Audition

Today was great! I conquered my fear of singing by myself. I had fun doing the dances. I was only a little bummed that the director was cutting everyone off during the plays, when we had worked sooooo hard on it. Oh well....what we did show was good. We will find out more details of casting later. We have a "vacation" for 4 days until we start rehersals. But, then they told us that the church asked us to perform at the opening ceramonies of their big summer conference. We stayed after and put something together that we will perform on Monday, and plan to attend the conference every day of our "vacation". Once we finally finished( we were starving) we celebrated the end of the academy and my roommate Jasmine's 21st Bday, by going out to dinner. Its now 1am and I have to get up at 7 for church. :) Night

Week 2

There is a lot of pressure this week. We are all trying to get ready for the audition on Saturday that will solidify/give our parts. We will perform the dances we have learned, a scene, and a section from Le Mis and one song from Covenant Journey. I'm learning a song entilted "Who am I" for my solo and am singing the character of Eponine in the song "One Day More". Its scary for me to hear my own voice but everyone is so supportive and helpful. For the play I'm doing a scene from "Fat Pig" with one of the Korean actors. We can't fully understand each other verbally, so we have to be creative in the way we communicate about our ideas and the direction of the scene. With only one week to learn everything for the audition we are all working really hard. A couple of people are going to get cut. I can't imagine anyone leaving. We have become such a family.

First Week of Training

I can't believe we just finished our first week of the academy. It has been a blast. Each morning I ride the sparkling clean, air-conditioned subway to the rehersal space, where I'm greeted with a warm, excited, hello (Step)(a)(nee)!!! I can't wait to get there and see all of my chingudel ( friends). We've been working on memorizing different plays, songs, and have learned 3 dances. One of my favorite moments of the week was when we split into two groups and sang Grasslands from the Lion King accapella. Today ( Saturday) was a short day, ending at 6 and we went out to dinner together. I ordered samgyetang, soup with an entire chicken, rice, and ginseng. However, my Korean friends also ordered Bosintang, a soup made out of primarily dog meat. Believe it or not, I actually liked Bosintang better. I loved the flavor, although the texture of the meat was a little rubbery. It is suppose to be good for your health. :)

The Start of Something New

On Sunday we went to Seoul Emmanuel Church. It was amazing to see around 10,000 people worshipping God in Korean, English, and sign language. Yesterday, we started our first official day of training. Our music class was really challenging. We do the vocal excerises on Korean vowels and the music is really diffifult for me. I wish I new how to site read. I'm excited to grow in this area. We had a dance class and conditioning class. The dance class is very basic and will challenge my patience, but really great for me to go back to the basics and work on technique. The teacher is beautiful and is very jazzy, which I love :). For conditioning we had 10exercises that we did for 1 minute each with a partner, 2 times. Acting class was fun. We did cold readings in English. This was very difficult for the Korean's diction and a good challenge for me to get out of my comfort zone. I love the feeling of adrenaline when your nervous. We had training from 1-10 and then met for worship and a short message until 11:30. Didn't get home until 12:30. What a different schedule than America! The day went by fast though. We have a lot of breaks and we get an hour for dinner. There was one group that went out to eat and the rest of us brought our lunches. The Korean's all brough rice and side dishes to share. They eat sooooooo fast. Throughout the day when I would eat a snack they would just grab a bite without asking. I thought one girl was really comfortable with me at first, but after the 4th person did it, I decided it must be part of their culture :). I woke up at again at 5 am ( jet lag!!!!), with really sore muscles, a count of 13 mosquito bites, and ready for a new adventure in Seoul!

The city that only sleeps in the morning

We are slowly adjusting to the time change. I woke up at 3, 4, 5, and finally got up at 6am. We tried to walk around at 10am and hardly anything was open and it was so queit. People stay out really late and sleep in late here. Today we experienced heavy monsoon rains and long stop and go traffic. Each family is only allowed one car and the streets and freeways are crowded. We went to get water and pizza for the cast at Costco( yes the American Costco except that everything is marked up). In the parking lot we saw two ladies trying to push a car and ran over thinking something bad was happening. They just park the cars in neutral and if you need to leave you just move the cars in your way. lol We must have looked pretty funny trying to "help". We met the cast and choreographer today. They are friendly, energetic, and passionate. We did a jazz class and learned a combination. The choreographer doesn't know alot of English so the class conducted in Korean. Its neat to learn to count and pick up words here and there in Korean. I've always said dance is a universal language and have taught it to many different cultures, but I'm enjoying being on the other side and gaining a new perspective. :)

Arrival in Seoul

We left LAX at 12:20am Wed Morning and arrived at 5:00 am Thursday in Seoul! Our first day was long! By 10am we had moved into our house, had 2 breakfasts, gone grocery shopping, exchanged money, and were ready for bed....but we pushed on and explored the city. We are living right in the heart of Hongdae. It is the center for entertaiment and there are alot of young people around. We were stopped and asked to chicken fight for some promotion, and of course we did it so we could get the free ice cream. :) There are alot of American chains, but everything has its own Korean flavor. I'm excited to try all of the different foods. For our second breakfast we ate ddeok kalbi and ddeok bok gi. My pronuciation is pretty terrible right now, but my uncle blessed me with Rossetta Stone for my birthday so I'm going to be a pro soon. :) The Korean woman who's house we are staying at has a daughter who will be attending school in Tucson in the fall. I just love how small this world is. We sat and talked about Tucson and Jasmine( my friend from NYC who is in the show) was really able to communicate in Korean. She lived with me for 3 months in NYC and would always watch Korean dramas. I guess I should have paid a little more attention. lol Well...off to study the language. Annyong! (Bye!)