My youngest brother, Paul, has been in Orchestra camp for the past week, which means that even though we've been on the same island, we haven't seen him. Now, orchestra for most people means BORING but they have a truly incredible program; demanding but balanced with so much fun and recreation that it is well worth it.
Plus his girlfriend is in band, which was holding camp at the same time and had a few conjoined activities.
We had planned all along to go to the end-of-camp concert, but after I got about 2 hours of sleep last night (seriously, between diarrhea Tony, a mewling cat, and OK I'm awake at 3:45 Naomi...2 hours might be a generous estimate) we decided that this would be our ONLY activity today.
Ok, so we went to the little neighborhood park for an hour. No biggie.
The concert was great, and after all the Baroque music they'd been focussing on, out came a prominent local band they'd recorded with to do some "fun" music. And it was a lot of fun! We sat right next to the school principal (a man on equal footing with the Governor in general social status)...well, Tony did. He fell asleep midway through the concert but hey, he wasn't a pest. Naomi was surprisingly good too; she found a package of hair accessories in my bag and spent over an hour taking them out, putting them on fingers, putting them back in, taking them out, handing them to family members, etc.
We were back on my own alma mater, Kamehameha Schools, and while I didn't run into any former classmates or teachers (school is not in session) I did find someone I'd run track with. The views were just what I remembered. Spectacular.
I didn't get to meet Paul's girlfriend, the drum major for the Kamehameha Marching Band, an elite band that performs in such events as the Presidential Inauguration Parade and a great many other invitational venues. They, apparently, are a tad more disciplined than the orchestra; when Paul's band played (err, for dancing) at the band dance, they would not let him so much as SPEAK to his girlfriend after he exited the stage, much less kidnap her to come meet us. But hey, exclusive invitations to perform in China must come at a price, right? And that price is, well, being incredibly anal about what the band members are doing during camp.
Anyway, we saw Paul perform, met up with him after, and he and Naomi...well, she won't even LOOK at him. Buried her head in my shoulder. If she didn't have that available she'd actually do a wrinkly-faced "if I close my eyes for long enough, maybe he'll go away" kind of thing. After we'd all been back at my parents' for a couple hours, she LOOKED at him a few times when he wasn't looking at her, but that's as far as it went. When he went to watch his girlfriend perform (from the audience...without talking to her...errrrrr), Naomi declared victory and is happily sleeping in what she believes to be a Paul-free house.
The other kids, on the other hand, had a riotous time letting Paul toss them around the pool and couldn't quite understand the allure of watching the girlfriend play when he could very well keep swimming with THEM.
Ooooh, oooh, and this was funny enough to share; girlfriend rounds up the band members even from the dining hall by blowing a whistle. On the other end of the hall, Paul's orchestra friends have decided that the only suitable thing to do is to get Paul a whistle so that he can return the mating call. They do, after all, seem to have to communicate at a distance. Well, at least for this week. Which to a kid entering his senior year in high school, might as well be FOREVER. That they didn't get around to it over camp matters little. They'll probably get him to do it some other time now that they've gotten the idea into their heads.
The camera took a break today too. Didn't take a single photo. Although I would have if I'd remembered to bring it to the concert, but, oh well.
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