Music Monday || Camp Electric Edition

Alright, so it's been awhile.....
For some reason July is always jam-packed for me. And this year, the first three weeks I had camp and then I was sick all last week from a combination of being away from home, not getting enough sleep, and not getting a lot of nutritious food. You know how camp goes....
So now I just have a little bit of congestion and I'm ready to recap Camp Electric for y'all!!

I have some depressing news first: I lost my phone. The wailing may now commence.

I lost it at Carowinds THREE DAYS before I left for camp, so I have no pictures. None.

On that note, the story shall continue. My parents and I drove up (over??) to Nashville on Saturday morning. We were originally supposed to go on Friday so we could do some sightseeing, but that didn't work out. We stayed at my dad's cousin's house on Saturday night and I got to see some distant cousins. Then after church on Sunday we went to a Greek diner for lunch and drove around Nashville until it was time to go sign me in.

There are three different weeks for Camp Electric; two of which were in Nashville and one that was in Ohio. The Nashville camps are hosted by Trevecca Nazarene University, which is a beautiful campus. I registered for the vocals track(more on those later), so when I signed in, I got my little packet of vocals info, my name tag, and my dorm key. After meeting my 3 roommates, we walked to the opening concert across campus.

Now I've had a lot of questions about what I learned during my time in Nashville, but the structure of Camp Electric wasn't about learning scales and bars and theory; it was more like getting to peek into the lives of the artists that were teaching and learning their "tricks of the trade" and where their love for making music has taken them and how they got to where they are.

Anyway, my three full days at camp went something like this:
Bible study at 7:30
Breakfast at 8
Worship at 9
Voice clinic at 10- this class was taught by vocal coach Marjory Searcy, and it was basically about vocal warmups and cooldowns(apparently those are important), ways to keep your voice at top performance status. Ms. Searcy was really awesome and helpful and I really feel like I benefited greatly from her class.
Tom Jackson at 11:10- So where Marjory Searcy worked with us on fine tuning our voices, Tom Jackson showed us different little ways to tweak a performance to create moments with an audience and connect with them, which was amazing.
Lunch at 12:20
All camp session at 1:30- basically a mini concert where we were put so all the leaders could have a meeting(:
2:30- Instrument specific class- This is when the different tracks are split up into skill levels. I was Class F, which is intermediate. I had a different teacher each day, all three focusing on different aspects of music and the business. I can do a separate post on these classes if y'all would like that, but there's waaaay too much info for this post.
Dinner alternated every day at either 4:30 or 5:30
Free time was in between 4:30 and 6:30 depending on dinner
Concert doors open at 6:45
Concert ends at 10:00
Lights out at 11- this didn't actually happen(: my roommates and I were up until 2 or 3 every night/morning. When you're sharing a tiny dorm with 3 other people you get real close, real fast. I loved having intense conversations with these girls that I'd only known for 48 hours.

But my favorite part, hands down, was walking around the campus and just hearing music from every direction. There were little jam sessions happening everywhere. People were walking and playing guitars and ukuleles and singing and it just made me really happy to hear and see that.

So that's an overview of my time at Camp Electric! If you want me to go into detail about any aspect of camp, than just comment below or email me at cjhearts98@gmail.com

Much love to all of you and Happy Music Monday!!
Callan

Where In The World Have I Been??

You may have noticed that I've been MIA for about 3 weeks.... I promise I have a good reason! On Thursday, April 23 I, along with my Varsity group, left for Washington DC at 6 in the morning. Why were we going to DC at 6am on a Thursday, you might ask?? Well, some of you might know what AWANA is, but in case you don't I'll explain: AWANA is an organization where kids of all ages (separated into age groups, of course) come together to memorize scripture, play games, and have fun!

The high school group is actually called Journey, but we call it Varsity. Every year AWANA holds a national games and quizzing competition called Summit, which was held in Washington DC this year. And that is why I went to DC at 6am on a Thursday morning.

