The Exam!

Dear faithful followers,

I am SOO sorry I didn't get around to posting sooner. I know I said that I would post on the 18Th. And now it's already the 20Th. *Sorry*

OK, so let me tell you all about Monday and the exam. I'll start from the very beginning, hey?

Well, I got up in the morning feeling surprisingly ..... calm. I had a shower and washed by hair. I didn't blow dry it because that makes it too hard to work with. I let is sort of just dry its self whilst I was having breakfast.
After breakfast I put it into a perfect bun. I was proud of how I did it, actually. For all my other exams my Mom has done my hair for me. This was the first one where I did it myself.

We left our house at about 9:00. Dad took me to Melbourne for the exam. We stopped in Geelong for morning tea. When we got to Melbourne it wasn't nearly time to go into the Opera Center (where the exam was held) yet.
Dad and I just walked around Melbourne for a while. The weather was absolutely beautiful. I love Melbourne - it's such a pretty city. I have only been there one other time in my life.

Eventually it was time to go to the Opera Center. Dad and I had made sure we knew exactly where it was the minute we arrived in Melbourne. We didn't want to be looking for it at the last minute.
Actually, the Australian Ballet Centre is in the same block as the Opera Centre. We ended up going in there thinking that's where the exam might be. ha ha.
The lady there said she didn't think any exams were being held there but we could go up to the 5Th floor and ask.
Dad was like 'well, it was supposed to be at the Opera Centre, so I think we'll keep looking.' So we did.

Anyways. So when we got the the Opera Centre a lady came and took me and three other girls up to the warm up room. I must say, it certainly wasn't as flash as last year. It was still nice, but not as fancy.

We got changed, warmed up and then before we knew it the examiner was ringing her bell for us to enter. It was really weird because I was SOOOO calm!

The exams was ...... well ..... not so good.
In fact, it was pretty awful.

I'll explain.

To start off with the floor was completely .... yeah - wrong. It was this rubbery stuff that hurt your feet so much just to stand on it and it was SOOO hard to dance on.
I would have much prefered to be dancing on thick carpet.
So that was incredibly disappointing. I felt that I couldn't do my best and could feel myself failing by the minute. Stupid Floor.

In the middle of the exam I actually felt like crying. My feet and legs and whole body didn't want to do what I told them to do. And I know this is going to sound lame but I blame it all on the floor.
You really need to be able to trust the floor when you are dancing. And .... if the floor's rubber it's pretty impossible to do a pirouette on it - let alone a double or a double-and-a-half.
Sucked really.

Plus, to go with that, when I got up that morning I had a really sore throat. It got worse during the day. By the time I got home that night I was coughing pretty bad. I went to school on Tuesday, but by Tuesday night I knew there was no way I was going the following day.

So I didn't go to school yesterday or today. Actually - I'm supposed to be at school right now .... in Major Project. he he he. Got out of that one OK I guess.
But I still feel pretty awful. I think it's the flu. I've spent the last 48 hours on the computer, piano, reading and bed.
Sigh.

On the way back from Melbourne Dad and I stopped at McDonald's for dinner. I had ....... a double quarter pounds, medium chips, medium coke and a soft serve ice-cream.
YUM!
That certainly was the best part of the day.

It is good to have the exam out of the way - but I am really really really terribly disappointed at how it went. I hope I passed. I mean - surely she can't fail me. I mean, she can, but you know - there would have to have been SOME good things I did in it.

I think it will be about 1 - 2 months until I get the results back. eeeeekkk. Well, I did the best given my situation and that's all I can do, hey.

I am really sorry I didn't post earlier. Thanks for reading everyone!!

Tomorrow = Intermediate Exam!

Tomorrow is the big day!

I am ...... SO ..... nervous. And also excited in a way, I guess. I mean, I get to go to Melbourne and dance in front of some well known ballerina. Plus, the location of the exam is pretty famous too.
AND I'll have a massive awesome hall to dance in, and get the chance to meet other ballerinas that will be doing the exam with me.

I am fairly confident with all my exercises, dance and pointe. It doesn't mean that I'm not completely nervous to the point of feeling sick.

Later today I am going to pack all my stuff and tripple check that I've got everything.
It's going to be so good to get into bed tomorrow night and know that it's over with for a nother year.

Actually, after publishing this post I am going to go back and read what I wrote on this blog the day before my exam last year.

As completely nervous as I am, I think that I'm just a bit calmer that the day before last year's exam. Although it's still over 24 hours away so that could all change.
I couldn't sleep last night - I just kept thinking of the exam, exam, exam, exam, exam. eeugh. I just want to get it over with right now.

I mean, I love dancing, and I like doing exams. It makes you work on exercises and have them perfect by a certain date. Plus, as I said earlier, there ARE advantages to doing the exam such as getting to dance to live piano music.

Anyways, I'll post on the 18th (the day after the exam). I won't be able to post tomorrow because we'll be getting back pretty late.

Bye Bye To All ....

The Exam!

