Summer vacation? Montreal!

It's been awhile since I've updated anything here. The lack of writing is mostly due to the fact that summer started, and life, believe it or not, got crazier. I guess in a sense it just got different, but the amount of time I spend in my room has significantly decreased, thanks to the 6-day-per-week work schedule that organizes my time. It looks like this: physical plant work on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 7:30 am until 3:30 pm; babysitting Monday and Tuesday from 10 until 3, babysitting Thursday from 9:30 until 5, and church on Sunday. I guess that means I don't have too much time for a Sabbath rest, but Sunday afternoon can count for that, most likely. The rest of my time should be spent practicing, but I have yet to figure out how to work that in as the music building closes a full five or six hours earlier than it does during the school year. Inconvenient. Luckily, I should be able to practice tomorrow morning from 7:45 until 9-ish, which should help my embouchure get back in shape.

Since the last time I wrote anything, I journeyed to Montreal! It was lots of fun. We visited several churches including one with the second largest copper dome in the world (St. Joseph's Oratory), saw the Bodies Exhibit (I would strongly recommend it for anyone who is not squeamish about the human body), and ate lunch at a very good restaurant next to the underground city. Getting to St. Joseph's turned out to be more of an adventure than we planned - including a uphill 15-minute hike - but the views, the church, and the organ (!) were totally worth the sweat and inhalers involved in the arrival. It was gorgeous:

And the organ was magnificent!

We got a bit lost on the way back to Vermont, but the GPS saved us and we got back in time to see the sunset over Lake Champlain in Burlington.

Overall, a most excellent day trip.

In addition

I realized that every time I write something and finish it, I think of about a hundred more things I want to say. All of these things of course slip my mind as soon as I go to write them down, but I thought that if I perhaps started right away, I wouldn't forget.

I had the most wonderful evening last night! It started with dinner at Chipotle with some of the world's greatest people. I had never had Chipotle before, so it was a new and excitingly different experience. We lingered for a long time after we'd finished eating, discussing our college ensembles, music technique, the role of women in orchestras, study abroad programs to Salzburg, portraits, etc. We then decided to watch Star Trek VIII: First Contact, which was a whole lot of fun as well as a culturing experience. On the way back home, while laughing over the fact that I, thanks to the laryngitis, sounded like the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings, things took an interesting turn when we witnessed a car accident. That part of the evening wasn't so wonderful, but it was somewhat thought provoking. It's so easy to forget how incredibly fleeting life is. We think of death as being a long way off, something we don't need to think about until we're old and "ready" to leave the world, but it doesn't always work like that. If that car or our car had been in a slightly different place a few seconds earlier, we could have been involved in the accident as well. That being the case, why should I be complaining about simple things like a cold or too much work or a particular circumstance that didn't quite go exactly as planned?

In chapel this morning some members of the senior class expounded upon their lives while at Gordon. They talked about what they wanted to do with their lives, and how Gordon had changed who they were. It made me think about what I wanted my life "signature" to be, and how I should live in relation to that signature. I came to the conclusion that I want my life to be a reflection of who God is, and his love for his precious creation. "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" So here I stand: let my life be solely for the glory of my God and for the edification of his people.

FINALS WEEK.

I have a long to-do list. It goes like this:

-Finalize summer job plans

-Study for two finals

-Figure out when I have to take those two finals

-Finish two final projects

-Take the MTEL pre-tests on Saturday at some ungodly early hour (drive for an hour first)

-Jury for my semester grade in oboe

-Practice

-Sleep?

-Get rid my nasty cold and laryngitis (observation: I've been sick in some form for an entire quad)

-Go out to tea! (YAY!)

-Finish the last few days of classes

-Figure out life after college. This can maybe wait for a few weeks, but grad school research needs to start now

-Several rehearsals

-End-of-year music major get-together

-Church

-Pack up all my stuff and move to another building on campus

I'm sure there's more to add to this list, but that's all I can think of right now. All of that stuff needs to happen within the next 12 days, and so I'm hoping that life will be a little less hectic by day 13. In the mean time, I will be praying a whole lot, listening to a bucketload of both classical and non-classical music, and drinking several hundred mugs of tea.

Late at night...

I can't sleep. This could be related to the fact that I ate a fair amount of candy this evening, but I'm not entirely sure that eating candy at 9 would affect me at 2 am. Who knows.

I have been listening to Ella Fitzgerald all day today. I have a CD in my car that I've been playing and consequently singing along with. Maybe it's cheesy, but I really like her music - it's along the same lines as Michael Buble and Frank Sinatra. This afternoon, I decided I like "Too Marvelous for Words" the best on my particular CD. I couldn't find a Youtube recording of Ella singing it, but I did find one of Frank Sinatra, which is also good, albeit slightly different:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TtMHUJeiSc

Finally, I'm pretty sure that a good friend and I are going on a road trip to Montreal from May 14th - 16th. SO EXCITED! It will be lots of fun for a number of reasons: it's a "foreign country;" roadtrip ('nuff said); speaking French; Canada; etc. We're also hoping to go to church there, maybe on Saturday night. I'm not really expecting Canadian church to be any different from American church, but just the fact that it's Canadian is somewhat interesting. So with that, I think I'll look up directions for how to get from northern Vermont to Montreal and then try to sleep one more time.

