My First All-Nighter

My dance studio's annual lock-in was three weekends ago. I've been twice now, and this year, I stayed up the whole time. I'm proud of myself but also (was) exhausted.
I have written a journal-ish account of the whole thing.
(all times are approximate.)

7:00

The lock-in started at 6:30, but I got there around 7. The first thing I picked up was a handful of Swedish Fish, because why not? There was pizza, but I had eaten dinner already. Someone brought cream puffs, which are maybe the most delicious thing on the planet.
Last year, the food options were amazing, and this year was no different. There were a couple flavors of chips, some sour candy, M&Ms, cookies, cream puffs, guacamole, strawberries, and more stuff that I can't remember and probably didn't eat.

Mrs. M. handed out some balloons, and we got a little competitive with who blew up the most. Unfortunately, the group that won was given more balloons in the first place. Oh well.

7:30
This year Mrs. M. decided that we should have the instructor from a local karate studio come and teach us some self-defense. My friend Stephanie and one of my dance teachers take there.
We learned two kicks and a few strikes that I can't remember the names of. 

The instructor said I had good form a few times, which Stephanie said really meant it, especially from him. Maybe I would be good at karate.
At the end we sat in a circle while he told us some application stuff. One girl asked how effective a pocketknife was for self-defense, then proceeded to take hers out and open it, scaring the girls sitting next to her.

8:30
When self-defense was over, everyone made a mad rush for the food.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. They made a messy line. Since most everyone had eaten all the regular food they wanted to eat, it was time to break out the Sour Patch and M&Ms.
A few girls and I went back to ask the instructor some things about self-defense.

9:00
Mrs. M. called everyone into the Peach room to play a game. I can't remember what it was called, but it was similar to Charades. To play, everyone wrote down three things on slips of paper and put them into a basket. Then we divided into two teams. When it was my team's turn, we picked one person to take words from the basket and try and get us to guess them. The first round we could use any words we wanted to describe the word. The second round we could only mime. The third round we could only say one word.
There was a lot of cheering and applause and strange actions and gestures. "Socks" and "dolphins" ended up in the word basket about six times each.
"They go under your socks!!" - Maddie
She meant socks. It got put in there so many times it started to confuse people. Mrs. S. yelled "Benedict Cumberbatch" every few minutes.
"Benedict Cumberbatch! Michael Jackson! Norway!" 
My friend Izzie decided not to play, and instead spent the entire game throwing Hershey's Kisses at me. At first I ate them, but when she wouldn't stop throwing them, I threw them back by the handful.

10:00
After the game, people started setting up blankets and things. I noticed that no one but me was setting up their things on the wood floor, not that it really mattered.
We peeled up the tape in the Peach room and replaced it. It went really fast with 30 people.
Obviously we didn't set up our beds for an entire hour, but I don't remember what else we did. I think I might have gotten some pizza.

11:30
Some girls went downstairs to choreograph a dance. I decided to join them. I stopped on my way down to watch a girl drag Caitlyn around on a blanket. She almost got shut in the elevator door, but Stephanie caught it.
I don't remember what song we danced to. Stay With Me, I think? Kaci sang some of it while we were working. She has a really pretty voice.
We choreographed the first verse and the chorus. It turned out pretty cool.

12:00
We finished our choreography and decided that we wanted to play sardines. (Sardines is like reverse hide-and-seek: one person hides and everyone else tries to find them. Then when you find them, you have to hide with them. The last one seeking is it. You usually end up packed into a tight spot like sardines.)
Unfortunately, no one else wanted to play sardines, so instead we sat around and ate potato chips.

1:00

My friends and I started planning how to stay up all night. We weren't supposed to sleep on the second floor this year, so we moved our things into the hallway so we wouldn't disturb the people in the studios who, for some reason, actually wanted to sleep. Some people were already asleep. I guess they were tired. 

We went back downstairs and showed Mrs. M. our choreography, and we did our Jazz and Contemporary dances.
Some girls had a dance off. I'm not sure who won.
In our Contemporary dance, we throw someone. It's controlled and takes about six people to catch, of course, we aren't launching her off the stage or anything. We had just enough people, and we said that we were going to all run and do one throw, instead of the three groups we normally do.
However, one girl ran to the wrong place, and we couldn't do the lift. 

2:30

By now I was feeling sleepy and getting a little bit tired of people. I decided to settle down and watch YouTube for a while. Little did I know that I was about to be dragged back downstairs by the rest of Advanced B.

We literally did our ballet dance at 2:30 a.m. Why. 

We ran through it once, and then we dispersed and went back to our sleeping bags. I played the Sims mobile for a while. Some other people came in and laid down. Stephanie watched youtube on her phone, Lacy set up her sleeping bag on the bench, and Mrs. M talked to Lauren about knitting.
I turned on Danger Days to try and keep myself awake. It worked for a little while, but then I took out my earbuds and put my head down. I kind of fell asleep, but I was still listening to everything everyone said. Then Mrs. M mentioned that she had to wake my friend Izzie up at 6 a.m. the next morning. The mention of her name woke me up suddenly, and I didn't go back to sleep. 

3:00
I played the Sims a little more and ate a lot of cheese potato chips. Let me pause for a minute and rant about cheese potato chips, because oh my gosh. They're even better than barbecue, which was my favorite flavor. Sorry barbecue.
Then I got bored and went downstairs. Olivia, Mallory, Beth, and Trisha were sitting in the Blue room talking. I sat down with them and talked for a long time. I don't remember what we talked about specifically, because I was pretty tired. We played two truths and a lie for a little while. I'll put mine here.
1. Mint is the first cat I've ever had.
2. I have three Instagram accounts.
3. My favorite flavor of Starbursts is orange.
I'm not saying which is the lie, you have to guess.
At one point, Olivia went upstairs to get snacks. She came back with the bag of M&Ms, popcorn, cream puffs, and Starbursts. I ate so much sugar that night, but it was honestly worth it.

5:00
We started to fall asleep a little bit, so we got up to do something. We played that sleepover thing where you try to lift someone, and then you say something and suddenly you can lift them higher. It's weird because it actually works.
We also tried to do that thing where you sit in chairs and make a chain, and then take the chairs away and stay there. That one didn't work. We fell four times before we gave up.
Those are really bad descriptions and I'm sorry.

6:00
As soon as we realized it was six, we started celebrating. Izzie and Mrs. M. got up and came downstairs. I laid down on the floor, and Olivia yelled at me not to fall asleep, because they still had an hour to go to beat their record. Last year they stayed up until 6:45.
When the sun started to come up, we took pictures of the street outside to post on our Instagram stories. We did it! We stayed up all night!

7:00
A few people woke up and came downstairs. Ironically, the girls who actually slept look like zombies, and my group was wide awake.
Once everyone was up, we cleaned up the food and bedding and dragged it all downstairs.
My dad asked me if I wanted to drive. No, I would probably fall asleep.

8:00

When I got home, I ate two pieces of celery for breakfast because I did not want anything that even remotely resembled sugar. And at 8:45, I finally fell asleep.

I slept until 2 p.m., and then, foolishly thinking I had gotten enough sleep, got up and sat on the couch. I fell asleep again about 30 minutes later.
That was the lock in!
Until later,

P.S. Sorry it took so long for me to write this. I've been super busy, but hopefully stuff will slow down soon and posting can go back to normal.