Csehy Summer School of Music

Hey everyone! As many of you know, I was attending the Csehy Summer School of Music over the past 2 weeks. I had an amazing time... it was such a great experience. I learned so much and met so many cool people. I know some of you want to hear all about it, so I'm going to share what my daily schedule was like. Keep in mind that everybody's schedule was a little different, depending on what instrument(s) they played and what ensembles they were in, so this is MY schedule.

The day started with everyone meeting at the cafeteria for breakfast at 7:40. Though there were other camps using the Houghton College Campus at the same time we were, we had a section of the cafeteria closed off just for us, which was really nice. Meals were a lot of fun... for the most part I sat with different people at each meal, so it was a good time to get to know people. I'll write more about meals when I get to lunch and dinner :o)

After breakfast, we all pretty much went straight to Chapel. The messages were really good... the guy that did them was a lot of fun. The theme was "Studies in the Letter P"... there was a whole slogan thing but I'm not going to bother trying to remember it. Basically, it was about how to live the Christian life in a Christ-like manner. We talked about the Past, Present, and *Ph*uture... how to Persist in the Present... and we studied 2 Peter in the 2nd week. So that was why it was studies in the letter P ;o)

After chapel, if it was a day that I had a piano lesson I would go straight to my lesson. Otherwise, I would go straight to a practice room to practice. My piano teacher was so much fun... he was an older Chinese guy, and he loved to make jokes. He's an excellent pianist and teacher, and I had a great time with him. We mostly worked on perfecting 1 song at all 4 of my lessons, which was good, because I don't do a lot of that with my piano teacher at home. He taught me a lot of good techniques for polishing things off and perfecting them. Anyway, after my lesson I would go practice until it was time for choir.

Choir was a lot of fun, but it was really hard! All the campers had to be in the choir. We had up to 8 parts in the songs that we sang. The songs weren't my favorite in the world... there was a lot of Latin and *olde englische* (thee thou etc), but it was really cool to be in such a big, good choir. The choir director was really funny. He was really strict-- he called himself a benevolent dictator-- but he was likeable and fun at the same time.

After choir, we went to lunch. The food was all pretty good, and there was icecream at every lunch and dinner!! Heeeaven!! Anyway, one funny thing at meals was that if you lost something, you had to come up in front of everyone and sing a song to get it back. People mostly sang things like I'm a Little Teapot and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Onetime 2 boys stole 2 girls' name tags, so they had to get down on one knee and sing You Are My Sunshine to the girls. It was really funny :o)

After lunch, I went to handbell choir practice. That was one of my favorite times of the day... I loved the teacher. She was really sweet and a lot of fun. We warmed up to Beachboys songs and the Beatles and fun stuff like that :oD Our songs that we did were really cool.

After that, I practiced for a little over an hour. It wasn't as hard to practice for so long as I thought it'd be. When you didn't have anything else you'd rather be doing it wasn't so bad.

From 3-5pm we had free time. Sometimes I just read or wrote letters, sometimes I played games with some other campers, sometimes I socialized with other campers, one time I went swimming, one time a group of us went to a Nursing Home and did a little concert there... it was a really relaxing time.

At 5 we had dinner. People usually got packages at dinner, and you had to sing for the packages too. That was fun.

After dinner was theory class. I really liked my class... there were only 5 people the first week, and the second week we just got 1 more person. The first week was pretty much review for me, but it was good to review it and learn it better; the second week we started 4-part writing, which was a challenge. I really liked it, though.

After that I had practice time/free time if I'd already gotten all my practicing in. Then at 8pm we had Sing & Share :o) That was another of my favorite times of the day. People could request hymns to sing, and share what God was doing in their lives. It was a really good time every day. I loved it so much. After that we'd have some kind of special event, like a recital from the faculty or counselors, or a chalk-drawing competition, or swim night or something cool like that. Then we'd have small group devotions, and then lights out.

Sorry to write all this... I figure if you're really interested, you can read it all, or you could just not read any of it if you don't care!

Here are some pictures, if you'd like to see:

~Me practicing
~My choir buddy & I
~Handbells at the concert the 2nd week
~Me playing in the student recital
~Elizabeth (she was such an amazing little 12-year-old), my friend Carolyn (she's probably the closest friend that I made), and me!
~Me & my counselor... love her!
~My awesome theory teachers
~My piano teacher ^_^