One-Year Anniversary!

 (This is Dan eating a "man meal"- an entire box of Hamburger Helper, and drinking right out of the pitcher!)

This last Sunday Dan and I celebrated our first year of marriage. A whole year! It's so crazy to think about. Looking back, it's been a year of interesting things, but nothing super eventful, I don't think. Let's see...


We got married on Saturday.
We had Sunday to ourselves.
Dan was back in classes the following Monday.
Dan stayed in class until Thanksgiving. Then we drove and saw both of our families, and had Thanksgiving dinner with Dan's family.
Back to classes.
Drove back home for Christmas. Saw both families again, and spent Christmas Eve with my family. Drove home for New Years.
I started classes as well, so now both of us were going to school.
More classes.
I went to Canada for two weeks with the Symphony Band while Dan stayed at home and worked. (And cried.)
Dan started classes again.
I came home, and resumed classes as well. 
I turned 20 in May, and my family came to visit for my birthday.
Still more classes. 
Helped his older sister move in to her new house in Montana over July 4th weekend; celebrated by throwing poppers in the street.
More classes.
The semester ended. Dan started working full-time instead of part-time while I stayed at home. 
Dan's family came to visit. His younger sister got engaged and went wedding dress shopping while she was here.
Dan works some more.
We spend a week visiting family and friends.
Dan works some more.
Dan turned 25 in August.
I start classes, and Dan starts his working internship.


That's really about it. Not very eventful. Note that there wasn't a spot there that said "Honeymoon in ________." I'm super bummed that we never got a honeymoon! But because the wedding was during the semester, we never really got a chance to go anywhere. It was my dream (besides getting married in the temple)! ...but that's a lament for later (maybe- I haven't decided whether I'll post that blog entry or not).


However, for our anniversary, we had SO much fun! We drove down to the temple, only to find it was closed that day- no sealings for us. We also got curtains for the front window! Nothing super fancy, just something to add some color and homey-ness to the boring blinds. (That's a new word, "homey-ness".) Then we ate dinner at TGI Friday's. It was so yummy! At home again we put up the curtains while listening to the General Relief Society Broadcast (during which Elder Uchtdorf gave a BEAUTIFUL talk, it should still be on the front page of lds.org). Sunday Dan had to spend a good chunk of time at the church doing his ward clerk duties, so I waited for him and made dinner. We had pork and rice, and I had made Oreo truffles the day before so that was dessert.


Now, I know what you're thinking- usually people give gifts on anniversaries, right? Don't worry, we did that too!


Saturday Dan snuck off in the morning and brought home two colors of snapdragons for me!

I love to gently squeeze them and make sound effects like they're talking in little squeaky voices. I've been talking about possibly trying to put snappies in the same pot with Plant, but I don't know if they'll get along.


Sunday afternoon he also revealed another surprise he'd gotten me: A bundt pan!

I'd wanted one because I think that's why the sticky buns I make have come out half doughy and half overcooked. And he got one!


And what did I get him?

That's right. Velveeta. He LOVES the stuff, (no really, he raves about it!) but it's so much cheaper to buy generic macaroni and cheese! So I sneakily purchased a box of it while we were shopping (that's right, I ninja'd that sucker right under his nose!) and that was his gift. He loved it! (And that right there is the difference between men and women. Women get baking pans or jewelry; men get food and desserts.)


We've had a FANTASTIC year together, and we've already learned so much! The only bad thing is that we still haven't sent out thank-you cards from our wedding! Oops! But we'll get them out soon.


I love you SO MUCH, Dan, and I can't wait for another wonderful year together (and many more to come)!

Shanghai Chinese Opera Orchestra

The other night Dan and I had the opportunity to purchase tickets to see the Shanghai Chinese Opera Orchestra. I wouldn't have gone, except during my band class earlier that day, they gave us a demonstration of the wind instruments they used, and they were so awesome! The members of the orchestra played on traditional Chinese instruments (although they did use a few western instruments, a couple of cellos and a bass, but mostly I think because they don't really have any traditional instruments in that register). It was called an Opera Orchestra because the players usually play with a smaller ensemble for the Chinese Opera, but they had come together to play some orchestral pieces. Each of the players in the orchestra had studied their individual instruments at Chinese music conservatories, and had completed their studies.


