7th graders and tuba solos

Wow, I've been posting a lot. My life isn't usually this exciting...

Monday morning I was at Brentwood at 6:30 a.m. to leave for Camp Buckner. I was a counselor on the 7th grade retreat along with Colleen, Catherine, Ben, and Jay. Each of us had a group of 9-10 7th graders and a teacher sponsor. I was with Mrs. Morin, and our "low ropes" team-building exercise was disaster. We were attempting group juggling, and most of the guys were completely uninterested and wouldn't cooperate. After lunch, we found out that one of the groups would have to be split up because there were only 4 high ropes courses. My group split up, which worked out pretty well. During the high ropes, I was amazed at how far some of these kids were willing to push themselves. The first one we did, we had to walk across a steel cable only holding onto ropes hanging from above us. This wouldn't have been too bad, but they were pretty far apart, making it hard to grab onto the next one. Our instructor was Robert, an 50-ish black guy who was about 6'4." When we were preparing to climb and going through the commands, whenever we said, "Climbing," instead of saying, "Climb on," he would say, "Climb on witcha' bad self." For some reason, this entertained me to no end, and I doubt I'll ever forget it. Next was "The Screamer," which was a 40 foot high pole. The whole group would pull a rope to pull you to the top of it, then you would let go of the rip-cord and swing toward the other pole. This was the easiest, but most fun. That night, I led a devo for the guys in my cabin, which had me really nervous. Shockingly, all 10 of them stayed quiet for the whole time. Tuesday morning after breakfast, we did the other 2 ropes courses. First, we did the "Power Pole" which was a 30-foot pole with rungs on it. We had to climb up, stand on the top,(which was about a foot across) and jump to a trapeze bar. I was really proud of Co Ho, who stopped climbing before he got to the top and said he was coming down, but when we cheered him on, he eventually made it, jumped, and grabbed the bar. Unfortunately, I got one foot on the top, lost my balance, and fell. The next course was a 30-foot high balance beam, which Mike Lee and I crossed blindfolded. Good times.

After getting back to Austin, I went to UT for a tuba recital by Oystein Baadsvik, one of the best tuba players on earth(www.baadsvik.com). He played Carnival of Venice at a speed that would have been really impressive on piccolo. Then, as the second encore, he played Fnugg. Fnugg is so awesome, it cannot really be explained. It must be witnessed. Fortunaltely for those of you who weren't cool enough to be at the recital, a really good arrangement of Fnugg is on Youtube. Listen carefully and you will hear that he is singing through the tuba while playing.(multiphonics)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHMyrhilkdo

There is also a good recording of Carnival of Venice played by Baadsvik on Youtube.