April highlights

Well, it's long-past time for an update! As usual, a lot has happened in the last few weeks.

To start off with, one of my roommates had a party a few weeks ago with a bunch of mostly-law school people. A senator showed up to hang out, which was exciting for me but didn't seem unusual to anyone else . . . I tried to explain that senators in the US don't hang out with regular people, especially students, even regular student people active in politics, but I guess it's different here. In any case, after we were introduced, he asked me to play, so I gave a short little concert to a senator in my backyard. Which was kind of cool. :)

We had a whole bunch of time off for Holy Week (Semana Santa), which was pretty sweet. I mostly relaxed around the house during the break, but for Easter weekend I took a little trip to Argentina. (I love being able to say that!) One of my friends here is from Corrientes, Argentina, so she, I, and another friend of ours went to visit her family for the weekend. They were so sweet and welcoming, and the city was so pretty. There is a little beach there that we visited one night, and as I stood with my new friends, ankle-deep in the sand along the bath-warm river, with palm trees behind me, and watching the lights along the bridge fade into the distance as it stretched out to the other side . . . well, it was one of those moments when I just can't believe how lucky I really am to be here.

But the trip wasn't quite perfect - my friend's family has a few cats, and one of them likes to sleep on the bed I used. Well, the cat has fleas, and they bit the crap out of me. For the record, flea bites are SO MUCH WORSE than mosquito bites. Aside from a little itching on my back now, they're mostly gone . . . but that was not fun.

In other news, my friend Jordana got here from the States last night - yay!! She's an amazing bassoonist, and is going to be teaching and playing with the National Symphony here until October. Part of me is a little sad that the experience here isn't just mine anymore, but I'm mostly super-excited to see her, as is everyone else! She's a great musician and they're lucky to have her over there. Plus we haven't gotten to work together for way too long, which means we haven't seen each other for way too long, so I'm lucky too to get to spend more time with my friend. :) A friend in the National Symphony and I have been working for months to get her down here, and I'm glad it all worked out.

I also recently got in touch with a teacher in Buenos Aires who I'm very excited to study with, so I will be going down there in a few weeks for a lesson. Yay!

But more sad news, I put a giant dent in my headjoint the other day. We only have wire stands here, and the music we're currently playing in orchestra is on legal-sized loose-leaf sheets of paper. So we're playing along, and the air conditioning started to blow my music off the stand. Naturally, I put the flute in my lap and grabbed the falling papers. Except that then the flute rolled off my lap! So I dropped the papers and grabbed the flute - I got both hands around the keywork and caught it before it hit the floor, thank goodness - but the headjoint got clipped on the leg of the stand. Since the keywork and the lip plate were spared, I can still play. I feel a little bit of funny resistance on a few notes and the pitch feels a bit weird, but it's nothing I can't compensate for for a few weeks. There are no repair people here, so I will have to get it taken care of when I head to BA for my lesson. Until then, I will just try not to look at it, 'cause it's depressing.

That should pretty much catch you all up . . . hasta luego!