Once again, Kingston High School arts students enrich our community with their talent and their savvy international living experiences. Fine Arts Boosters’ featured artist for April, senior and singer Amanda Holbrook, came home to Eglon and the KHS Choir from five months in Argentina with American Field Service.
Amanda has lived in the same house all of her life, a “country girl with horses, lots of land and four sisters.” Still, she enjoys having the city close by.
“I have really, really been involved in playing sports — basketball and volleyball. I just picked up singing,” she said. “It was meant to be, it comes so easily.”
She began playing tenor saxophone in elementary school. Last year, she joined choir — she is the secretary — and although she had never been in a musical she tried out and got the lead roll of Queen Aggravain in “Once Upon a Mattress.”
When you attended the performance recently, you did not see or hear her. A serious illness intervened. By the last performance, she could sit in the audience and, “I found it hard not to sing along.” She smiled a bit wistfully.
At the Olympic Region Solo and Ensemble Contest, Amanda sang a classical/folk Spanish love song, “Promise Me,” almost perfectly and in Spanish. “In the wonderful Bremerton High School auditorium, I didn’t recognize my own voice in the excellent acoustics,” she said.
Having been accepted to several nearby universities, she plans on a nursing major with a minor in Spanish. Hopefully, she will keep on singing. Amanda says there are many opportunities in college.
Now having lived with a family in the Argentinian desert, she is fluent in Spanish and she experienced first-hand the differences in life in her two countries.
“After a 10-hour bus ride all by myself, at the last stop — how would I know it was the last stop? — I saw my host family sitting there. I had no face recognition for them but they did for me. I could talk on and on about my experiences. Because I will soon vote, I need to know what is going on in the world.”
There are seven exchange students at KHS right now. Kamal from Malaysia is living with the Holbrooks. Kamal is the first AFS student to arrive here. Perhaps the thing giving Amanda courage to tackle big things is the hurdle she gets over every day since she was 9 — Type 1 Diabetes. “I can do so much more than I would ever know,” she said. She shares her coping skills and love as a counselor at a diabetes camp in Idaho.
Amanda the athlete thinks sports are important. Amanda the singer feels the arts are just as crucial in a healthy community. Support KHS music at the April 10 Concert, 7 p.m., and the Dessert Dinner Showcase fundraiser. Check out our website KHSFAB.com and our Facebook page.
— Marilyn Bode writes FAB Spotlight for the Kingston Community News. Contact her at Lidenbode@aol.com
