Phantoms of the Opera

Okay, so my crazy students are performing an opera tomorrow. Stone Soup the opera. That's right. 

An OPERA. An all singing, full on opera. I'm a bit nervous. 

The science specialist at my school asked me if I wanted to put on an opera with my students. A volunteer from the Chicago Lyric Opera comes to work with us each week and we sing and learn the songs and do blocking on the stage and put on a show- the whole bit. It sounded like a good end of the year activity. So I said yes, and here I am 15 weeks later. 

Now, anyone who even remotely knows me, knows I love theater and music and all that artsy, fartsy stuff- so why wouldn't I love to put on an opera with my 30 insane, South side kids? Well, the answer is that I have loved and hated it. I love having the kids experience something they never would have otherwise. I love them learning new things and being able to feel proud of their accomplishments. 

I don't, however, love them complaining about singing: 

"Why do we have to sing the same song again and again?" 

"Do you know the words yet?" 

"No" (with attitude)

"Well, then we have to learn it, right?"

"Uggghhh" (insert chair slouch here)

That I do not love. They really don't get the idea of practicing something. I mean, why would you do something twice? "We keep singing the same songs over and over!" they whine. Um, yeah, no duh- it's called rehearsing. Whatevs.

I also hate holding consequences over their heads to get them to sing and dance around on stage. I personally don't care if they prance and sing or not. It's just that now that we're signed up to perform, so let's not make fools of ourselves, okay? Let's actually learn the songs . . . that's kind of essential to perform an opera. 

Anyway, overall, it has been great. We have props that the art teacher helped with and costumes that we borrowed and brought from home. Some of the costumes are pretty out there:  like the one student who insisted on wearing this George Washington wig he found and a black vampire cape. What part is he? I don't know. But if that makes him happy and encourages him to sing his part as a "villager"- eh, who cares.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes. I think with some luck and few prayers from their frazzled (who am I? frazzled??) teacher, it will work out. 

Countdown

Just so you know there are 4 weeks of school left for Chicago Public Schools. 4 weeks, people!

Also, in top news, the annual crime report for Chicago came out. The West Englewood neighborhood had the most murders out of the entire city.  Guess where I teach . . . yep, West Englewood- Keepin' it real!

And P.S. Robbie is doing his internship next year in the neightborhood with the second most murders. We live for danger?? 

(By the way, these two comments are not related. I am not excited for school to end because I am fearing for my life or anything- I just love summer time- even when I'll be teaching summer school.) 

Four Score and Seven Years Ago . . .

Okay, so it hasn't been that long, but for some reason I just wanted to start off with something more momentous than: 

"It's been four years".

But! It has been four years - and that is pretty awesome to us!  

April 29, 2005

We take turns planning our anniversaries. 

That way it's always a surprise and one of us has to plan something :)

Our first anniversary, Robbie took us to the Bellagio in Las Vegas

Our second anniversary was in Russia. 

So we both planned that one: St. Petersburg.

Number three: we went to the beach house in North Carolina.

(I thought it was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself)

This year, I woke up to a scavenger hunt and beautiful bouquet of flowers. The "hunt" took me all over our apartment (including the fridge, where I found my favorite pie: Coconut cream! Mmm) to find out what we were going to do for the big day. We went to a delicious dinner and to a spa resort outside the city. 

Pretty perfect. Good job, Robbie. 

P.S. On our wedding day, Robbie had the job of putting our wedding song (You Are the Love of my Life) on a CD to give to the DJ for our "first dance". However, he accidentally burned the wrong song on the CD, which we didn't realize until about 10 seconds into the dance. I'm pretty sure this picture is us talking about the fact we were dancing to the wrong song (although, I have to say, at least it happened to be romantic and appropriate- it wasn't Welcome to the Jungle or anything- thank goodness).