The instruments themselves were fascinating. They have their version of a violin section and they all looked like this:

 

This is an Erhu. You can't see it very well in the picture, but it has two strings (those two horizontal pegs at the top are for tuning said strings). The Erhu could be considered a Chinese violin, and in the orchestra we saw there were three others that are pitched consecutively lower than the Erhu, except for one which was higher than the Erhu and used mainly for solo playing. (I really wish I could remember the names of all of these!)


So the Erhu is part of the bowed strings, but there are also plucked strings...

 

This one is called a Pipa. I chose this picture because you can see how it's played. The liugin (below) is played similarly, except angled a little bit, and it's pitched a little higher.

There's also the Ruan (below, top) and Zhong Ruan (below, bottom), which are differently pitched Chinese equivalents of guitars.

There were a couple other stringed instruments that were sort of in a family of their own. One was the guzheng, which looks like this:

 

 She sat in front of it, and plucked the strings, and the little peg-thingies you see in the middle of it she used too while she was playing, and it changed the pitch of a sustained note as she pressed on it. The other one they used was a yangqin:

 The box on the bottom was hollow and that's where the performer's knees went, sort of like sitting at a desk. He had little sticks that he used as hammers to hit the strings, and it was very pretty.

 And then there were a few wind instruments. There were these awesome mouth pipe organs called sheng (I think) but there were different sizes. I really wanted to find a picture of the ones we saw, but Google only gave me this crappy image:

 

I drew a yellow arrow to the one that we definitely saw, there's one to the left of that one that's the same. The green arrow points to one that we saw, except it was way smaller than that, just a little larger than the yellow arrow one. They were so cool, and could sometimes play two-note chords.


There was also the Dizi, a Chinese bamboo flute.

 

(Gasp! She's immodest! ...)

I put this picture because unlike the western flute that we play now, it's centered more in the middle when you play it. There are two sizes of dizi:

  ...and obviously the smaller one is played in a similar fashion to the normal sized-one and is the equivalent of the western piccolo.

My favorite wind instrument is the suono, probably because it's the Chinese equivalent of the trumpet.

Of course, the suono doesn't sound anything like the trumpet. I can't even describe the sound of it, it was sort of like a... bagpipes without the drone mixed with an oboe?? I give up. It was very loud and hurt my ears during the demonstration because I was three rows from the performer. During the concert, though, it was SO cool! It has a completely different timbre (or tone) from anything else in the orchestra, and it stuck out when he was playing melody. But it didn't stick out in a bad way, it was really cool how he could blend with the rest of the performers.

And of course there was percussion. There were some small hand cymbals, two gongs of different sizes (little hand gongs) and the main drum that they call the Ban Gu.

Before there was an actual conductor, whenever Chinese got together to play instruments it was the Ban Gu player that kept the performers in time together. The performers would watch the Ban Gu and see what he did that directed them. There was another set of drums too that a Chinese woman played for one of the pieces, the Chinese version of our western marching band quints:

(Except I don't think she had the biggest drum; they had trouble bringing it as well as their Chinese bass drum, which is ginormous. They said the airlines wouldn't allow the huge drum to go on the plane!)

The group also brought along a man and a woman who were their opera singers, and they each sang a Chinese opera piece separately, and then one together. It was so cute! They wore Chinese costumes and sang in Chinese, and it was so beautiful.

The concert was amazing, but my favorite piece was the first one they played. It was called "Celebration Orchestra" by Zhao Jiping. I suppose my opinion might have been skewed because that was the first piece I ever heard a Chinese orchestra ever play... but it was still amazing. The entire audience was awestruck. The sounds from the traditional instruments playing together were so different from western music! There's an ok recording of "Celebration Overture" on YouTube that gives you the general idea about the piece. It's played with a national orchestra, so the sound is a little different but mostly the same. You can see that by clicking here. 

This other clip though sounds more like what we heard. I think it's even one of the pieces they played for us! The concert was so amazing, and I would go again in a heartbeat.

If you want to read more about the instruments, I went to this site and this site. The sites also tell about other Chinese instruments that I didn't see in the concert I went to. (However, they also don't tell about some of the ones I did see...) All my images came from Google. Special thanks to the unknown Chinese people in the photos.

College: The Semester That Almost Ate Me Alive and Has Already Taught Me Something

 This is kind of a long post, but this last week has been so crazy, and I think I've discovered something about myself and making decisions for myself... I promise that after this I'll quit blogging about college for a while....

Remember in the last post when I said that everything would be worked out by 5:30PM Monday? Yeeeeeeah right.


