Wednesday, May 19, 2010

CC Goes to Pepperdine!

UCSB Chamber Choir Goes to Pepperdine!

Breakfast
We had to up bright and early on Thursday morning to be on the bus at 7:45. The lovely Choir President Blythe arranged for bagels and cream cheese to be provided for breakfast and she was even thoughtful enough to bring almond butter and vegan cream cheese for me! (She is also vegan-ish.) I brought her a banana as thanks :) I also had a mug of coffee with soy creamer sweetened with stevia.
The view from the road.
The campus is really beautiful and feels more like a gated community! We had lunch in the dinning commons when we arrived.

Lunch
Pasta and salad for lunch. Nothing special but not bad either.
This was the view from where we sat and ate inside.
After our rehearsal, Savannah and Amanda and I decided to go chill out by the pool! Here? Yeah, this looks good. haha
Olympic size pool!
I brought an apple from the home that I used to finish off the rest of the vegan cream cheese and almond butter.
I also shared my homemade kettle corn with the girls!
This is the view from the dorm area where we were staying. We got lucky and had beautiful weather every day!
Savannah and me :)

Snack
Later that afternoon the girls and I just relaxed and enjoyed the fact that we were legally missing classes! I snacked on this Z bar and a few pieces of dried mango.

Dinner
After yet another rehearsal, the three of us met up with Amanda's sister who goes to UCLA for a Thai food dinner! The restaurant was called Cholada and it really didn't seem like much from the road but inside were all sorts of interesting, trendy "LA" people and the food/service was great! We started by ordering a bottle of unfiltered sake, my first time having sake at a meal! I really liked it; not overwhelmingly sweet and went down smooth.
I shared some of the tofu broccoli that the girls ordered.
We all had some of this crazy looking rice!
My entree was tofu peanut curry (sans coconut milk which I just don't like for some reason).
Sake!
Everything was soooo good! The broccoli was savory and garlicky while the curry tofu was spiced rich.
After our entrees we switched to hot sake which I also liked. I don't feel like I could pick a flavor between hot and cold though. I feel like they would each be good at different times of the meal and with certain flavors.

Dessert
You can probably imagine how excited I was when I realized that one of the desserts was coconut ice cream with fried banana. This ice cream was unbelievably good. It wasn't the kind of coconut ice cream that is meant to be a replacement for cows milk ice cream. Instead it tasted as though they had just chopped the tops off a bunch of coconuts and used the water and the meat to make this intensely fresh tasting creamy treat. The bananas were like egg rolls but with bananas inside.
Damage.
Little candies came with the check. I went for cherry.

The next day I forgot my camera at breakfast but don't feel like you missed out on anything, it really wasn't anything special. I mostly stuck to fruit and whole wheat toast with peanut butter.

Our morning started with two back to back performances in this awesome chapel. The stained glass was beautiful and in between our performances we listened to the group before us. It was a very meditative experience.
While we waited around I shared the rest of my dried mango with this frog..I mean with Savannah!

Lunch
For lunch they had polenta which I was fairly enthused about! I also loaded up on some fruit salad and raisin bran crunch on top. I grabbed an iced tea from the fountain machine and even though I have that coconut cream pie Lärabar in the picture I didn't end up eating it at lunch time.

Snack
Before a rehearsal for our last group performance Amanda and I shared the Lärabar. This has to be one of my favorite flavors for sure.
With only one performance on Saturday left, we decided to relax in our room and watch Tropic Thunder! That movie is hilarious! I snatched this apple from the dinning commons.

Our last day at Pepperdine we got to have a master class with the conductor of the symposium: Robert Page. This man was so inspiring and I feel lucky that the choir got to have such an awesome experience. We spent the weekend making music and getting to know each other a little better. The perfect little trip to end the quarter with. From left to right is Professor Gervais our choir director, Robert Page, Amanda, Savannah, and me.
A few more of the choir kids jumped in!

Lunch
My last meal at Pepperdine! I was pretty darn excited when I saw that the buffet was a burrito bar. I never have a problem eating vegan when there's mexican food. Beans, rice, and veggies! I also attacked the salad bar and got some salad with beets and onions and a fruit salad with those prune things.

It was weird coming back to "real life" and we were all sort of thrown off that it was only Saturday. All in all it was a fun trip and I'm glad we did it.

Now all I want to do is get caught up with blogging and be in the present!

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