Southwest Minnesota String Festival Part 1

(All 27 students! Spot me?)

I'm back!!!! I decided to split my tales and adventures into three posts.

Part 1: Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Sunday after our noon meal my mother took me down to the Festival, and I was one of the very first students to arrive. I was told as I checked in that I had the most popular name this year --- there were three students named Olivia and one named Liv! I started preparing for chaos then! :) I also found out who my roommate was, which was quite exciting, as we both were hoping to room together. After everyone got there and settled, we played two get-to-know-you games before supper. The first was this: We stood in a big circle, and said our name and the names of the people who went before us. The last person had to say all 29 (including counselors) names! The next game was a lot of fun: again we stood in a circle, then took off our shoes, and one person took their shoes away so one person had no shoes. That person stood in the middle and said something that he or she had done, owned, or something along those lines. Then if we had done (or owned... etc) that thing we ran to a different pair of shoes. Naturally, since one person had removed their shoes from the group, someone ended up in the middle again. Eventually we had to ban questions related to farms and music, the music being the hardest to avoid! We were there for music, obviously we all had it in common! :)

Monday was the day when we really all got to know each other, what our particular music instruments and skills were, find out who all was in our chamber music group, rehearse for the first time, have lessons.... all that wonderful stuff! Monday was fairly uneventful, overall, but extremely fun as well. We had orchestra rehearsal and everyone was a little overwhelmed by how many of us there were! Our practice area was pretty full!

Tuesday we were all pretty comfortable around each other, practicing harder, trying to make sense of the chamber music, not spending as much time together because of it, and crashing at night. It was officially busy!


To be continued on Wednesday!!!! :) Do you have any questions so far?