Well i hate to say it but I am struggling to think of things to say. I can't decide whether it's because the weeks are jam packed and just fly along without me realizing or whether it's because I don't actually do very much (and the weeks fly by without me realizing haha!). With all this in mind, I think I will probably end up making this a bi-monthly blog so that it sounds as if I am doing loads of crazy things all the time haha!
One thing that has been pestering me ever since I arrived in Texas is the crickets! They are literally the most annoying things known to man. Joe tells me off for killing them but I have to admit that in a really sadistic way I enjoy doing it because the bastards keep me awake all night in fear. In fact I bought a pair of sandals that zip up at the back (don't be mad mum!) and the sound of the zip clanking at the back made me think that crickets were following me. Seriously, I think it's making me insane. Joe and I have thought that they are coming through the air conditioning vents and I finally plucked up the courage to have a look at the vent and managed to shut it off! Since, there has only been one (unfortunate) cricket in my room so hopefully it's done the trick.
I've started getting creative in the apartment as it was looking a bit bare. I tied those Hawaiian flowery neck things to make some groovy bunting round the window and breakfast bar. There are also some posters on the walls and I've put up some posters that I bought in my room. I will post pictures when it's finished! Joe and I have started getting a bit creative with food. We're both pretty hot at risotto now and recently we've made pitta breads and victoria sponges. I suppose deep down we feel we have a duty to try and eat healthily!
The wind trio is going really well and we get on brilliantly. After every rehearsal we end up going out to lunch or dinner! oooops Reading band is okay but a little boring and I'm struggling to see where it's progressing too but nevermind. My saxophone and flute teacher actually lives in teh apartment complex right next door to me so I am having lessons at the weekend which works really well for both of us. Bring on a lab band next semester! Symphonic band is going well and we have 2 concerts tomorrow (lunchtime and evening) which should come off effectively. The lunch time one is a children's performance with the theme of 'tradition' so we're playing the national anthem! It's been arranged and jazzed up with loads of scrunchy half diminisheds and sustained chords so I'm really struggling not to laugh when I play it! Finally, music wise, I got my unit 1 test result back for Jazz History and I got 87%. Of course I'm not completely happy with it (especially as when I looked at my paper I'd made silly mistakes like marking me answer in the wrong box!) but it's a good start none the less and I should still be on for an A.
I'm actually missing Leeds quite a lot at the moment. I think it might be all the facebook freshers week status'. HiFi, Mission, The Fav, Danceband, Symph, Hyde Park, The Eldon, marmite, real cadburys choccie aaaahhhh!
Oh well, I suppose that it's the 4 week blues or something! It's exciting making new friends (especially sorting between the wierd stalkerish ones and the cool ones!) and my playing and knowledge is already much more advanced.
Speak soonish! xXx
Wednesday 23 September 2009
Wednesday 16 September 2009
Week 3
Blimey! The weeks seem to be flying by...you know what they say about having fun etc! I'd say that finally I am settled in America and I have made enough friends already to see me through the yr (although a few more are always very welcome!). I also realise that my weekly blog is more like an 8 day blog and although I have the intention to do it every Monday, it doesn't always (in fact most of the time) happen! I'm currently in the music building computer lab on an applemac computer and obviously struggling, but I didn't want to admit defeat when the guy on the desk asked me whether I would mind using one! Anyways enough general chitchat...let's crack on with week 3...
In contrast to last weekend, with cars, trips to Dallas and big steaks, we had quite a reserved (and personally very welcomed) chilled out weekend. I met up with my wind trio on Saturday (2fl and a cl) and had a very productive practice. I'm pretty excited about playing in the recital hall fairly soon as we've picked some wicked repertoire to play. Whilst in the library, which incidentally is incredible, I was chatting to the guy on the music check out desk who happened to be a composer. He was really excited to hear about my trio and is going to write us a piece to perform at the end of the semester :0) You should check out his website, www.brittandrewburns.com (I think that's correct!). He writes some pretty cool stuff. Anyway, after the rehearsal I managed to catch a lift back to the mall with one of the flautists, Grace because she had an interview there. Again I bought things that I didn't particularly need (shoes obviously!) but I also got some A-MAZING bubble bath stuff. Grace then gave me a lift home because it was raining. This is the kind of attitude that most of the americans have. They are so unbelievably friendly and kind...sometimes it feels too good to be true!
Anyway...in the evening we decided to go out to dinner in the mall again at this mexican place called El Chico. After my last horrific experience at Taco Bell (I foolishly ordered Volcano Nachos - it has been the butt of Joe's jokes now for 2 weeks) I went for something a little milder in some shrimp, chicken and beef tortillas. The nachos kept coming, as did the sprite, and it was really lovely to be out with all the brits again. Afterwards we went to watch a film at the mall cinema. It's $2 a ticket and only $1.50 on a Tuesday which is ridiculous! The film was called Funny People and starred Adam Sandler as a comedian suffering with Leukemia. I was a bit disheartened by the lack of plot if I'm being honest, but there were some hilarious bits that Sarah Mawby and I could not stop chuckling about...and you know how loud my laugh is!
