Is that a post I see before me?

I'm sorry; that was a weak attempt at wit. I think I'll leave it because I can. Well, I'm home for Christmas and for the first time in my Samford career, I won't be going to take class over Jan Term. I will be back in Birmingham (sort of, at least) because I'm getting to go on the Italy trip with Dr. Sanders (for my non-SOPA friends, the music history professor takes a group of students/faculty to Italy for 10 days during Jan Term every other year). Pretty exciting, though hard to believe it's so close. Three weeks now, I think? We're hitting seven cities: Milan, Mantua, Florence, Venice, Rome, and I'm forgetting one. Bet you haven't heard of that one, right?

In other end-of-the-semester news, I passed my recital hearing Tuesday so my recital is on the calendar in ink for February 7, and that makes me happy, too. And because I'm student teaching next semester, I have no more class classes at Samford. That feels really odd, to be honest. I'll be living on campus, but at the same time I will feel like I'm hardly there at all. It sounds a little bleak, but maybe I'll have a little more time than I expect. I guess it just means I'll need to make conscious effort to spend time with all those people I care about. I'm sure student teaching will be cool once I get into it. In my current lazy Christmas vacation mood, however... :)

As far as grad schools, I've applied to two with one more definite and a couple maybes on the horizon. Ask me if you're interested and don't know, but I don't want to give too many details for the sake of the less minutely interested.

Christmas in nine days, and it seems very soon! It will be great as usual, I'm sure. Hordes of family, you know. I need to do some pretty significant shopping before then...actually before Tuesday (ie tomorrow) because Tuesday my car goes in the shop for a little reconstructive surgery, thanks to a fender bender last Monday night. Everybody was fine, which is always most important and I even drove Stitch home to Tupelo--he just has a little extra personality for the time being. For this time being, I've got to go because we're heading to Emma's Christmas program at church! I might even post again sometime; who knows?

So I confess--I'm a xanga moocher. I visit this site every day or two, find out what everyone else is doing, and then leave. It's a very one-sided relationship. I suppose, since my sister asked and because it's been almost 2 months, I could post again.

Although I'm really not sure what to say. I've been doing the school thing, the homework thing, the practicing thing, a little of the teaching thing, and a very little of the applying to grad schools thing. I've also been trying to hang out with friends/boyfriend/sister/cousin, play a little Frisbee, read some for fun, bum around a smidge. It sounds pretty boring when you condense it down that far, but I don't find it so. I'm pretty content with where I am (eh, admittedly some days I don't want to practice my whole time and sometimes I really don't want to do some of my homework), though not sure where I'm heading next.

My goal--for those who don't know--is to go to grad school in music ed/string pedagogy (teaching string instruments). I've got several really first-rate places I'm applying to and that I would love to admit me. It would be really cool to go to a grad school with a really amazing program. I'm hoping to find someone who will take me. At least most places don't have auditions for music ed folks, which is good. Before you shake your heads and say I'm being modest, let me say that as hard as I've worked these past four years, I am not qualified for a performance-based degree. Which is good because that's not what I want.  Fortunately at any of these places, I can continue taking lessons and improve my playing skills as I improve everything else. I think I can be a pretty good teacher, but I don't know how I'm doing at the moment. I think I could really have some potential, which is exciting. Once I get into grad school, things will be easy (well, sort of) because the pressure's off--I'm in and I just have to work hard and make the most of it. I'm pretty sure I can do that.

That all seems rather grown-upp-ish, but when one is turning 22 in the next 24 hours, I guess that's okay. It is pretty hard to believe that all this is all really here. But it's true. Twenty-two. That's a big number. Yay for birthdays and surprises of which I know not what. And plans for Saturday which I do know. And boo for having to write a summative assessment for RWA. Oh well, I think it's my last big outside-class project--for that class at least.

All right, I think I'm done. I hope you're happy, Xanga-land. Actually, it was good to talk to you; maybe I'll do it again sometime. And I'll definitely be reading.

mwahaha   ....  ........ pretty sure I've outstayed my welcome now!

