Yeeps. It’s been a month since a real update. And what a month it has been! Full of concerts. Full of fun.
The first in the series was an April 1st ensemble concert. It caused me much distress in preparation because the music for it wasn’t determined until just before break and ensemble members were then out of town and wouldn’t be all in the same place until the night before the concert. I worked hard making myself go to school every day during vacation to work an hour on the pieces. My harp skills are coming along, but transposition is still an effort and half of the pieces we did in other keys so I played the pieces over and over until I had the tunes, if not the notes, memorized and then wrote little notes to myself in case I had a brain freeze at interval leaps. Considering the circumstances the concert went quite well, though in reality we had only made an excellent start on the music. We didn’t even get a coaching on the news pieces so that made dress rehearsal interesting. It went for three hours and our coach made some changes at the last minute that had me rather worried. The extra long rehearsal made it so I had to rush home with just enough time to change and rush back just before the concert started. I had quite a show of supporters in the audience and Stephan bought me a rose and gave it to me before the concert as a sign of his confidence that I would do well. Wasn’t that sweet? The only problem was I told him to keep it and give it me after and didn’t realize the intent until all was said and done.
The next day the knot in my stomach was gone and I didn’t realize just how much I’d been stressing out about the concert. I didn’t get much chance to relax as then the rehearsals for Eric Mentzel’s course began that day and were scheduled for all day every day until the concert Monday (April 7th). Unfortunately, I had not kept my schedule clear and had lots of other commitments during those times. I figured it was legitimate because voice is not my main course of study here and keeping up with other stuff was more important. Still, after the workshops a few months ago (remember me talking about singing medieval church chant music back in November?) I agreed to sing in the concert and so in a sense agreed to be at rehearsals. Eric was nice about it and we agreed to see if I could keep up with the number of rehearsal times I could get to. In the end I was there for the major pieces enough to sing in the concert and had a good time.
Wednesday (April 2nd) I went on a dinner date with Stephan for maybe the second time, as we usually spend time together doing work or hanging with other people at church or at Bible study. We had a good ol’ American meal which really hit the spot for me. French fries with all-you-can-eat-ketchup (it’s a luxury you shouldn’t take for granted!) wings, onion rings, and more. Yum, the fatty goodness. We then spontaneously went to a movie and watched Horton Hears a Who. I’m not sure I like all the messages it teaches, but as an adult with no kids it was an enjoyable watch. I’m proud to know that homeschoolers are now well known enough and scary enough that they made it into a mainstream movie (if not Disney or Pixar) as the bad guys. The antagonist, Mrs. Kangeroo has an over-protected child that she “pouch-schools.” How cute. That was actually the second time I’ve been to a movie with Stephan. The first was in May, and dare I confess, I already liked him then? Last time I got a rose (read the story) but this time I got to hold hands during the movie. Aw, how sweet.
But back to the current adventure. That same week I started teaching piano lessons at Rhine International Academie (RIA). I was a little nervous, but very excited. I love teaching and I’d been a bit unhappy doing work all day every day for me alone. Working with kids is a bit of a challenge since it’s been a long time since I’ve interacted with younger kids and I’ve never formally taught them. Things have been up and down since, but I am happy to make the trek to Germany once a week to meet the challenge. We’re all learning quite a bit.
Despite keeping a normal class schedule, adding piano lessons, and going to rehearsals for the chant concert I accepted an invitation from Diana to have Stephan and me over for dinner that Friday evening. She’s quite social and I thought it a bit odd that she just wanted the two of us, but I didn’t think much of it, nor of the fact that Stephan said he’d get a mobility car for it when he usually is more up for biking there than I am (it’s about 40min by bike). We arrived a bit late and as Diana was prepping she said she realized she’d locked Chloe (her dog) in her bedroom and could I go let her out. I dutifully went to find her and went into the wrong room. Stephan corrected me and I turned sideways to the other door and opened it while looking at the floor expecting to see a little bundle of pent-up energy scurry into the living room. Instead . . .
