Update: Where've I been?

Hello! It's been a few years since I've been here. Partially it's because I haven't done any big trips since my trip to Japan, and partially because I forgot about this. I've been really invested in a couple YouTube channels lately. Both mine, and a joint channel with a friend of mine where we're making an original series! I'm pretty excited about this one.

Also, I never realized that people were still on blogger? I recently checked my analytics and I'm still getting hits, which was a huge surprise. So to everyone who's stopped by, hello!

Anyways, so what brought me back? Recently, I went on a trip overseas to Indonesia to visit family. It was really fun, and I wanted to write things up at the end of the day like I did with my trip to Japan, but every day was packed with things to do and it was a struggle to get enough sleep. So now, I'm going to try and reach into my memory and recall the experience. Both as a way to spread my knowledge (I learned some pretty cool cultural things which I hope to add to this blog), but also as a way for me to document the experience. I don't want to forget my time with family and my experience, but it is likely I may forget it in favor of remembering the derivative of csc(x).

Now that I've explained myself, if you're interested in hearing more about my trip, consider following this blog, as I will post my experiences slowly instead of all at once.

Thank you, and I'll see you around!
- Abigail

Fantasme Chorus Battle: Round 1

Oh wow, this was something I wrote up in the middle of the battle, but never got around to posting this at the end. 😅 Since I recently came back to this blog and found this, I thought I'll post this anyways. Especially since now I've got some more chorus battle experiences, so this will help show my evolution! Anyways, without further ado, here's what I wrote.

I entered into my first chorus battle this year (November of 2017), and my friends and I decided to go with Fantasme Chorus Battle, mostly because it seemed like a nice, relaxed, chorus battle. Which is great for noobs like us. Our group originally consisted of three female vocalists, three male vocalists, a lyricist, artist, animator, and tuner. 

It took us nearly a week to decide on our song. We talked about everything, from Muteki no Soldier, to Universe, to History Maker. We finally decided on This Game the theme from No Game No Life.

A few of us then began the task of translyric-ing it and scripting it. Honestly, it wasn’t too hard to do. But then, vocal guides reared its head.

One of the girls volunteered to do the vocal guides, but, we ended up overthrowing what she had done in favor of the vocal guides that the girl who did the translyric-ing made. I volunteered to work on harmony guides. Which was a mistake, because I know nothing about making harmony guides. I literally looked at a piano transcription and translated that into notes which I then sung. It was bad. 

We set a deadline for the vocals and lo-and-behold, one of our vocalists dropped. It sent a good half of us into a panic. Me in particular. I was pretty much screaming all night long. But wait, good news! One of our friends decided to step in and replace the lost vocalist. So we didn’t have to rescript everything, which is fantastic. Our voices are a bit uneven now, since now it’s 4 girls and 2 guys, but it’s fine. 

Vocals came in and I did a rough mix. That was when I realized, my harmony guides were way too slow. There was no way we could fix the recordings with mixing, so, they needed to be re-recorded. Good thing was that only half of us had recorded our lines, so it’s not like there was a complete overhaul. We decided that night that we weren’t going to do harmonies. The difference in octaves between the singers would be enough. New vocal guides came out and we were good to go. This was also around the time when the organizers of Fantasme Chorus Battle extended the deadline a week. 

Then…we had another drop. By this point I was too mentally exhausted to even scream about having 1/3 of our vocalists leaving, so I just asked our staff members if they were willing to sing. They were, and it was great. However, now we were even more lopsided than before. Now it was 5 girls and 1 guy. However, we decided that two of the girls could drop down an octave during the chorus parts and it’ll even out. Spoiler alert, it did, and it sounds pretty great if I do say so myself.

A few days later and we got a preview of the art for the video, and at least half of the group was squealing and gushing over how awesome it was. We had decided to go with a chess theme. With everyone taking a different piece (queen, king, knight, rook, bishop, and pawn) and there was some discussion about weapons for these characters as well (scepter, sword, scythe, staff, book, shield). 

