Season's Greetings

It's been a while since I've posted anything on this. Funny how I was so determined to keep this updated every week, but alas, I'm terrible at keeping promises/commitments. Something I'm going to try and work on this upcoming year.


Significant events that happened since I've last posted:

• My SKC co-workers are actually really awesome and I'm glad I was apart of such a fun camp. It was a long week each week, but overall I enjoyed it. I also learned how to make friendship bracelets so that was cool.
• Fall Quarter of UCI started out rough, but slowly got better.
• I joined the Whovians Club and Her Campus writing club (again) and it was probably one of the best decisions I made this quarter.
• I sort of like Linguistics and I absolutely hate Bio Sci- Life Sciences.
• I really love my Etude Family and still can't believe I'm apart of the ensemble.
• I'm staying an extra year of school (I'm not graduating on time because of the year I took off) and I'm still kind of training myself to accept that it's okay.
• Because I'm graduating in 2015 and not 2014, I am planning on picking up a minor in Literary Journalism. I realized that I really enjoy writing and I want to get better at writing. Hopefully that can turn into a major, if I work hard enough in my time at UCI. I'm also thinking about business/management as well... 
• My ankle is slowly but surely recovering. 
• oh and I'M 21 (and invincible)

Anyways, I'm home for the holidays! I drove home from Irvine for the first time by myself. That was kind of a big accomplishment for me since I absolutely loathe driving, so I was really happy about that.

I'll have more to write about when I'm not marathon watching Grey's Anatomy. In the mean time, Enjoy the Her Campus articles I wrote this quarter:

Her Campus Author: Lexi Viernes

Happy Holidays! 

Macaroons, Dance Concerts, and the Importance of Live Art

Happy Friday!

It's been a great week so far, both academically and physically. I've been having some really great dance classes, I got two midterms back that I did extremely well on, and I did an interview for a summer job that also went well.

Oh, I also had my first macaroon ever so that was an experience. In fact as I type this up right now, I'm chowing down on a hazlenut flavoured one and drinking a cup of tea. I'm feeling fancy fancy freeeee (although I probably shouldn't be eating a dessert since my stomach isn't feeling too great. we'll call this sacrifice)

Anyways, I think the main thing I want to blog about is the importance of live performances. In my last post, I talked about how I was home to watch my younger brother perform with his highschool, School of the arts. School of the Arts in San Francisco is a very Ballet and Modern based school, so their dance concert was mainly works of contemporary ballet, modern, and the occasional jazz pieces.  These kids are all in their teens-- from 15 years old to 18, and all of them have got such talent. My brother kicked some serious butt (of course I'm being biased, but let's be real here... he's an awesome dancer) and it was just so cool to see him dancing in something completely different from Billy...

Except I do have to make note of one of the pieces that kind of reminded me of a continuation of Billy's "Shadow Dance" right before "Grandma's Song".  This piece used interesting lighting to create shadows onstage, and of course my brother whos obviously a seasoned expert on shadow dancing, had an awesome little duet with another dancer where he used his hands to create shadows that fit with her shadow. It was pretty cool and probably would have been the result of Billy's shadow dance if he didn't see Grandma sifting through his private stuff.

There were loads of other talent on the stage as well, and I have to make note of these two dancers... both tall and both are red heads... These guys were featured quite a lot and boy can they move! holy man, I was shaking my head in awe. The two of them had a duet, and it was so epic and ginger. Not sure why there's the idea that gingers are "soulless" and "unfortunate" because honestly, after Ed Sheeran, Rupert Grint, Karen Gillan, Prince Harry (The list go on), and now those two kids..... I Beg to differ. Gingers ROCK.

So despite it being a great show, I think watching this show and watching my younger brother perform was kind of the inspiration behind my working hard in classes this week. Not to say I haven't been working hard in class, because I definitely do, but this week I had a different motivation behind me. After watching a live performance of dance, I was motivated to really work hard in classes so I can perform again. And I think it's really important, especially for artists, to constantly be exposed to live art. I'm really fortunate that the university I go to offers live performances weekly, whether it's a dance concert thesis, a live improv comedy club, or a jazz music night. Not only do you get a sense of inspiration and motivation while watching talented performers, you gain an even bigger appreciation and respect for the art. Don't you agree?

With that said, this weekend is going to be full of live performances: I'm seeing my friends dance in a student choreographed dance thesis, I'll be working on a dance-chemistry collaboration video, and then on monday I'll be attending a musical theatre night show in LA (with andy mientus and michael arden! I've only recently found out who they are, but my golly can they sing!) I'm so excited for these events and I love surrounding myself with such talented people who may have a different focus in the arts, but all have the same passion and drive. :D It makes me just want to embrace all of them in a lovely hug.

That's all for now! Lovely weekend to all and to all. xo

There's no place like home

Happy Saturday at 1:30am!

I am currently writing to you from my very own bed at my home in Half Moon Bay after a spontaneous trip from Irvine to surprise my brother for his first dance concert with SF School of the Arts.

