Thanksgiving in Albany, and Audition Stress

This year, I had the great fortune to spend Thanksgiving in Albany with my best friend, Elle. We left Tuesday night and I got back Saturday, so it was definitely a full vacation (with waaaaay too much food). I spent a lot of time just hanging out with her family, who are all very nice and sweet. She has three older sisters, and I was "roommates" with her closest sister Brittany for the couple of days I spent there. Her grandmothers, aunt, and uncle were also there, so it was a very full house.

I have a theory that I've gotten used to a certain (very low) standard of dorm food in college, so when I had Thanksgiving dinner, I had the worst stomach ache ever because I wasn't used to having such rich, high quality food. I told myself I'd get a little bit of everything but because there was sooo much food my plate was overflowing! The food was absolutely amazing; I loved this acorn squash that they made with maple syrup, it was super sweet and yummy. And I actually really enjoyed the brussel sprouts that Elle's sister Meredith made, which is odd because I don't usually like brussel sprouts. 

When we weren't hanging out with Elle's family and her super adorable dog Bear, we hung out a lot with her friends from high school. It was neat to get to meet them all and to see how Elle interacted with her high school friends as opposed to her NYU friends. I have to say, Elle seemed to act the same way with them as with me, but our friend Sam (who went to high school with Elle and who lives on the second floor of our building) was a lot more outgoing and talkative with his high school friends. Funny how some people change.

I really liked meeting all of Elle's friends, and hearing some old stories about her from high school and whatnot. Like me, she had a few distinctive groups of friends, and I think I liked her musical theater friends a bit better, or at least I got along with them better because even though I didn't know them, we had a lot in common that we could talk about. It was kind of cool to compare musical experiences and to talk about shows we've all done. One girl Alisa talked about coming to the city and visiting us at some point soon, which would actually be really fun!

Auditions are coming up this week. I have a dance audition on Thursday and then on Friday is my vocal audition for Once on This Island, and callbacks are on Saturday. Sunday is dance call for the rest of the Steinhardt spring musicals, and my formal audition for Carousel and the other shows is on Wednesday. I only have to sing at most one full "legit" song and one 16-bar cut of a more contemporary song. It's not a very formal affair, nothing much to worry about from what I've heard, but it's my first NYU audition so of course I'm nervous. The cast lists for everything comes out on either Saturday or Sunday of next week, so either the 14th or the 15th.