Still. So. Tired.
This blog has gotten me to realize how appreciative I should be of the opportunities that I get. Anyhow, here’s the journey. Oh, shoot I’m procrastinating on even more assignments. Whatever. The State Band Clinic at my favorite university, UNC! Go heels WOOO

Day 1:
This was the day where I met quite a few people(I don’t have AoPS usernames of almost all of these people so I guess I’ll just name reveal because I doubt anybody really wants to stalk a middle school band kid? If you are one of the people I name and feel uncomfortable, either comment or shoot me a dm or something, although I doubt anybody reads this because it’s so mediocre.) Rehearsal was from 1:30-9 PM. WHAT THE HECK WHY WOULD I PLAY MY FLUTE FOR 7.5 HOURS WHEN IT’S LITERALLY NIGHT BRUHHHH. Anyhow, I met my conductor, Wendy Higdon.

Before rehearsal started, I was half panicking because I didn’t know my music too, too well and I was also super scared because serenaz26 had a piccolo in her hands and that’s enough to give any human hearing damage. I did bring earplugs but I couldn’t hear the piccolo with the exception of a few lines in one song BECAUSE THE ALTO SAXES WERE SO. DANG. LOUD. Anyhow, once I sat down, and beat a pokemon go gym, caught a few pokemon, etc. I realized how different my row, the 2nd, was compared to the first row. serenaz26(1st chair), Gauri, a school friend(3rd chair), and two other people whom I’d get to know later, Zoe(from Chapel Hill, 2nd chair) and Maggie(from Winston-Salem, 4th chair) were chatting, laughing, etc. while my row was dead silent. I ended up talking to AllenLi, who was 6th chair(I’m 9th chair LOL I suk), which ended up being kind of awkward because there were two others that were just sitting there on their phones.

As rehearsal started, the conductor made us introduce ourselves to the two people next to me. After introducing myself to Layla and Dina, the people to my left and right, I went right back to zoning out until our conductor made us pull up our warmup sheet. Dina and I, who shared a stand, immediately realized we were given Clarinet parts, and so we had a quick discussion as to who would sacrifice self-confidence for the good of the two of us. After I lost the argument, I put my hand up and told the conductor I had Clarinet 1 music, which ended up being EXTREMELY awkward because everyone stared at me… After all that was situated, we began playing Process. It was just playing a concert F for 4 beats and then resting for 4 beats. The goal was to enter and exit at the same time. Once we finished that, we moved straight on to the first song Chasing Sunlight. We read it really fast and moved on to the longest and arguably the hardest piece, Imaginarium. We struggled on this piece for just a little bit as it was four pages long. There were a couple of places where it was extremely difficult for the flutes, such as the very beginning(16th note Eb followed by 16 note F followed by 8th note Eb repeated like 20 times at 160 bpm…). We figured it out pretty fast and that led us into our first break! I saw serenaz26 talking to Victoria(also known as the mini version of serenaz26) and Gauri. I, along with AllenLi and Dominic(a 7th-grade trumpet who also went to my school) decided to see what they were talking about(we were really bored don’t ask). I think they were trying to locate a trash can, though I forget. I ended up defeating the nearby Pokemon Go gym and placing my typhlosion in there.

After the break, our band played the other three songs: Kalos Eidos, A walk in the Morning Sun, and Foiled Again!. Nearing the end, the person two seats to my right, Samuel King, started clowning because the second he looked at Dina, he would just die laughing. The two just died laughing for the last hour and I was sitting there trying to keep my composure because my school director was in the room. It was hard bro. Day 1 ended and everybody was dead tired aaa. I think the one thing that was so frustrating was that the conductor would stop after about 10 measures of playing and some people(cough cough TRUMPETS cough) would continue playing for a good 8 measures. During the first day, the band director was so done with us because we were kinda clowning around with an hour left to go. I remember Dina got really “high” and started drawing really pretty and fancy eyes above the measure where the conductor told us to look at the baton and stuff.

