Awaiting the return

My mom's coming back from Tanzania tomorrow!

After going there seven times, all of us at home have the While-Mom's-Away routine down. We still have a bit of cleaning to do, but otherwise we survived, just as she expected us to do. She will come home tired, in need of a shower, maybe a bit hungry, and oveflowing with stories to tell. I'll be listening and thinking about when I can make it back to TZ again...

*Cough* Ahem. Daydreaming a bit. Anyways.

These last couple of trips, all she's asked of us upon her return is to stand at the gate with her Grande Chai Latte with No Water from Starbucks.

My mom's only vice, or the main source of her boundless energy?

This year we'll be just as happy to oblige. We can't wait until she gets home!

Tanzania #7

Tomorrow I leave for my seventh trip to Tanzania. I'm excited. I'm traveling with a great group of guys--two my age and two teenagers--who will be my travel buddies. They're new to the Tanzanian experience, but they're all game and ready to take on the challenge of travel to a third world country.



For some reason, I've been thinking about travel companions of the past six trips. Companions really make or break the journey, you know. I'm so grateful to have had wonderful companions for many of my journeys.



There have been wonderful medical professionals who kept the members of the group healthy. First trip, a wonderful doctor who met us every morning for breakfast with the questions, "did you sleep well? do you have any diarrhea?"

There have been those whose expertise was in biology, who would spot wild animals, name trees, pick up tortoises and help the group appreciate and understand the environment of the savannah.

There have been teachers who provided encouragement and teaching tools to our partners, there have been business people who mentored our partners who are involved with microfinance, and there have been pastors who shared their experiences serving, nurturing and leading congregations.

There have been people with years of wisdom who become "bibi" and "babu" to our partners [grandmother and grandfather] and there have been youth who give our partners hope that this partnership will continue into another generation.

I have been blessed to share three of those seven trips with my two daughters.

For all these traveling companions, I am grateful.

Back from the City

I've given myself a week to recover and reflect on my trip to Milwaukee-- and man, was it a great trip!

We stayed at the United Methodist Church down town, where our church groups have been staying for close to 20 years every summer. What I first seemed to notice coming into this city was how old it looked compared to the Twin Cities. You go to Minneapolis, and they hardly have any of their original or historical architecture left, but Milwaukee still has the old two-story houses and tall brick buildings standing. But then with age and tough times comes neglect, abandonment, and vandalism. I saw so many businesses and homes boarded up, windows broken, and yards unkempt in the remarkably struggling area of Milwaukee we were in, and it was sort of a jolt for me.

I mean, I've been through rough parts of the Twin Cities, and heck, I've been to Africa, but this for some reason hit me differently.

On Monday morning we got up early, still recovering from the long drive, and went to the Habitat work site, about a 15 minute drive from the church. Part of Habitat's 25th anniversary was celebrated in Milwaukee by hosting what they called Blitz Build Week, the goal being to frame seven houses in the week we were there.

We started out with hammering together walls, putting together window and door frames, and lots of heavy lifting. It's so exciting to see the walls being lifted up! We weren't the only people working on the house, of course. We had anywhere from four to seven adult House Leaders that week, people who were trained and experienced and actually knew what they were doing, and willing to share their knowledge with us. We had such a great time talking and working with them. One of them was Mac, and when I was on the top of the second level nailing down these boards I asked him, "Now what are these things called again?" All of it was just wood to me. "Well," he says, "These boards are called OCB's, though I call 'em sheathing, and what we're gonna do is nail 'em down so..." and on he went like that. If you had any question he would stop whatever he was doing to tell you what something was called, what they were being used for, when it was supposed to go up, how we were supposed to put it up, and whether it was behind schedule for being put up. He made me feel like I was always being of use, and that is a wonderful gift.

One of the most awesome things for me on this trip was meeting the future owners of the house we were building. One of the adult leaders from my group had come up to me and said, "Guess what! You know Hassan, the home-owner? He's from Somalia, and he speaks Swahili!"
"Really?!" I said. What are the odds of a random white girl who just happens to speak Swahili finding another person who speaks it in Milwaukee, Wisconsin? I was kind of over the moon.

Hassan eventually found me that day and pointed at me. "Do you speak Swahili?"

"Ndiyo!" I said. From then on, we would make a point of having small conversations every day. He kind of assumed I was more fluent than I really was, though, so lots of the time I was saying "Slower! Say again?" He told me that he and his family had fled the violence in Somalia for a refugee camp in Kenya (where Swahili is the national language), and they lived there for ten years before they came to the U.S. It was nice to have one less barrier between our group and the people we were serving.

