First Show = Success!

Alright, I know I haven't posted in quite a while, but my excuse is that I've been so busy with rehearsal and training and what not. But as of today, I can completely understand why all of those many hours were 100% worth it! After a whole week of 8:30-5 training and rehearsal, we have finally mastered our show. Our timing for the video transitions, the lighting for the bands songs, the sound levels, everything is perfect. Everyone's speeches keep improving everytime they are said. The whole show just came together like magic! It's crazy to think that just last Monday we all had no idea how to set up a stage, and now we're perfoming live in front of hundreds of kids everyday!
All of us SOL's (School of Leadershippers) agree that we have learned more in the past two weeks being here than we did all throughout highschool. We never knew how much effort went into a show like this!!! Everyone has their job to do during set up, the actual show, and during tear down. It's wonderful how everyone works together too!
So we were up at 5:30am this morning and out the door by 6:15. We had about an hour drive from Hamilton to Brantford and by the time we loaded the bus and got on our way, then drove an hour, it was almost 7:30am. Then we had to unload the bus and start setting up. That was the longest part, because it was our first time setting up in a new venue, but it worked out fine.
The show today was at St. John's College in Brantford for their new grade nine students. 280 fresh minor niners wandering around with their school maps in their faces ... oh how I remember those days!
The show went amazingly well! The only few minor glitches that occured would never have been sensed by the audience. Anybody who wasn't part of the team would never have known that anything had gone wrong. And to be honest, the worst thing that really happened, was that one of the videos came in a little too quickly after another one. Besides that, the show was practically flawless!
Now I am not one to get nervous. I have been on stage enough times in my life to feel relatively comfortable being the focus of 560 eyeballs. However, when I was standing backstage behind the curtain waiting for my cue to walk on-stage, picturing Anna (the little girl from Jamaica who's story I was telling) and trying to imagine myself in her shoes at that moment, I started to get this weird feeling in my stomach that I hadn't felt in a long time. The butterflies! But they were just mini ones and I think I was mainly just psyching myself out .. because the second I walked on-stage in front of those 280 kids, all my feelings of nervousness just disappeared! I was comfortable enough to feel like i was standing in my own bedroom talking to my mirror. I had every line memorized beyond memorization that I was able to focus on the emotion of my story, rather than what my next line was!
It was an overall amazing day and I'm so glad that I'm getting to be a part of this for the next four months! :D

Thanks to everyone for following my blog, for praying for me, keeping in touch, and supporting me ... It's amazing.

Show #2 tomorrow morning in Burlington!

Cynthia :)