Hi BAROTR! It's been 92 (wow, that's a big number) days since you made a xanga post...

aka "The Long-Awaited Update." Yes, it has been quite a long time since I posted on xanga. And if I posted everything about everything, you and I would both definitely get tired of it long before I finished. I maintain that it is impossible to summarize a summer in a satisfactory way to both parties when you haven't talked all summer (note the inevitable "Hey! How was your summer?" "Great. ..." that we will all be experienceing really soon. However, I will endeavor to do better than that, although it has been a really good summer. And Ber, you forgot to mention that I had oral surgery in your list of my sins in your last comment. Dizzle, this one is also for you because I did promise. Hope the payoff is worth the hype!  So here we go.

The last week of May I left for 5 weeks in Spain. We were in Madrid for 4 weeks taking class and traveling through Andalucia for the last week. Again, it's hard to know where to begin. I think that, as many cool things as we saw, my favorite part was just the learning how to function in a new environment and the challenges of using another language. That sounds rather nerdy, doesn't it? Oh well. Speaking of nerdy, did I mention that I love finding my way (city, subway system, et al) around with a map? Okay, first of all, the family that Leah (Shell) and I stayed with was really cool. Our madre Concha was quite a character. For one thing she could really cook (yay!) and was such a mom, meaning she made sandwiches for us to take to school every day and encouraged us to eat more nearly every meal and told us that if we were ever taking a cab home late at night to call her with the cab number in case we left something in there by accident. She also was quite opinionated, which I think is fairly characteristic of Spaniards in general. Leah and I decided in most cases it was better to hold your tongue if you disagreed b/c you weren't going to convince anyone likewise. She was also very talkative so if you asked her a question, especially about a "big" topic like the government, education, or family values, it's best if you have about 15 minutes to sit and listen. But she was as warm and caring as she could be--even after only one day, she was calling us affectionate names like hija, carino, reina, amor (daughter, dear, queen, love). Very welcoming and very kind. And when I got sick (yes, I did--just a fever for about 2-3 days), she was amazing. Even though she put me on a 'bland diet' that meant I ate nothing but white rice, a little bread, and turkey every meal for two days straight. Santi(ago) our padre was a character in his own right. He was much less talkative, most of the time, but he loved to make jokes and make fun of us and the other girls in the house (one from Wisconsin who had been there since January and 2 from Carnegie Mellon--all very nice). And every night instead of saying he was going to bed, he said, "Yo voy a Toledo" (I'm going to Toledo). I have no idea why. Both were very supportive of our efforts to speak Spanish (fortunate since they spoke no English except when Concha was making fun of us and saying "Okayy. Okayy").

