Day 39

Date: June 23, 2011

Time: 12:05am (PST)

Playing on iTunes: "Waiting" by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

Location: Mesa, AZ

Recent Trip: 405 miles

Arrived in Mesa, AZ at about 5am. This gave us approximately 2 hours of floor time because we needed to start early. Today was going to be an extremely hot day so George wanted us to start early and end early before it got too hot.

Everyone getting ready for the day meeting

Every morning we start the day with a meeting with the corps, George, and Rudy (assistant director). We call this “the day” standing for the day meeting. In “the day”, George or Rudy will talk to us about what we’re going to do that day; our goals, things to think about, motivational speeches, etc. It gets the corps ready and excited for the day ahead. It’s a refresher after a night’s sleep. At the day meeting this morning at 8am, my phone calculated 101 degrees...man was Arizona going to be hot.

The high school we stayed at...VERY NICE

The pit in the shade zone

The pit found the greatest zone we have ever practiced in yet this summer! It was this quaint little outside lunch area under and overhang with overhead fans. The fans were set to turn on during the school’s lunch time so when the kids during the school year were out for lunch they would have circulation. So throughout our warm up block we got random spurts of warm air from the fans. Highly entertaining.

We had a very short ensemble block which started at about 1pm. At this point it was around 117 degrees (the turf measures a steamy 180 degrees) outside, but I was confused since I was not sweating at all. I guess it is just because it is such a dry heat that you don’t sweat as easily. I don’t know, I’m not complaining. I was very happy about that! Today was also a show day so we had to have a short ensemble to get prepared for our show that night.

Our show that night was our first sold out show...and apparently that field’s first sold out audience in a long time! I had a great show tonight as well as the corps. The corps sounded great.After the show, we received our scores and we got a 75! Much improved since our last performance. Great sign because we did only have a short day of rehearsal today. This was an amazing day to be a Cadet. We performed in a sold out stadium AND we improved our performance from the night before. I’ve started getting compliments from fans outside of the stands about our show. It feels great to have people comment on you about something. Personally it motivates me more to perform. Overall, I’m just glad that we can make their day perform for the great audience of Arizona.

Thought of the Day: "Successful people do the things that other people, otherwise, do not want to do.”