It's been an incredibly stressful week-- I had another midterm that I didn't do as well as I hoped on (Yay BioSci!), a large rough draft of a bibliographical essay on Jerome Robbins, and another Dance History Quiz (which for some reason I had this strange false confidence while taking it... I guess writing "Martha Graham" and "Isadora Duncan" for every answer seemed about right in my mind at the time).   The first part of the week went by at an excruciating pace and I'm praising the fact that I won't have to worry about any exams till June. This was definitely a week I was wishing I was back on tour, especially after seeing my tour family the past weekend. I'm still struggling on adjusting back to student life, and I think it's taking me slightly longer than I thought.

Which again, is why I'm so so happy to be home. After the stress of midterms and papers, there's honestly nowhere I would rather be than here. I love being home.

Home to me is both tangible and intangible. It's tangible in the sense of it being a physical place you're referring to, aka your home that you grew up in. But over the course of years of living away from my physical, I realized that home can be more than just a physical house, but it can be a feeling.  Home is being surrounded by people who really love and care about you. And being back at the Viernes house, I'm getting both the tangible and intangible aspects of "home"-- it's overwhelming in the best way. I'm not saying that I'm not surrounded by people I love and care about at school (vice versa) because I am, and I couldn't be more thankful to have such lovely people in my life... It's just hard when everything you were once familiar with feels foreign again. I would go into greater detail, but given that it's almost 2 am, I might have to stop right about now

Midterms shmidterms and a mini Gatsby ramble

Happy Friday!

I'm lying. It's actually Thursday night, but no worries, by the time you read this, it will already be Friday.

It's been an exhausting week, and midterms have literally taken up every ounce of my time this week. After having a small taste of tour life all over again in San Diego with my Billy family, I had to return to the life of a college student.

And not just a college student... a college student in the midst of midterms, which is even worse.

I have one more midterm and a rough draft of a dance history essay to do still, but those aren't untill next week. So I obviously have time to blog, and watch The Great Gatsby at midnight tonight and get all the hours of sleep I lost over the week.

I'm doing a terrible job of trying to keep this blog up to date, but let me tell you I am making an effort!! I have drafts of different posts I started, I just haven't finished them yet. SEE PROOF:

 But I'll try to finish and post some of those during the week, or whenever this university mayhem is over.
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Ah, 2 am. I am certainly not glad to see you again.
It's not Thursday anymore so I can officially say Happy Friday!

I just got back from seeing The Great Gatsby, and I thought it was pretty good! I'm not the greatest movie critic since I pretty much love all movies, but I figured i'll ramble a little on the movie:

I thought everyone did great performances of their characters. Leo was top notch, loved Carey for Daisy, and thought the people who played Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker were incredible too (wish I got to see more of Jordan and Nicks relationship though...)! I want to give Tobey Maguire credit too because I think his performance was great as well....

but I honestly can't shake the Spiderman out of him. When he's narrating, I half expect him to start swinging from the rooftops in his Spidey Suit.

Also, please don't tell me I wasn't the only one who pictured Leo in Titanic scenes throughout this film.

The soundtrack is A++ . I'm all for the merging of different time periods in music, so I thought it sounded really cool. However, I'm still kind of iffy on actually seeing girls in flapper dresses dancing to Kanye West. I remember watching the trailer and not really knowing what to think about the mix of modern music in a scene thats supposed to be set in a 1920s time period...  I thought it added a really cool modern vibe to the scene, it's just... strange. It's kind of like how I feel on the Bates Motel show on A&E, (which is a modernized spinoff of Norman Bates in his early adolescent life), and it's set in contemporary time... It kind of throws you off when crazy Norman pull out his iPhone to type a text to his mother. Little modernized things like that just kind of take you out of the time period for a moment, and I guess it's slightly distracting. But, nevertheless, the soundtrack is awesome.

I can't NOT talk about the visual imagery in this film so here it goes:This movie SCREAMS Baz Luhrman. Even if you don't know who the man is, if you've seen Moulin Rouge, you would totally recognize the cinematography. Everything was so beautiful, and it was so visually stimulating, its like one big shiny DIAMOND. The lavish mansions and parties that Gatsby threw totally blew my imagination of what his parties were like out of the water. I found myself shaking my head in awe at the sights because his parties were even more elaborate and magnificent than I imagined. Hell, I want to go to a Gatsby party... There were moments in the way a scene was filmed that I could trace back as a similarity to Moulin Rouge, but of course, it IS Baz, so obviously there would be familiar moments. I feel like it would be really cool to watch in 3D, but I'm not really a fan of 3D movies.

 Anyways, I really want to re-read the book again and re-watch the film so I can analyze/recognize some differences and similarities between the film and the book. It's one of my favorite things to do with a book-turned-film. I almost always prefer the book to the movie, but I thought Baz did a unique take. I wouldn't say it was one of my favorites, and I'm not gonna lie, there was a couple moments in the film where I tuned out for a few seconds (I think it's because I was tired, not because the movie was boring) but for the most part, I liked what Baz did with it.

What did you think, Old Sport? (Let's not even begin to count how many times Old Sport gets said in the film. I can already see ideas popping up for possible movie games in the future...)

With that, I'm heading to sleep. Night, Old Sport!