As always, it wasn't as bad as I though. Though I was still shaking!!!
We stayed at my uncle and aunt's place about half an hour out of Canberra. Even though it is only supposed to take half and hour from their house to Canberra, we left really early (7:30), because we thought that there would be heaps of traffic.
We arrived at 8:15, but only found the building at 8:30. We sat in the car and listened to the Italian news until we saw my teacher.

I said goodbye to my family, then went into the building with my teacher.
There was a lady at the door who we had to give my photo ID and a letter that they sent us to. My teacher handed the lady my photo ID, then I opened my suite case to look for the letter.
I looked and looked and looked, but it wasn't there. My blood literally ran cold!
Thankfully, my teacher had a photo copy of the letter, and the lady said that was good enough.

Then the lady attached a number (8) to the back and front of my leotard. Don't ask me why.....

We then went into the change rooms and my teacher put the "light pink velvet hair ribbon" (she had picked one up for me) into my hair, then she passed me a package and told me to open it once the exam was over.

The lady came in and told me to "say goodbye to Mom and go into the warm up room." (the lady thought that my teacher was my Mom - ha ha!) My teacher said, "Ooh, I am your Mom, OK," then she told the lady that she was actually my teacher. I said goodbye to her and went into the warm up room.

I put on my flat ballet shoes, then did some stretches.
A little while later, another girl came in. Then another. I found out later that a fourth girl was supposed to come, but she never did.
We practices some exercises, then the lady came it. (I have no idea was the 'lady's' name was).
She showed us how we would enter the exam room, and what the examiner and pianists name was.

Then she left us. We warmed up for a while, then the 'lady' came in. She said it was time to go in for the exam.

We collected our pointe shoes (guess what, we weren't supposed to wear toe protectors - but we all took them in with us), then lined up at the door, ready to go in.

I WAS TERRIFIED!

The bell went and we all ran in. We said good morning to Mrs. Everson and the pianist (I can't remember her name).
Then we put down our pointe shoes and ran to the arr.

The barr seemed to be okay. One exercise the the other girls did a little differently, I just kept doing it the way I was taught.
We actually skipped a lot of the exercises, I guess that there wasn't enough time to do them all.

The center was okay, too. Except for the 'thing' (I just spent ages on the Internet looking up how to spell in, but google had no idea what I was talking about.) aka: jumble of exercises you have to do at the examiners command. I totally stuffed that up, and so did another girl - ooh well!

Again, we skipped a heap of the exercises. We also had lots of breaks, where we could go over to the corner and have a drink. There was a shelf with a water jug, cups a tissue box and a vomit bowl (thankfully none of us had to us the bowl).

The other girls did the dance a little bit differently from me. But again I stuck to what I was taught, and I think that I did it well - possibly..... (!!!)

Pointe wasn't actually that hard. One of the exercises at the barr we didn't do, and we only did half of each exercises in the center.

YAY!

Finally the exam was over. We said goodbye to Mrs. Everson and Mrs. Turner (I think that was her name - maybe no!) then ran out.

"No more exams for another year," I though. I got changed into some other clothes, then said goodbye to my teacher.

We went to BLOCH to get me some new pointe shoes, Demi pointe shoes and a new leotard. I got a fantastic pair of pointe shoes, they are sooo comfortable - well, as comfortable as a pointe shoe can get.
The demi pointes are soooo funny. They look just like a pointe shoe, but have nothing at the end. If you go on pointe on them, you actually wreck them!
I tried on litrally millions of leotards, all different sizes. I will have to take a picture the one I chose, and put it on my blog.

After BLOCH we went to the food court. Then headed home.

I am SO glad that the exam is over, and that I don't have to do another one for one more year!

4 More Sleeps!

The heading probably makes it sound as if I were excited - but I'm not.....I'm extremal nervous!
I have only got 2 more classes before the exam.....saying that makes me even more nervous!

We went to a large town some kilometres from where we live, on Friday. We got new ballet stockings, and ribbons to sew onto my flat ballet shoes.

On Saturday we looked and looked and looked for a "light pink velvet hair ribbon, about 1 cm wide," that I have to wear in my hair. Don't ask me why!
After ages of searching, we eventually found one. It was light pink, but now velvet. We bought it anyway, then kept searching for one that was actually made of velvet. We ended up finding one in the shop next door, though it was not 'light' pink, we bought in.
I have to show them to my teacher today, and she can decided which one is the best.....like the examiner is going to care, anyway!!!

On Thursday, guess how many kilometres I rode on the exercise bike.....15! I know, I was pretty bored by the end of it.
It sounds like a lot of kilometres, but it really isn't that hard, if you can get past the boredom. It's not so bad if I'm watching TV while I am riding, or listening to my Ipod.
Once I went through a stage where I would do something ridiculous like 25 km per day. It took up so much time and I got tooooo seriously bored, that I stopped.

Later on today it is my second to last ballet class before the exam! I think that we are just going to start the music and keep going, not stopping it at all!