So I thought I'd narrate my trip and share my (many, many) pictures, and I apologize in advance because there are SO many:D

Day One: Thursday

Bojangles at 9 in the morning. No makeup and everything. Just a heads up: my selfie face is the exact same every time, so you'll see a lot of my tongue... 





We have arrived!!

My lovely and crazy roommates!! Madeline on the left and Emily on the right.

Triplet-ing??   

Day Two: Friday



My first Frosted Lemonade from Chik-Fil-A!! So delicious, by the way;)

 



I have issues

Annalise's photobomb game is ON POINT!!

I don't know why this pic is blurry...

*steam coming out of ears* 

What do we do when we're waiting for a tree to be moved off of the road?? Lay in a random person's yard, of course!!

 

Me and Mads 

Tree huggerrrs

Kayla says she likes taking pictures with me because I'm almost as short as she is:)

The beautiful Great Falls..... and Caleb to the far right.

We so cute 

Of course we had to do an artsy Pinterest picture 

This was a great Titanic reenactment until Ransome decided that falling asleep on Walter would be a great idea:) 

And Dana comes in with the greatest photobomb of the day!!

Balancing precariously over a canal?? No big deal!!

My beautiful Kristie

 

Day Three: Saturday 

On our way to the games!! 

The team

 Me running Agility. Spoiler Alert: I won!!

 Three-Way Tug. Which we also won.

 Me being really serious and intense before the Balloon Relay

 

 Waiting for Nathan to get on the same knee as everyone else, which happened to be the knee he had surgery on. Oops;)

 But he worked it out

 Silver Circle winners!! That basically means we placed 4th overall.

SQUAD GOALS 

My beautiful Aunt Al came to watch us dominate the Silver Circle!! She also brought me an amazing gift bag that was filled with lots of goodies, including these throwback edition lip balms!!

On our way to the Closing Ceremonies

 

Kayla made me take off my heels because I was so much taller than her with them on:)

We are all SO proud of Kayla for earning her Citation!! Basically, it involves a lot of Bible memorization, community service, and reading through the entire Bible. It's a great accomplishment that a lot of people don't reach.

L to R: Madeline, Emily, Kayla, me, Olivia

We're very interested in the Gold Round of quizzing, really.

 

IHOP 

My beautiful Madeline

I stand by that statement 

Denim Squad minus Olivia



 

Day Four: Sunday 

On Sunday morning we took the Metro into the city, which was about an hours ride

The Washington Monument

 

 





I love these girls so much!

I apologize for the weird formatting that is happening with these four pictures. Blogger is dying on me:(



 When Bekah and I try to take a normal picture

007

 



 Probably my favorite picture from Summit

 

 On top of the world

 

The girls, minus Annalise and Olivia

                

 Selfies with Lil Kay

 

Sarah and I representing at the WWII Memorial

 

Let's take a stroll down to the Lincoln memorial, shall we??

A lot of stretching went into this picture, but it was sooo worth it!!

 

 El Presidente

 

Typical tourist-y picture;)

 

Madeline and I enjoying some highly overpriced frozen lemonade

 

La Casa Blanca

Wow, I'm using Spanish a lot. Probably because I'm about to take my final exam....

Anyway, doesn't this look like a painting?? I don't why, but it does and I love it!!

Air and Space Museum

 A chill pigeon. I don't even remember what this was for, but the pigeon was cool.

After we got back, some of us went to Cobblestone Creamery, where I got Pink Champagne Sorbet!! I was pretty excited, and it was delicious, by the way. 

 

We came back on Monday, but there are no pictures because everyone was exhausted and looked terrible. So that, believe it or not, is the shortened version of my weekend in DC. It was so much fun, and I won't ever forget it!!

 

For the next Music Monday, I'll show y'all my road trip playlist and talk about some specific songs.

 

Until we meet again

Callan