One thing I really liked about Madrid was being able to walk a lot. Our apartment was a couple miles from school and we walked there or back several times. The other days we took the metro and either way was about 40-45 minutes. We had class in the mornings, which wasn't bad b/c the teachers were fun (and mid-twenties so very accessible) and there wasn't much homework. I also met a lot of cool Samford people that I didn't know before. I know Leah a little because her normal roommate is a friend of mine and two girls were in my Spanish class last year and I sort of knew 3 or 4 other people, but that was really it. And our whole group had a good dynamic, which is helpful when two faculty members are trying to take 53 college kids to a foreign country. Some days we had planned excursions and some days were free. So we'd go to museums (El Prado, La Reina Sofia [modern art], Casa de Lope de Vega [16th-century playwright], Archaeology [which I'm pretty sure I misspelled]), visited the Royal Palace (they had a whole quartet of Stradivari instruments--I was drooling), went to a bullfight and a zarzuela (Spanish musical) and went to nearby towns on Saturday excursions. The day they went to Toledo I was sick so I took a Sunday and went by myself. They had a bus that went straight there and it was very easy. And kind of cool to get to wander around by myself. And it was cool when a guy in an artesan shop full of handmade swords took a picture of me in the process of drawing one from the scabbard after I bought Mark a dagger for his birthday. Leah and I also took a weekend trip out to Barcelona and booked our own train tickets and hotel in everything. That was another cool aspect--all the independence we had during the trip. But anyway, Barcelona was nice, although I preferred Madrid for the long-term. We ended up leaving our bags in a hostel (that we had not stayed in, btw) during the afternoon before we left because the lockers at the train station were out of order. Then during the touring week, we hit Cordoba, Sevilla (yay flamenco show, climbing 34 ramps to the top of the cathedral bell tower, Plaza de Espana where they filmed a scene of Star Wars Ep. II, lunch for 3 euros at a hole-in-the-wall place, and a pool on the roof), Gibraltar (yay for reverse culture shock b/c it was an English colony, standing on the southernmost tip of Europe and kinda sorta making out the tip of Africa, a cool drive of the the top of the Rock of the aforesaid Gibraltar, and for pictures of people with the monkeys on their heads), Torremolinos (yay for a relaxing day on the beach, the rather chilly but very refreshing Mediterranean sea, and an amazing buffet for breakfast and dinner), and Granada (the Alhambra...oh my gosh). That's a pathetically condensed version but gives you a little hint maybe of the coolness of the experience. I also took my violin, practiced a very little bit, and took it out to play one day in Retiro Park. I actually made about 5 euros, which was fun. Oh, and I love gelato--had I mentioned that? All in all, a great trip, really and truly. There are pictures on Facebook, and I have the 500-photo version on my computer if anyone is a real glutton for punishment!

So, who's still with me? The rest will be quicker, I promise. I worked at the Dawson Music Camp here in B-ham and had a group of Intro and Beginner violins, who were about as cute as they can be. The intro class and I collaborated on a version of Three Little Pigs in the style of 'Peter and the Wolf' (narration with musical punctuation) that demonstrated the basic skills we had learned that week. And they learned fast and actually practiced! Then I was home for about 3 days before I went to a workshop up in Milwaukee for string teachers. Very interesting and again, I picked up some general pointers that I can work on to improve my own playing (never a bad thing). Um, then I had a minor oral surgery to cover up some exposed teeth roots and Lydia had a slightly more major surgery to repair her torn ACL (we've been doing a lot of hanging out in the living room and watching movies, reading Trivial Pursuit questions and Dave Barry sketches, and socializing with her many admiring friends (and cousins) who have come to see her. And I've gotten to play a little Ultimate too, which is always fun though very hot these days (go figure).

Then there was Linds' and Andrew's wedding last weekend, which was a lot of fun for just about all involved. Very unstressful (for me at least!) and they both looked so happy that it was a pleasure to be there. So yay, yay, yay. Although sometimes it is hard to believe that she is married and Mrs. Murphy now. Yep...

So that is my summer. Between May 20 when I got home from school and July 22 when I got back from Wisconsin, I was home for a total of about 12 days. Since then, I've at least been based from there although I've been to Birmingham a couple times (like for the, you know, WEDDING--yay), and yesterday I went to Montgomery and surprised Mark at Chaplain School.

And that's my summer. If you made it this far congratulations! If not, well then I could say something insulting about you and you'd never know because you didn't read this part. So hah! I'm not sure when I'll post again, but I'm pretty sure it won't be this long again!

Did I mention I'm now a senior with a lot of grad school and other big life choices coming up soon? That's weird. Good. Weird. Exciting. Slightly scary. And weird. And with that, goodbye!

This Spain thing is starting to feel awfully official. Yesterday I got my flight itenarary and today I got the name of the family I'm living with and looked up the metro route from there to the school. And I called AmSouth and told them I would be there so they won't freak out and think some crazy European is committing fraud with my credit card.

I need to dust. I think I'll just do it as I'm packing everything up (which is very soon!).

Sketchfest J(i.e. Lindsey's lingerie shower) this weekend. In the words of Ber, "Oh, good." It will be fun, right, Linds? And then a quick trip home for Gumtree/Mother's Day which is also good....and 3 tests between now and then (well, 2.5 b/c Instrumental Arranging doesnt' REALLY count).

And now I'm off to teach!