A week later and 5 of our vocalists had vocals turned in. (this was the due date we set, so that’s good) I put together a rough mix and noted some places where we needed some re-recordings, but overall, it was coming along really well. All I had to do was wait for the last person to turn in their vocals and I could send it off to our tuner.

Once we got all of our vocals in, I timed it and sent if off to our tuner who, well, tuned. Unfortunately, by that point we were cutting it very close on time and she didn't have that much time to tune or do any effects or EQing. So our final mix was just timed and tuned.

Unfortunately, due to improper leadership and all around messiness, our final mix was finished on the day that Round 1 ended. Our animator started to render and we all panicked when we realized it was going to take longer than a day to render it. By the time it was done rendering, the grace period for Round 1 would've been long over. So, that's when I stepped in. We were out of options so I threw together a quick video. I don't have After Effects, and the program that I use is intended to splice videos together. This hurt us in the animation category because the camera needed to move, and couldn't be in a static position. Which, at the time, I had no idea how to do. 

Overall, when we got our judging back, we did really bad. A lot of us were very discouraged by this. I had a lot of finals coming up so I proposed to sit out Round 2 in order to get back our energy and motivation, then to come in Round 3 with renewed energy. Unfortunately, the staff members weren't too pleased with that. So they left. The team was in shambles and motivation was lost so we decided to let the team split apart. It was no use to kick the dead horse.

Preparation for Broomfield Days

On Wednesday we got together at Chiaki's house to try and get ready for Broomfield Days on Saturday. We were supposed to make origami boxes for our booth, but that didn't happen. In total we made about six paper dolls. One from Chiaki, two from my sister, one from me, Laura, and Grace.
While we were doing that and just talking, Chiaki had the movie The Ramen Girl, playing. About a quarter of the time when we were watching it, we were asking to each other, 'what is this movie'? Chiaki also skipped over a bunch of parts, so we were kind of confused.
It wasn't until around seven forty did Jared and Jack show up, the girls had already started eating by that time. Udon noodles and chicken nuggets (not the McDonald's type). Thank you Chiaki! It was delicious!
That wasn't the most productive meeting we had. The last time we were at Chiaki's house, we were doing last minute practice (even though we ended up practicing at the hotel and at an office space in Ueda as well) of our dance. We practiced outside in the backyard, and because the backyard faced towards the street, we may have scared some people who were walking, and maybe some drivers.
If you're in the Broomfield area, you should come swing by the Broomfield Sister Cities booth. We'll explain more about the trip and of hosting the delegates from Ueda for next summer. You could even try on some kimonos! If not, you'll just hear about Broomfield Days from my blog.

Back Home

When I returned back home I could still remember what happened about two weeks ago. I could still remember taking out my luggage from the trunk of the car, the cool, crisp morning air, the roll of my suitcase as we walked to the shuttle stop. I could still remember the other people who were at the shuttle stop, and the slight confusion that the notice gave us. I could remember the shuttle ride to the terminal, and then getting lost because there was a hotel at the entrance of the airport and we were so disoriented. Thankfully, we managed to meet up with everyone. I could still remember seeing how excited Chiaki, and everyone else were. I can even remember the shock we had when we saw Jack and Jared and how they had managed to fit everything they needed in a backpack and a carry-on bag. I also remember Jared asking me if he could put his can of tomatoes in my bag, because TSA would not like that in a carry-on.

I remember the crazy long line for security, and my anxiety and how I totally messed up going through security. I forgot about my traveler's pocket, and phone. I also remember how Riley was the person who held us up because he forgot to take out his laptop. I remember the tears. I remember us going down the escalator down to the shuttles. And now, it's done.

The trip is over, and the only thing we can hang onto are our memories and the pictures and videos. We weren't in Japan, we were in Japan, we aren't in Japan. Our trip is over, I'm sad. Not only is the trip over, but the friends who became my family for the two weeks of vacation are also going to be lost. We won't see each other in a very long time.

Thanks for the amazing trip.

August 12th

The day that was 39 hours.

Today was started with a late start, at least for me Glenna and Laura who were rooming with me. We then packed up and grabbed some breakfast from the 7/11. At 11:45 we went downstairs to get checked out, and since we had some time before our bus arrived, we wandered around the park until we got on the bus. We then began our two hour ride to the airport.