Practice is going okay although I feel like I'm facing a continuous battle with practice vs. the phenomenal UNT gym. Either of them are good for me I suppose but I have to say that I prefer sweating away to the sounds of Stevie Wonder and James Brown rather than in one of the dungeon-like practice cells playing Baermann scale passages. I can't emphasise how good people are here, especially the pianists. I am baffled at how they can concentrate for any longer than about half an hour although today there was this chinese girl next to me religiously practicing her octave stacatto scales who broke out into the cheesiest piano piece I have heard in a while (I think it's even cheesier than the stuff that Russell plays! :0p). My teacher is so unbelievably friendly but I feel like it is absolutely a teacher pupil relationship rather than a friendship one which has hindered my lessons in the past. One time he asked me what we call the 'pinkie' in England to which I replied, 'little finger!'. He thought this was much better as he has a lot of black, korean and spanish students and couldn't help but feel racist when he called it the 'pinkie' hahaha.
So I guess that is it for this week. Me, Joe, Tim and his girlfriend went to The Garage on Fry St last night and played pool and darts! It felt like home again and was a good laugh. Surprisingly I'm not really missing the alcohol and it was pretty funny to see the only legal drinker (Joe!) slowly getting legless as the night progressed. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I can no longer handle going to bed at 1am and getting up at 7am for a 9am lecture anymore and I am exhausted! There's another lab band gig tonight (3 o clock and 2 o clock) which I think I might go to but then I am definitely heading back for some Damien Rice, The Girl at the Lion D'or by Sebastian Faulks and a hot bath with my lavish, if somewhat expensive, bubble bath! Maybe I will have a little nap now before heading to the gym? hmmmmm
Anyway, apologies for the randomness and very grammatically incorrect week 3 blog. Hopefully I will write a bit better next week!
xXx
P.S. There aren't any pics because I am not on my laptop! (Stupid Apple Macs!)
In contrast to last weekend, with cars, trips to Dallas and big steaks, we had quite a reserved (and personally very welcomed) chilled out weekend. I met up with my wind trio on Saturday (2fl and a cl) and had a very productive practice. I'm pretty excited about playing in the recital hall fairly soon as we've picked some wicked repertoire to play. Whilst in the library, which incidentally is incredible, I was chatting to the guy on the music check out desk who happened to be a composer. He was really excited to hear about my trio and is going to write us a piece to perform at the end of the semester :0) You should check out his website, www.brittandrewburns.com (I think that's correct!). He writes some pretty cool stuff. Anyway, after the rehearsal I managed to catch a lift back to the mall with one of the flautists, Grace because she had an interview there. Again I bought things that I didn't particularly need (shoes obviously!) but I also got some A-MAZING bubble bath stuff. Grace then gave me a lift home because it was raining. This is the kind of attitude that most of the americans have. They are so unbelievably friendly and kind...sometimes it feels too good to be true!
Anyway...in the evening we decided to go out to dinner in the mall again at this mexican place called El Chico. After my last horrific experience at Taco Bell (I foolishly ordered Volcano Nachos - it has been the butt of Joe's jokes now for 2 weeks) I went for something a little milder in some shrimp, chicken and beef tortillas. The nachos kept coming, as did the sprite, and it was really lovely to be out with all the brits again. Afterwards we went to watch a film at the mall cinema. It's $2 a ticket and only $1.50 on a Tuesday which is ridiculous! The film was called Funny People and starred Adam Sandler as a comedian suffering with Leukemia. I was a bit disheartened by the lack of plot if I'm being honest, but there were some hilarious bits that Sarah Mawby and I could not stop chuckling about...and you know how loud my laugh is!
Practice is going okay although I feel like I'm facing a continuous battle with practice vs. the phenomenal UNT gym. Either of them are good for me I suppose but I have to say that I prefer sweating away to the sounds of Stevie Wonder and James Brown rather than in one of the dungeon-like practice cells playing Baermann scale passages. I can't emphasise how good people are here, especially the pianists. I am baffled at how they can concentrate for any longer than about half an hour although today there was this chinese girl next to me religiously practicing her octave stacatto scales who broke out into the cheesiest piano piece I have heard in a while (I think it's even cheesier than the stuff that Russell plays! :0p). My teacher is so unbelievably friendly but I feel like it is absolutely a teacher pupil relationship rather than a friendship one which has hindered my lessons in the past. One time he asked me what we call the 'pinkie' in England to which I replied, 'little finger!'. He thought this was much better as he has a lot of black, korean and spanish students and couldn't help but feel racist when he called it the 'pinkie' hahaha.
