Friday!

As you can see, I am being super creative with the titles here.  It is Friday morning, 10:32 am, and I have already had one lesson and practiced for ...hmm, almost an hour.   It is strange to realize that it is currently what, 4:32 am back home?

Today is a rather light day for my personal schedule.  I have plenty of time to practice -- but the piano rooms are almost always very full.  There are probably 15 or more pianists here but only 5 practice rooms, so we really have to stick to our assigned practice times.  20 minutes until the next one, whoo! 

For the Ewazen and the Brahms, we have our first coachings tomorrow.  Definitely looking forward to that.

Since today is a light day for me, I will be hopefully venturing into a store or two this afternoon after practice.  I need to buy a real German dictionary, since the one I have so far is not quite comprehensive enough to help.  The grocery store might also have a visit from me -- Korinne bought some German chocolate yesterday and it was quite good.

Let's see, food...  breakfast is usually meats and cheeses, fruit, yogurt, boiled eggs or omelets, cereal, bread, and plenty of juices and really amazing coffee.  I kinda wonder if they use straight espresso here or if it is regular coffee brewed strong.  Not so sure.    Lunches are at the hospital cafeteria, and so far have been super yummy.  There is always fresh salad, fruit, yogurt, even sliced bell peppers!  Soup is also pretty consistent.   The first day I picked the vegetarian dish, and I didn't know how to say "I like it but I am not vegetarian," in German, so I think they think I am vegetarian.


Last night the concert was finished around 9:45 but we still had not eaten yet (it was still light outside), so we went to this Turkish kabob place across the street from the hotel.   It was such a fun place -- the people there were really cheerful and having a lot of fun.  It was pretty obvious that they really enjoyed having everyone come through their store and talking to them.  Also, the group of students we were with had already eaten there 3 or 4 times this week and knew the owner/workers pretty well.  One of the students was even a little bit "famous" for rapping for the workers. I think they were videoing it and putting it online somewhere.  Quite funny.  They kept asking him to rap more.  He said, "Just let me finish my coke," but they misunderstood and brought him a new coke.   Most of the students in our group were pretty young - rising sophomores - and when I joked that I think I am the "old one" here by far, one of my chamber group members, Mikko, called me "Ate" ...  !  It really made me smile.  (In case you don't know, Ate means big sister in Tagalog.  Hopefully I spelled that correctly.)

It is Friday, which means 8 full days left until the end of the festival.  So much goes on that the time flies by.


In other random news, I think I saw more motorcycles here in the first 5-10 minutes of being here than I ever see in weeks of driving around South Carolina.  And the cars are cool(er) here.  The Toyota Yaris and Mazda 3 look very large in comparison.  Of course I knew the cars were smaller here but it is neat to actually see them driving around the city.   The drivers are also quite good here.  They all actually seem to follow the same rules, haha.  They are all very predictable, which is a good thing.  I am going to have to be careful when I get back to the US because drivers here are so aware of pedestrians.

Off to practice!  More later, happy Friday!