What a surreal experience... I went to see Nune perform for the first time ever.... in Washington DC. Not only in Washington, but at my old High School. I haven't stepped foot in that school for 8 years, and there I was going back to see Nune sing on the same stage that I saw my friends perform in Peter Pan. Everywhere I looked I remembered moments from high school, sadly bad memories out-weighed the good. I didn't enjoy my high school years, probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was known as the "strange ethnic Armenian girl that was too different to be cool." But many years later, I observed Nune dancing all over the same stage. We had an AYF meeting in DC that weekend, so there were a good 50 people in town that went to the show together. We sat in a section on the side up front together and I think Nune liked us. Most of the audience was pretty reserved, clapped when songs were over, but didn't make a scene like us. She kept coming over to our section to sing to us, but apparently wanted to go the extra step to show her appreciation. She jumped off stage and walked over to us, grabbing our hands and asking us all to dance. Next thing you know, there is a big crowd of 50 people in front dancing and Nune in the middle. In that same room, I remember school assembies wasting my time. Surreal indeed.

I received another bit of bad news yesterday that is particularly devastating to me. Years ago, I organized a huge photo archiving project for the AYF office. We had stacks of photos, unlabelled, all over the place, no order whatsoever. It took me months and even years to identify, label, file and organize these photos, along with buying albums and filing system to organize them in. Since then, we have systematically photographed our events and filed them accordingly. Apparently at the AYF Olympics last month, the hotel was so outraged at the damage that our guests had done to the hotel, they cleaned out one of the rooms being used for storage... the same room our photo archives were being stored in. Straight into the dumpster. The hotel has done many illegal things with our group, probably thinking they could get away with it because we are a measly non-profit youth group that can't handle taking on a big hotel. They added unauthorized 100 charges to EVERYONE's credit cards that had an ian at the end of their name who stayed in the hotel that weekend and blamed it on us. This would be the Radisson hotel and the Scanticon hotel connected to it in Philadelphia. Feel free to take my advise in boycotting them. I've never seen such a massive corporate business handle their business so unprofessionally and illegally in such a blatant and public manner. The AYF will be starting a huge photo collection campaign soon to restore our archives. If there are AYFers reading this, please feel free to call the AYF office for more information. I hate to sound like a commercial, but it's not for me. It's much more personal.