So I guess that is it for this week. Me, Joe, Tim and his girlfriend went to The Garage on Fry St last night and played pool and darts! It felt like home again and was a good laugh. Surprisingly I'm not really missing the alcohol and it was pretty funny to see the only legal drinker (Joe!) slowly getting legless as the night progressed. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I can no longer handle going to bed at 1am and getting up at 7am for a 9am lecture anymore and I am exhausted! There's another lab band gig tonight (3 o clock and 2 o clock) which I think I might go to but then I am definitely heading back for some Damien Rice, The Girl at the Lion D'or by Sebastian Faulks and a hot bath with my lavish, if somewhat expensive, bubble bath! Maybe I will have a little nap now before heading to the gym? hmmmmm
Anyway, apologies for the randomness and very grammatically incorrect week 3 blog. Hopefully I will write a bit better next week!
xXx
P.S. There aren't any pics because I am not on my laptop! (Stupid Apple Macs!)
Tuesday 8 September 2009
Week 2
So after my somewhat depressing post last week things inevitably seemed to pick up instantly. One full week of lectures made me realise pretty quickly that I can't possibly hope to get as much out of the yr when I'm spreading myself so thinly. With this in mind, I have dropped off the Jazz Saxophone Performance Fundamentals class and sax lessons. What they don't tell you is that it's not simply 1 credit = 1hr. So for instance, although the sax class was only 50 mins long, I was expected to attend and prepare transcriptions to play in every saxophone studio class on Fridays. As you can imagine, all of this coupled with double the amount of credit on clarinet and 6hrs of symphonic band practice a week was just not realistic with the academic stuff. The head of jazz sax was really lovely about it and there is a teaching fellow who is really keen to teach me saxophone privately (ie. I can work at my own pace without having to attend all the other things!). I am doing the reading ensemble. Basically it's a group designed to make you better at stylistic as well as simple reading ideas in bigband charts. I think it will be really useful and it has a really positive link with getting into a lab band next semester!
I had my first clarinet lesson on Thursday and it was fantastic. I managed to get the head of the dept and he clearly knows what he is talking about. Immediately he noticed my problems with my wrist and helped me to correct that. I just loving his teaching style and we seem to have hit it off immediately. I've already probably learnt more in a lesson than I did in a yr at Leeds so hopefully when I get back to the UK I will be able to kick some butt and get myself into a college for post grad! The clarinet studio are also equally as friendly and the english accent doesn't seem to lose it's charm with them. Tim and I have been stopped in the street with people saying 'OMG what kind of accent is that?'...to which we reply english! It is pretty funny trying to explain that they actually stole our language and have an american accent!
At the weekend we hit Dallas again, this time to another mall called the Galleria. It was absolutely brilliant and even had an ice skating rink inside it! Surprise, surprise the 2 Sarah's and I went spending crazy, but it was actually a really nice break from everything and made me feel like I've started to settle down a bit. On the way home we stopped off for an epic steak (what a surprise) and had a good chinwag with our lovely waiter, Justin.
We have spent A LOT of time in our pool as it is really pretty and cool at night. We still haven't managed to work out how the hot tub works so at the moment it remains a 'luke-warm' tub but at least it's a good topic of conversation to start up with our fellow neighbours. There is a big party for all the residents at the Ridge in a couple of weeks so hopefully we should be able to make a few more friends here.
Joe and I went to a houseparty on Golf Court last week. Little did I know that they would all be percussionists! It was pretty challenging but I actually really enjoyed myself. Being under the drinking age and all that I was a bit cautious so didn't drink but managed to make friends with a steel pan player called Shannon who also wasn't drinking! There are some pretty hilarious pictures from that night and I had forgotten how much fun it was laughing and teasing drunk people!
I had my first clarinet lesson on Thursday and it was fantastic. I managed to get the head of the dept and he clearly knows what he is talking about. Immediately he noticed my problems with my wrist and helped me to correct that. I just loving his teaching style and we seem to have hit it off immediately. I've already probably learnt more in a lesson than I did in a yr at Leeds so hopefully when I get back to the UK I will be able to kick some butt and get myself into a college for post grad! The clarinet studio are also equally as friendly and the english accent doesn't seem to lose it's charm with them. Tim and I have been stopped in the street with people saying 'OMG what kind of accent is that?'...to which we reply english! It is pretty funny trying to explain that they actually stole our language and have an american accent!
At the weekend we hit Dallas again, this time to another mall called the Galleria. It was absolutely brilliant and even had an ice skating rink inside it! Surprise, surprise the 2 Sarah's and I went spending crazy, but it was actually a really nice break from everything and made me feel like I've started to settle down a bit. On the way home we stopped off for an epic steak (what a surprise) and had a good chinwag with our lovely waiter, Justin.
We have spent A LOT of time in our pool as it is really pretty and cool at night. We still haven't managed to work out how the hot tub works so at the moment it remains a 'luke-warm' tub but at least it's a good topic of conversation to start up with our fellow neighbours. There is a big party for all the residents at the Ridge in a couple of weeks so hopefully we should be able to make a few more friends here.
Joe and I went to a houseparty on Golf Court last week. Little did I know that they would all be percussionists! It was pretty challenging but I actually really enjoyed myself. Being under the drinking age and all that I was a bit cautious so didn't drink but managed to make friends with a steel pan player called Shannon who also wasn't drinking! There are some pretty hilarious pictures from that night and I had forgotten how much fun it was laughing and teasing drunk people!
So I guess that is it for now! Catch you next week! xXx
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