David & John the disciple.

Summer school in American Government leaves me in a state of

excited anticipation!

As does the prospects of house-warming our comfy new apartment in University Park.

Summer Schedule(Revised):

1. Singin' in the Rain

2. Bible Study

3. Instruments

4. P90X

5. The Artist's Way

6. Sew a Dress

I am leaving you with a gift-- peace of mind and heart.

And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give.

So don't be afraid or troubled.

~ John 14:27 ~

And the Summer Cometh :)

~Thank goodness I wrote about a good majority

of my second semester already~

That saves me some time...

All in all, the strings of commitments tied themselves into knots as the school drew closer to an end.

Spring Break came at a great time. I was winding myself into a little ball of stress, suffering from insomnia, and having some relational issues (to be extremely vague.) Studying Exo/Deut, Piano, PM, and Music Theory did not stop when I went home, but being away from campus and all its busyness and drama was glorious. I came back feeling reset with God back in the center of my life. No, I was not necessarily refreshed or rested as I hoped.

But... Summer will come soon, I told myself, and willed myself to believe that rest would eventually come with it.

• Mike Wilkins' Masters Recital at Chance Theatre in Anaheim was a wonderful experience. We hope he passed.

• Turning my time card into Dr. Hughes at the last possible Monday before a 2.5 hour Performance Forum, which I went to voluntarily because..well... I just love music... love the people performing... and love watching the journey of a student striving to become a professional in their craft. It felt a little awkward being there, but nonetheless, I sat through the whole thing. I got see both of my future roommates perform, Joanna and Elizabeth, who are both Vocal Performance majors. They did wonderfully. :)

• I had my piano jury at last, and although I didn't have the guts to smoothly make the chord progression from D to A on my Beethoven piece, overall I thought I did technically well, and even stylistically well in one of pieces called "The Bear," aptly named for its jarring dissonance and percussive dynamics which create the feeling of a bear romping about throughout the piece. But I still want to make my playing more playful and personality-filled. Considering I've only been playing for about four months now, I would say I made excellent progress in studying piano semi-independently. I went through just about an entire year's worth of material had I taken ordinary group classes in piano. Hooray! Now I have the building blocks... the rest is simply practicing with passion & patience.

• I recorded video for a grad student's Brass and Woodwind Ensemble concert for his parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary... got paid for it!! I had to learn a new editing program called "Media Edit," and that took a bit to adjust to, but after that it was fun to learn a new skill. Staying in the MIDI until the wee hours of the morning was super fun and tiring the next dew days, but I got a good experience with friends and SWEET SKILL BUILDING out of it! Hooray!

• Arie Moriguchi, a dear sister of mine, came out with her Japanese Worship CD. Despite my lack of knowing Japanese, the music is beautiful, each track unique in genre and still uplifting in its message of God's great love to everyone. We took a night and had a CD burning party in the MIDI lab until late at night.

• Dead Week brought peace of mind to me. I had studied diligently throughout the year and- knowing I studied as much as I could- I felt like my grades and test scores will be what they should be. I did not worry, but let go... and felt free. :)

• Sean Gabel and I recorded a single called, "Spring Break Is Over," a fun song that feels like it belongs in a musical. So that's what I think I will do: write a musical about the two weeks between Spring Break and Finals... and all that ensues in that short and yet concentrated period of time.

^I learned a lot about recording...how to sing, what I sound like in a close mic as opposed to a live stage, and how certain things I do with my voice directly impact its quality of sound. Like its obvious when I'm trying too hard in some places because my voice sounds forced or sharp in pitch. haha! I guess sometimes the best singing happens when it comes easily and naturally without tampering with the pitch or tone. Good lessons learned. I'll remember for next time.

• To my utter delight, our Health final was cancelled. Everyone had turned in every assignment on time.

Booyah.

• I did not get into any of the Fall plays. But I did get called back for the main role in the Fall Musical. With God carrying me the entire way, from an entire weekend of long days and late nights shooting a short film for director Brian Hartley's project in his Film Aesthetics class --> an all-day Bel Canto concert in San Diego --> to callbacks from 7:30pm-9:30pm, all in the same day, I thought my audition went well despite having ZERO time for preparation. I hit from third space C on the staff to a high A (a M6 can be difficult to find vocally) and held a 12 whole note ending on that same third space on the staff C. Hooray! Now I need to work on NOT over-singing like I'm pretty sure I did.

• I MADE IT INTO UCO 2011-2012! My audition/interview with Dr. Sutton was so incredible. He's such a great person, and I felt like my song went well too. I sang the second verse of "Miracles, from the Prince of Egypt soundtrack. We did some sight-reading out of 5o Easy Two-Parts and that went well also. I found out at Joanna Pascoe's Senior Recital.

• Dude... I went to a ton of Senior and Junior and Sophomore Recitals this semester: Arie's on Joy, Jess Ginsky, Joanna Pascoe, J-Lord, Christina Spencer, Bethany Baxter, and Natalie Buickans. Each one was wonderful to watch and listen. Especially Natalie, who did piano in the first half and voice in the second half, double majoring in both piano and vocal performance.

