Day 5

Daily Practice
30 mins
I woke up early this morning and sang through the the first 13 exercises of the warm-up CD.  I fell in love with the "Ng, Ng, Ng, Ng, Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah" practice.  Making the "Ng" shape forces sound into the mask region and relieves tension from the back of the tongue and soft pallet.  That's what I need!  Usually when I sing the "Ahh" vowel, my tongue pulls back and the sound goes back into my throat rather than staying forward and sounding bright, but when I did it in this exercise, everything fell in place.  Hooray!

I wish I could have practiced longer, but I had to rush to work.  I wait tables at a place that sells $4 margaritas, so needless to say, we were a hotspot for Cinco de Mayo!

Healthy Meal 12
I still ate healthy today, but I didn't take pictures of everything, so only breakfast will count.  I ran out of bowls... time to run the dishwasher... so try not to judge my coffee-mug breakfast.  :)

Breakfast- cereal
Lunch- vegetarian chili and side salad
Dinner- cereal (seriously, stop with the judgment)

Dance Class 3

Can't fake sweat!

I took Latin Jazz with Maria Torres.  It was a great class!  She taught us set choreography, but she really forced us to explore our own musicality and awareness of physical space, rather than just regurgitating the steps that she showed us.  I need to apply that to ALL of my classes, but it was nice that she spent so much time addressing it explicitly.




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It was a good day, but this was my first day back to work since the challenge started-- I'm sure you can tell by my writing that I'm not as energized as I have been the first few days.  It's so hard to put my full energy into singing and dancing after spending 7 hours on your feet running around a restaurant.  Obviously it's physically exhausting, but even more so it's emotionally draining.  I'm just tired of spending so much of my day in a negative environment, doing mindless activities.   Nevertheless, Happy Cinco de Mayo, and thanks for reading!