Over the next few days we nailed, drilled, carried, got muddy, sweaty and gross and achy, but every day we did something that could help with the build. On Thursday afternoon Hassan brought his wife Zara and their four children to visit the work site. Zara just looked at the house and kept saying, "Wow, it's beautiful!" Then Hassan told her I spoke Swahili, and you should have seen the look on face. We started to speak with each other, and she was very encouraging and quite surprised, although I was relieved that she spoke it a lot slower and clearer than her husband. Then she asked in English, "Tomorrow, would you all eat African food if I brought some?" And I, remembering the yummy East African fare, enthusiastically replied, "Yes!"
The next day Hassan pulled up to the house and brought two aluminum pans, one filled with samosas, and the other with cardamom rolls, and I was trying not to flip out. Word spread through out the work site that we had some darn tasty food, so people from the two next store Habitat houses came by, but even after we shared we still had leftovers!

This week was an experience where we were helping people in a very tangible and permanent way, and nobody came home feeling their time was wasted. I believe there are few mission experiences that are like that. It's very humbling to find out how much it takes to build a home, and even more so to know how much joy it can bring to a family. It was nothing elaborate, but it was decent and dignified, someplace where the family could stay, after being uprooted from one country to another and to yet one more.

We met some amazing people, too. There was Jim, John, Mac, Chris, Bob, Carol, Pat, Jessica, Ann, Katerina, Hassan and his wife Zara...all these people were immensely hard working, fun to be with, kind, devoted to their faith and how they lived it out, and I feel so blessed to have spent my week with them.

Milwaukee

So, on the top of the screen it says that we mostly blog about music, our travels and wonderings.
I've talked about music and wonderings, but I don't really have too much traveling planned--no Africa this year.
Mom goes off to Tanzania for three weeks in August with a group from our church, and I will be keeping things together at home with my family. College hunting, of course, is my main priority right now, but at the same time I'm trying to manage those decisions in a way so that I won't go crazy.
I tell you, Dear Reader, it is impossible.

But I am getting excited for one brand new experience: Building a house in Milwaukee for Habitat for Humanity. On Sunday morning me and a bunch of other kids and adults from my church will wake up bright and early (well, more just early) and be on the road to Milwaukee at 5:30 AM. We're leaving at that insanely early hour to make it to a Brewers game at 1PM, so they better win.
We'll be framing a house in the city, with help from local volunteers, young AmeriCorps volunteers, and the future owners of the house. That's one of the cool things about this organization, that the family is expected to work a certain amount of hours to build their own house. Imagine the sense of accomplishment and pride they have to be living in a permanent home that they built with their own two hands.
None of us going have extensive construction skills; we can hammer, drill, measure, sand, paint and lift things, simple things, but that doesn't matter. We'll be learning a lot on the job, working hard, having fun, coming back tired in the evening, then doing it all over again. I'm excited to get to know my fellow travelers and also the people we'll work with in Milwaukee, excited to see this city, and to make myself useful, being one piece of the puzzle in helping a community.

We hope to be witnesses to amazing things during this next week, and I can't wait to find out what they'll be.

Returning from the Hill

Yesterday I came back from the St. Olaf Summer Piano Academy--and it was quite a week.

There were 24 kids in this program, but also 200-some others who were either involved with choir, band, or orchestra as part of the St. Olaf Music Camp. We all stayed in one dormitory, Ytterboe, so we all got to know lots of different people. I was at first surprised to meet so many people from outside the Midwest--from Brooklyn, Dallas, Orlando, Los Angeles, Blacksburg, VA, Seattle, and Maryland were some that I heard.

On Sunday night after I got dropped off and there had been the All-Camp meeting with the student counselors about basic rules and stuff (elevator parties not allowed) and after dinner, us pianists had our first masterclass in Urness Recital Hall inside the music building.

I slept in Ytterboe, but I basically lived in Christiansen Music Hall.

The first girl in the masterclass played an awesome Darth Vader-like prelude by Rachmaninoff.

Fear Darth Maninoff!

and the second boy played a Brahms Intermezzo.

(You can't fear Brahms because he looks like Santa)

To my amateur ear it didn't sound like either one of those pieces needed a whole lot of polishing at first, but our professor gave suggestions about dynamics, equal voicing of the melody and the left hand accompaniment, and talked about arm tension and how to hit the keys in an effective way to get the best sound. It sounds like simple things, but many people ignore them. You can't just play note, note, note, note, and expect people to think you're a good pianist. You have to add depth and substance to it, no matter how difficult or seemingly simple the piece may be.

I went to bed that night excited for the coming days, and realizing how much work it was going to be.

