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!