Once we made it to the airport we got our boarding passes, except me and Haley. So we went up to the counter to get them, but our tags on our checked-in baggage caused a problem because it was on Grace's name, who is in our group. So there was that whole mishap where the names didn't match, and then Haley and I find out why we didn't get our boarding passes. Apparently the two of us were randomly selected for extra security at the gate. The two of us were somewhat upset, and it freaked me out, because one security is scary enough. We then grabbed some lunch (at around 5pm).

Once we got to the gate we were pat down, shoes were pat down, and bags were looked through, and we were done. The plane ride was about 12 hours. A lot of us tried to coordinate watching the Assassination Classroom live action and we came pretty close, it took us awhile though. Most of us were awake the entire time. The airplane also fed dinner and breakfast.

We then got off the plane and began the walk around LAX to find our gate. Luckily, this time it was easier to get to our gate, we had to walk down a sidewalk for twenty minutes before we actually got to the check-in counter. Then we went through TSA and found our gate and more food.

This next flight is two hours from LAX-DEN. It was a relatively quick flight, we then had to go through customs and immigration, but that was easy enough. After that, we got on the shuttle to go to baggage claim. After riding the trains and subways in Japan, we were experts at the whole balancing in a moving train thing.

We went up the escalators and were greeted by our families. It was also pretty surprising. We got flowers, and balloons, and then we split our ways to baggage claim.

We said our goodbyes, and that was the end of our trip to Japan.

August 11th

Today we leave Ueda. We gathered at the station at 8:30, and waited for the bus to arrive at 9:08. There was a lot more crying, and lot's of luggage and many thanks and hugs. We boarded the bus and yelled 'arigatou gozaimashita' (thank you very much) out the window, only to find out that we were going to sit here five more minutes. When we finally began to leave, we yelled 'sayounara!' And other varying ways of saying goodbye and thank you. I'm pretty sure the other people who were on the bus were done with us. The bus moved, then got stuck at the stop light, and then the host families chased us, and we waved and yelled goodbye again. Now for an almost four hour bus ride.

When we arrived we checked in and then some of us went to Shinjuku to shop a little more. I got a cat ears headband. We tried to yell out 'Marco' in hopes of a 'Polo', and 'Red Robin' in hopes of a 'yum', but we just made fools of ourselves.

After that, some of us went to a cool restaurant where you could fish for your own fish to eat. We weren't very good at it. We ended up just stabbing flounders instead of actual fishing. We also messed up with our orders because we got four to five fish, but ended up getting seven fish at the table, and after we had parfaits, another fish came out.

Then, we were up all night hanging out and watching videos to spend our last night together.

August 10th

Last day with our host families. We started with taking the train to some place outside of downtown Ueda to a hot spring. It wasn't large, and it also didn't seem natural, but the smell of sulfur was enough to tell us it wasn't completely man made. A few of us soaked our feet in the hot spring, and it was really hot. After we soaked our feet, when we took out our feet, any skin that was in the water was red. So there was a line in between normal skin and red-tinged skin.

We then went to another shrine.

After that we went to one of the wonders in Nagano. We went to the last eight-sided building. It was completely made of wood and there were no nails, it was staying together by interlocking pieces. There were also a lot of gravestones.

After that we took a bus to eat korean barbecue. We cooked the beef on a grill in the middle of the table. We were joking about who might get food poisoning because they didn't cook it long enough, I think we're good though.

Then we went to another shrine where we fed giant koi fish, and of course made a wish/prayer.

We then went to a shopping mall where we managed to get all three boys into a puri-kura/cute Japanese photo booth. They were regretting it. We also found the Hot Topic of Japan.

After that, we went to a really fancy place where we had dinner and the closing ceremony. We felt underdressed. We then had to do a small speech in Japanese with our host families at the front on a stage. It was scary for most of us. We also celebrated Glenna's birthday. We had photos from the opening ceremony that we decorated and then gave to our host families and vice versa. Lot's of hugs were given, and there was some crying.