The semester started off like I thought it would. There were trumpet auditions and the discrepancies about classes, but I thought it would work itself out. Well, my audition didn't go as planned. I had to wait outside the trumpet instructor's office while the gal ahead of me auditioned because he was running late. When I went in for my audition, it didn't last nearly as long as hers did- if I was lucky, it was about half as long. And a third of it was looking for last semester's solo. I only played two things for him. Then he asked the dreaded question- "So, have you decided what major you're going for?"


Ha! I thought. I've thought about this for the last six weeks. I know exactly how I'm going to deal with you! "I am sticking to the BA," I replied confidently. "I was hoping I could talk with you about what I want to do with my lessons and such."


"Are you taking major lessons?" he asked, to which I replied, "Well, no, but that's why-"


"There's 14 trumpets in the studio this semester. I don't think I'll have time to teach any non-major trumpet lessons this fall."

And that's where the audition ended. I don't think I had a chance. At all. Come 7 PM, Dan and I drove back to campus where I discovered that I didn't make Symphony Orchestra or Chamber Brass, the two ensembles I was planning on being in and the ones I'd been in since I came to the school. I was heartbroken. Literally. I tried not to cry, but I did. I did make Symphony Band, but I didn't think I could take it because of my Creative Writing class for my cluster (aka mini-minor). Plus I wasn't even planning on taking that ensemble this particular semester...


So my 17 credit semester went down to 14 credits. 14 credits is enough for me to keep all my financial aid... except there was a Music History overview class that was supposed to be covered by another class I'd taken before I'd transferred, which, after dropped from my current schedule, would take me down to 11 credits. That there's bad news bears.


So after sobbing and feeling horrible, after Dan gave me a beautiful husband's blessing, I went back to campus and up to advising, where I explained the situation to the wonderful lady who patiently listened and gave me advice and helped me choose the classes I needed to take to keep my credits up at a full-time student level. My trumpet teacher, upon hearing that I couldn't take Symphony Band because of the Creative Writing class, found two other classes I could take at different times (although he didn't sound too happy with me, but whatever).


There's was an additional discrepancy about whether I'd have to drop my Conducting class for Piano Proficiency, but after talking with the ladies who run the PP classes, they said 10 years of piano should be enough to test out, so I'm just going to wing it and not mess up my schedule even more.


Seriously, I'm surprised I'm not bald. I just about tore my hair out all week at different times. I was convinced I wouldn't be in any ensembles this semester, and even though I am in one, I'm not even going to try to take lessons this semester- I'll try again after Christmas. I figure if by then my teacher has time to teach me, then I'll try to figure out what I want them. But if he really is still unhappy with me choosing to the BA, (which seems kind of ridiculous to me,) then I'll figure it out on my own, whether it's studying repertoire on my own or finding someone else to teach me. I'm standing up for myself. I don't care what anyone else thinks. I want to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Music, and I'm going to do it my way. I'm paying for it, not anyone else. (Ok, the government is paying for it.)


Sometimes it feels like a lot of the people who used to be in other ensembles with me won't talk to me anymore, like I've become some sort of evil entity who has contracted the bubonic BA plague and isn't fit to play Mussourgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition". Sometimes I wonder if it isn't easier to just submit to the trumpet teacher who knows all and says I should be a BM major. But... at the same time, it's sort of empowering to make a firm decision for myself, and to know that it's what I want, and it sort of inspires me to want to do more to achieve it...


Is it sad that it took twenty years to discover this?


(If you read this entire post, you deserve a cookie. I have a new oven and I can make you some....)

College: The New Semester (And a little 9/11)

(PS I love that title. It makes me think that its a movie title or something... ok I'm weird. Never mind.)


The new school semester starts today. I've already been to one class at 7:45 AM. I was surprisingly awake when I got up this morning, but I don't think it'll last long, especially when it snows and the sun doesn't come up until later in the day... I also have lots of people to talk to, but naturally we're already playing the procrastination game and writing a blog post instead of talking to them. But we'll talk about goals later.


I was writing out my schedule last night in an attempt to get my ducks in a row (I'm still missing a few of them... the ducks, I mean, although some of my classes are still up in the air), and as I was looking over it I felt as though I was missing half of them. That's when I realised I was only signed up for 15-16 credits. Whaaat? You mean I have breaks to practice and whatnot? No way! AND I can eat lunch! It's weird not taking 18 credits. Plus I don't have to take any generals (or foundations, as they call them here) for a few semesters, so I'm doing only what I want. It's SO NICE!