• Doing lights and getting paid for the Spring Opera was good skill building too. And a great opportunity to befriend the Opera folk/learn an opera in Italian/ get some extra tuition money.

• Running most mornings with push-ups, sit-ups and wall push-ups kept me in shape to do all these things. :)

• Deanna O'Brien asked me to dance in her Benefit Concert for studying music in Ireland this summer. The dance was fun to learn and turned out beautiful with Kayla Speck and I as her back-up dancers. We performed on Tuesday and Thursday of finals week. I came very close to missing my Acting Fundamentals final performance on West Campus because the concert started a half-hour late. We were dancing during my call-time.

• God took the lead and led me there in the knick of time. Kayla's friend had the car running after our part for the dance was over, and he sped over to West while I frantically changed clothes and gears into acting my angry scene from the 2006 movie The Savages with Emily Dodson. Again, my few errors were from trying too hard to control my acting rather than trusting and letting it come freely like it usually does. But our scene went well regardless. :)

• A group of newer friends from UCO and I went to Gladstone Park for a final "Saturday in the Park" day... only on a Friday afternoon! We played Volleyball, swung on the swings while watching little kids, climbed a giant lion-shaped water fountain, and relaxed in the shade. I did not play as much Volleyball as normal because I was feeling a bit under weather despite a beautiful, sunny day. Instead, I created a little mushroom edifice around "a little sacred mushroom" in the grass. Dani and Jess joined me in naming my creation as co-creators, and a picture is on Facebook with name-tags. It felt so great to conclude "Saturdays in the Park" in that way. And plus, almost every person who came will be in UCO next year. The people present were: David Cano, Daniel Tacotch(?), Rebecca Tamasco, Jess Luchtenburg, Dani Perez, Sean Lee, and another girl whose name barely escapes me because I had just met her. *sigh* Times like these are one of my favorite things. Friendship, outdoors, and sports bring us back to the basics of God's beautiful creation in one of its purest forms. It brings so much happiness to me and brings us all closer together, and closer to God and what I think heaven might be like. :) I love it. Love it Love it Love it. <3

• Our Bowles Middle Court Family: Johnny Strat, Sean, Arie, Ian, Stefan, Laura, Ethan, Jacob and I all went swimming in University Village. A final hang-out before the end of the year.

• Sean hosted a party making Funfetti waffles. OhmygoshYUM!

• I met, befriended, and worked with Keani Kahuhu. Period. :)

• Got all A's in my classes this year. Except Music Theory: B+ (89.6%).

You can imagine the bittersweetness within my report card... I kept an A the whole time until the end. Bummer.

• Bel Canto toured up the Northwest to Bellingham, WA and back down through Oregon and NorCal. Long bus rides, frantically running around, cartwheeling and handstand-ing during short rest stops, dehydrating myself so I wouldn't have to pee on the bus, then turning around and performing a heartfelt concert for a new audience in a completely different location. Talk about constant displacement. The lack of balance was tiring and unhealthy. Overall, the tour was wonderful though. My host families were sooooo nice and hospitable, and I gave a lot of back massages and bonded with some girls too. I got to sing two different solos, one consistently in our Disney medley (I Just Can't Wait To Be King), the other off and on (Revelation), sometimes as a duet with Holly Stell. She has got some operatic pipes on her! What an incredible voice.

After our final concert, Alex, Dani, Maegan and I had quite the night adventure: going to get frozen yogurt, getting another car from a distant city and bringing it back to school to pick up our luggage, calling campus safety to unlock the room containing our luggage only to have them refuse to open it without the consent of our choir director whose probably asleep by now, and then calling friends Ray Fairly, Josh Wood, and Jennifer Cleveland nearby to help us out and pass the time pleasantly while we waited for Campus Safety to open the room after a sleepy Dr. Hughes called us back and gives Campus Safety his consent to open the room. Did I mention it started to rain? Then we loaded all our luggage, drove another hour to Alex's house, arrived at 2am, and crashed. I woke up at 7:45am to shower and get ready for Maegan to drive me an hour to Ontario airport for my flight at 11:55am, checking in at 10am. Whew.

And then I made it home..

I still need to fully unpack my suitcase, but I'm diving into Summer Job Hunting and rehearsals for the summer musical Singin' in the Rain. I'm a chorus part and a back up singer and dancer. I get to learn how to tap dance! I'm so thrilled!

I'm also getting sick. It's my body's way of finally telling me how tired and dehydrated its been from this year's activities, finals, and tour. Sore throat, aches, tiredness, and sore muscles.

*sigh* But despite these small setbacks... I am back in Oregon. In my house. In my room.

Welcome Home & Happy Summer, Katherine.

You did it.

Freshman Year= Done!

Summer Plans:

***God First***

1) Get a job.

2) Have fun in the musical.

3) Get cookin' college meals for this fall!

4) Sew a sun dress

[maybe one for each of my roommates as well!)

5) Visit friends in the Portland area.

6) Act in a Pride & Prejudice movie.

7) Rest Rest Rest!

8) Have fun with friends, of course!

9) Reeead & Write.

10) Sing, Dance, and make Music!

The Lord protects those of child-like faith; I was facing death, and he saved me.

Let my soul be at rest again, for the Lord has been good to me.

~Psalm 116:6-7