Day 2:
Day 2 started at 8 iirc. The Pokemon Go gym nearby had been taken over by the red team(I’m on blue) so I retook the gym for blue. I put in my Gyrados, which had approximately 700 more CP than my Typhlosion, so I hoped that the Gyrados would stay in for longer(I haven’t checked since then, I should check soon oops). I still had a decent amount of fatigue from the day before as I kinda fell asleep at 11:00 on Day 1(my usual bed time) and I was just dead…
serenaz26, Zoe, Gauri, and Maggie(who I’ll just refer to as The Four because I don’t want to write their names out anymore) were talking, laughing, etc. before rehearsal started because they’re besties now! SLAYYYYYYYYYYY! (ew that sounded so weird I’m never doing that again) My row remained dead silent because everyone was on their phones. I’m pretty sure that The Four exchanged phone numbers because I scrolled through serenaz26’s following list and they follow each other now(ohhh that explains why they were passing around Gauri’s phone ohhh). We had quite a bit of fun and we played through the entirety of Imaginarium and Chasing Sunlight WHICH WAS AWESOME! That’s when lunch came.
We got to go to the UNC buffet at Lenior Hall which was super cool. They had an escalator the led up to the second floor and there was an all-you-can-eat buffett. After you were done, you could put your plates on a conveyor belt and it would be cleaned :OOOOO Yeah I totally sound like a 6-year-old going to his/her parent’s workplace for the first time. Oops. I think the most significant thing was that there were five pokestops within reach at Lenoir Hall and I farmed a ton of materials off of those. Other stuff happened, so yeah time for STORY TIMEEEEEE!
So while Dominic was walking around the entire second floor because he’s a seventh-grader and he loves exploring places(?), he found ICE CREAM! Now normal people would go insane for ice cream, but this was the type of ice cream that was packaged in those styrofoam cups and it was Orange Sherbert :face_vomiting: . Anyhow, the second Dominic put is PLASTIC SPOON into the cup, the styrofoam BROKE LMAO. When he finally got a decent spoon into the cup, he announced that it was disgusting(i meannn what do you expect the quality of the ice cream must have been horrible considering how durable the cup was, plus it was ORANGE SHERBERT). I guess Zoe must have zoned out while all the cup-breaking and taste test happened because she went to Dominic and went “OMG THERE’S ICE CREAM SHOW ME!” We immediately warned her it was bad and it was orange sherbert. The response back was “I LOVE ORANGE SHERBERT!” Welp. We warned her. She got the ice cream and rushed back, only to make a really sour face and proclaim “Oh that tastes horrible.” YEAH WE WARNED YOU! Anyhow, I got a really funny photo of her sour face(at least it’s funny in my opinion… Mission(if you don’t know what that is read the post below) has ruined my sense of humor.). Uhhh… so we went back and during the break in the afternoon, we pestered our school band director with dumb comments and questions, such as “do squirrels make nests?”(now that I think about this, we were definitely 6-year-olds at that point in time.) Yeah so that happened… We played through our other songs without too much problem, but Kalos Eidos sounded a little too good…(Hint: Foreshadowing occurring right now!) Day 2 ended at 4:30. Tomorrow would be the dreaded CONCERT. The Four were talking to each other about other music stuff and also how serenaz26 was making them go deaf(with the exception of Zoe, who had earplugs in) with her piccolo because all they had were paper towels and earbuds to protect them from the screaming high pitch. xD I, AllenLi, and serenaz26 collectively agreed that our pieces were nowhere near concert-ready, but there wasn’t too much we could do about it.

Day 3:
OH GOD TODAY’S THE CONCERT?! Yup. Oh god.

Our rehearsal started at 12:00 but we were supposed to be there by 11:50. My parents got kinda mad(a slight understatement) at me because I lost my binder with all my music at, I assume, Hill Hall(where we rehearsed for the previous two days). However, Dina and I had collectively agreed that she would bring the music so that came in clutch. I was pretty excited but also pretty scared because our music was definitely not concert-ready. I was pretty nervous too as my school band director had stated how Memorial Hall(where the performance was) was huge and amazing and scary and stuff… We warmed up on stage, revealing 90% of our pieces to the audience because quite a few people were already waiting for the concert to start. After our dress rehearsal, we had 15 minutes of waiting, where The Four started looking out into the absolutely packed audience to find parents, friends, band directors, etc. I looked out and saw my parents in the second row(definitely not scary at all). Once the concert started, everything went perfectly well. I was really happy with what happened, until Kalos Eidos. The oboe soloist messed up her solo and the song kind of went wack from then on. The soloists didn’t do as well as they had during rehearsal and I’m sure the conductor was kind of disappointed as well. However, we continued trucking along and it was pretty good.

After the concert, we had to clear the stage for the 9/10 band(the band for 9th and 10th graders). We ended up walking to the right side behind “the shell,” which was a series of wooden doors that were retractable. However, the people in charge told us to go to the left side EVEN THOUGH OUR CONDUCTOR TOLD US TO GO TO THE RIGHT! So, we went to the left side and were told to GO TO THE BACK THROUGH THE MIDDLE! At this point, my brain just shut down so I started following Zoe, and AllenLi was following me… Yeah whatever we made it to the right place eventually so yayyyy. We had some reserved seats in the very front so I ended up listening to the 9/10 band, who was GREAT! They are the primary reason why I really, really want to do band in High School(however, there are some GPA concerns so I’m still questioning whether I truly will do it.). I had to leave after the 9/10 band because my parents wanted to leave(bruh I wanted to listen to the 11/12 band SO BADLY). The Four took a picture with each other or something and that’s all I really remember. On the way out, I found someone’s reed case so I gave it back to them. Zoe’s family ended up being right in front of ours and uhh apparently she started yelling at her parents because her mom had to go strawberry picking? I suck at Chinese so I’m probably far from what actually happening… I did get boba after and Sunday was super unproductive because I just did a mock AMC10 and texted friends. I watched The Ant Bully after dinner, which is pretty good. Yeah I’m so tired now.

Also wth this took me two hours to write(no joke I swear). Aiming for 3 comments?(If so, I think that’s a record high I think). I think this might be a little long to read so if you got to the end of this 2200 word recap, comment down below! It means a lot to me that you’d spend ~8 minutes of your precious time to read my recap, and it’s a success that’s worth recognition

I’ll see you guys later(hopefully something interesting happens soon ig)