Time to cook?

I NEED TO COOK. That is all. Ok, not really all, but right now it's taking precedence. This evening I was sitting in front of my computer, attempting to motivate myself to finish my homework, when I happened to glance to my left and spy Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Thus ended my homework effort for a good twenty minutes, and it only resumed when I promised myself that if I finished my homework I could look at it some more. I realized the other day that my love of cooking goes beyond just experimenting with recipes. To illustrate, I will compare myself with my mom, who likes to redecorate rooms in our house. She often goes to hardware stores just to look at all the options - sink faucets, light fixtures, counter tops, furniture, etc. - to get some ideas about how she would redecorate the next room on her list. In my case, I am drawn to the cookbook section of the bookstore, I love Williams and Sonoma in the mall, and while waiting around for 45 minutes to get my hair cut, I found myself in the kitchenware section of Kohls. Maybe that's unhealthy...it's not like I'm a gourmet cook or anything, I just like to experiment with recipes that seem promising. So far, they've turned out well, even if they don't look gorgeous. The problem is (as previously stated) that there is no alcohol on campus, and most of the recipes I want to try involve it to some degree. For example: a particular beef recipe that sounds fantastic requires six to 24 hours of marination in five cups of red wine.

In other news, I went to six recitals this weekend, and played in three of those six. Far. Too. Many. They were all very well done though, so I think the time spent in the recital hall was worth it, except that I'm now finishing the homework that was assigned Friday.

On a more philosophical note, I have a lot to think about as of now. I've found that it's difficult to balance everything sometimes, and I feel like I can't juggle the major things all at once. According to the present moment, major things include academics, music, family, friends, and faith. Up until this year I'd never been able to balance the academics and the music, but this year I figured out how to do that. But because of that balance, the social aspect of life was shifted and dynamics started changing. I can only assume that life will get more challenging after college, so I guess it's best that I learn to balance everything now while it's still simpler.

Regarding Dancing

I forgot how much I love to dance. Ballroom, mostly, but occasional ballet in the kitchen at home is nice too. A few of us watched Take the Lead last night, and by the end of the movie all of us wanted to get up and dance. Unfortunately, we're a little bit hindered from looking like people in movies by minimal ability level, but it's still fun even if you just know the basic steps of a lot of different dances. Tango, of course, is my all-time favorite, just because it's so....well, I don't know exactly what it is, except for sweet. Overall point: I need to go ballroom dancing sometime in the future, even if it's over the summer. It will happen. Thus saith...someone, I guess.

Holy Week and Folk Songs

I haven't updated anything here in a long time! Thus, I'll begin with Holy Week. It was by far the best Holy Week celebration I've ever had. On Maundy Thursday, we all went to church and sang an absolutely beautiful piece by Maurice Duruflé called Ubi caritas. Based on the Latin title, one could easily and correctly surmise that it was originally Gregorian chant. We didn't sound quite like this, but this is a nice recording of the piece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=457nVpxJDkA

After church in the evening, we decided to go out to eat. At this point, I ordered my first drink (I know, I know, I've been 21 for well over a month and I still haven't drunk anything...) but I forgot my wallet, resulting in no ID. Oh well. I don't feel like I missed out on anything, really. Good Friday was also spent at church in the afternoon, and then we went to go see the BSO perform Mendelssohn's Elijah with the Tanglewood chorus that evening. It was magnificent. Ooooooh, the choir's first entrance...and the rest of the piece...glorious.

On Saturday, we spent the whole entire afternoon and into the night cleaning and baking, interspersed with listening to Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, which is also magnificent! Everyone should become familiar with it.

On Sunday, the church service, like the Elijah and the Organ Symphony, was also magnificent! It included a choir, a brass choir, an ORGAN (epic proportions, obviously, if you know the organist), and a handbell choir. As it turns out, I am a horrible handbell player. Perhaps if I practiced I'd get better at it, but my handbell debut was suboptimal. At least I had the fifth of the chord instead of the root. Church was followed by a lovely gathering of wonderful friends, and overall Easter was splendid. Best Holy Week of all time, so far.

UNTIL....dun dun dun....Monday happened. Well, not really just Monday, but the due date of our semester-long Folk Song Repertoire Project loomed in the future (Wednesday morning at 8). The weather was gorgeous, but both my entire Monday and Tuesday were spent in the windowless computer lab in the basement of the music building. Serious thought process for two days straight: "Oh gosh. This project is insane. I'm never going to finish! I have so much to do! Curses! I have two rehearsals tonight! I'm going to be up ALL NIGHT! No, no, I can do this. I just have to manage my time efficiently. Make a list. BUT I HAVE REHEARSAL! WHY AM I A MUSIC MAJOR?!?!?! Can I quit now?? Oh wait. It's the middle of the semester. What's this? I have stuff ON TOP of that? Like finding a summer job, finding housing, doing other stuff, worrying about normal social life and things of that ilk, etc.? Wait. Social life. I can't handle complications right now. This is nonsense. I'm going to eat chocolate. No. I have to finish. WORK."

In any case, the project is now done and turned in (on time, AND I got four hours of sleep! Win!), so I will hopefully have a little more time to devote to things outside of school work that require my attention. Needless to say, the number of hours I've spent practicing piano has increased exponentially since this morning, which I find excellent. :)