The only thing is that my classes are all weird. I think I mentioned this in the last post. I feel like a freshman all over again, (for the third time,) because the trumpet instructor was away finishing his doctor in trumpet performance, and so the guy they had in place of him did the auditions for ensembles differently. (A LOT differently.) So I can't even register for ensembles because I don't know which ones I'll be in. I can hope, but with an actual audition, you never know what might happen... So if I make Symphony Orchestra then I have to drop a class and take it another semester. There's also another class that is the same as another class I took at college before I transferred here, so I have to go to this class today and hope that I'll never have to go again because... well, I already took it! PLUS there's a class that I can test out of part of, (piano proficiency,) but they're changing the course starting this semester so I don't have a clue what's going on anymore!


So my semester is starting off SO NUTTY! People want to know what my schedule is but I don't even know it! I don't mean to complain... My thoughts are just everywhere... But I think (I hope) that everything will be worked out by 5:30 today. Crossing my fingers.


Don't worry, I'll find something more interesting to post next time. Unless the music department eats me alive. Then there'll be a few problems with writing a blog post.


Also, since September 11th was yesterday, some of my friends have been posting via facebook or blogs what they remember about that day 10 years ago. I thought about posting yesterday, but I'm trying to keep from posting blogs on Sundays so I can spend time with my husband and at church (although with his new calling, I have time to post...) But anyways, all I remember is that I think I was in the 3 or 4 grade... and I remember being on the playground before school started and kids were talking about it. I think we watched some of it on TV, and they kept saying that lots of people were dying. I don't remember watching the towers fall, maybe because we only saw news stuff every so often and not continuously. But I remember seeing one down and the smoke coming out of the other, on TV... I remember it but not well. I didn't really understand at the time what exactly was happening, I don't think. I'm glad I was aware of it, though. 

If you want to read a beautiful post about it from one of my friends who was a newly-married military wife at the time of the attacks, you can go HERE. Its so personal, and touched my heart.

College: A Love-Hate Relationship

College. It's something people want so they can learn more, discover more, do what they love, meet lifelong friends, expand their horizons... It's a place for learning, a place for fun and doing what you want, a place for independence, a whole new lifestyle... 


...And yet, it's a place where you walk around and find people crying, people sleeping in chairs or on benches or on the floor, people hunched over computers, people walking every level of the library trying to find a computer, people waiting in line for financial aid, people waiting in line for academic advising, people tearing their hair out, more people sleeping, people in the bookstore selling their soul for that last textbook... and if you're in the music department, you see twice as many people sleeping, people spending extra hours in their day practicing, and stand-offs between choir kids and instrumentalists...


...and we won't even start on the amount of construction going on....


Don't get me wrong, I think college is wonderful. I love the idea of getting to take classes you actually like as well as classes you hate or don't feel like you need to take. I love the variety and the chances I have, especially here at BYU-I, to try new things and to do what I enjoy or want to learn. But at the same time there is an incredibly amount of stress involved, and that stress can begin days before a semester actually begins! For me, it was showing up in the Music Department to find my trumpet auditions involve triple-tonguing, and for someone who can't even double-tongue, this is a problem. It doesn't help that this is for Moussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", which is something I'm DYING to play. Another stressful part is going to advising centers to beg them to accept more credits from my previous college so I don't have to take the same classes over again. I swear the panels draw slips of paper out of a hat that either says "ACCEPT" or "NOT ACCEPT" and that's how it is.

And then there's the issue of college kids not knowing what they want with their college career. Everyone always told me, "Oh, you know what you want now? Ha! That'll change." I always thought, No, actually, it won't, but thanks! And lo and behold, I'm in that situation now. What do I want with my degree? How do I want to best utilize it? Are the clusters that I've selected really what I want? What about this? I could try that. But I don't want to have to transfer again if Dan finishes, do I have time to change? Maybe I shouldn't... But I think I might want to... But what if I try it and I don't like it? Then I'm stuck again! Maybe I should just take the classes I want, and then if we move before I finish then oh well, too bad, I didn't finish college. Or maybe I should just not worry and suffer through another college transfer... maybe that would be better than trying to juggle everything perfectly... There is no light at the end of the tunnel for me yet, and it's the worst possible time to not know what I want.


So as someone who is literally halfway through her college career, I'm at the point where I'm asking myself: "As a college student, who am I? Where am I going? What do I want here? What's the best way to achieve that?" And as a college student, I don't know how to go about answering these questions.


College and I have a love-hate relationship. We don't know what's going on. If I were in a relationship with college and it went facebook official, it would be labeled as "It's complicated."