Every day would start out with breakfast, of course, then we had Keyboard Skills class from 8:30 to 9:30. It consisted of music theory and honing our improvisation skills. For the first few days that was the scary class for me. I haven't done serious theory work since middle school, and would not be able to tell you what iii G6/9 means if there was a gun to my head. All those Roman numeral chords were not my friends. What I learned from playing guitar while I took a piano lesson hiatus though really taught me about chord progressions and inversions. I can't read those Roman numerals, but I can play you those chords and improvise a song. I can't play you a really smooth D Flat scale with two hands but it's still my favorite chord ever and I know all the notes in it!

Oh god, I sound pathetic.

But anyways, I listened a lot in Keyboard Skills. I liked that we split up into groups of two or three to improvise on a certain rhythm and chord pattern, because there were some kids who had a great knack for it, and it was so cool to sit back and listen. It also was a great opportunity to learn how to listen to each other, making sure we were rhythmically together and responding to each other's melodies and harmonies.

After that class, I would have a little bit of free time--ahem, practice time-- before my lesson or duet practice session. When I went to my first lesson with Dr. M, I was waiting outside his office door and could hear a girl in there playing a jazzy and difficult sounding piece, which I later found out was by Gershwin. That's when I started to feel like a very humbled and average pianist.

When I went in I showed my teacher all the music I had brought: a Bach prelude and fugue, an Albeniz prelude, a Chopin prelude, and a Beethoven sonata. It was heavy. When I told him that I was working on the Bach and Beethoven for future college auditions, and was planning to apply to St. Olaf as a performance major, he said, "Okay, let's work on that."

My lessons were a half hour long, and we had decided that we'd meet every day, which I thought was awesome because my brain needs that type of consistency when I'm in such an unfamiliar and hectic environment.

It was kind of interesting to work with a person I'd just met, who basically only knew what I was doing right now for half an hour for five days straight. The first lesson I gave a bit of back ground as to where my strengths and weaknesses are, how long I'd been playing, and who my teachers have been. When he kept on asking me if I had played this sonata and that etude, I apologetically told him that my repertoire is like Swiss cheese--there's lots of holes in it.

Then we found out that Dr. M knew my current teacher, Dr. B. "We're like this!" he said, crossing his fingers. I suppose you can never have enough connections.

So, we did college stuff last week. The Beethoven sonata, Op. 28 (the first movement called Pastorale), we worked on the Notorious Fugue in G Major, and the D Flat Prelude Op. 28, No. 15 by Chopin. That was my end-of-the-week recital piece, and my assignment from Dr. M was to beat down on these huge loud chords with my hands moving towards the wood of the piano. I wasn't attacking them straight down with tension in my arms, but I was sort of in between, and once I got the hang of the airbag-deploying arm technique, I got a wonderfully scary-good quality sound out of the piano. I call the fugue notorious because I was trying to get the harpsichordy sound of Bach into a modern piano, but ended up putting accents where they shouldn't be. To illustrate what he thought I should do, Dr. M took my book bag. "Is there anything breakable in here?" he asked. "Nope." Then he swung it around from his wrist. "See how it takes work to get it going, but then it takes care of itself when it reaches the top?"

"Uh-huh," I said, hoping my copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee wouldn't come flying out of it at me.

So, I've been trying to metaphorically swing a book bag into a Bach fugue...and I'm happy to say it's been working.

Every day the Piano Academy would also have afternoon masterclasses, and every day with a different teacher. I played a little Beethoven bagatelle on Monday, and I oddly wasn't nervous at all to play for a dozen people and a teacher. Every kid that got up there he quizzed on the opus number and the birth and death dates of the composer of their piece. I think a few people were a bit intimidated, but I wasn't really. He was right that the three Coke machines in Buntrock Commons get cheaper as you go down the hallway. And he was also right that I didn't really "sell" the bagatelle, that I wasn't really excited about it. I tried to joke that I chose to play it that day because it was the lightest book to carry across campus, but he kind of ignored that. Oh well--it was partly true, though. He asked the others what they thought of it, and they said things like, "I think your dynamics are good, but you could have more balance between the hands," or "maybe a little less pedal." One of the no-nos was to call it a song, and not a piece.

"Songs have words, pieces don't." Which makes sense, I guess, but it took me the whole time up there to stop saying song. That's what made him laugh.

It was all good feedback that I tried to internalize quickly, and after being up there for 15 to 20 minutes, I'd say it sounded better than when I came in.

I would say that the first few days at the St. Olaf Piano Academy, I was greatly humbled by the talented kids and wonderful teachers that I spent time with, and I was desperately wondering whether I was really all that good, and whether I could become as skilled as the people I met. It was kind of overwhelming. The second part of the week I was feeling more curious, energized and encouraged and confident about developing my skills as a pianist. I had thought, "Music is my life, and I'm not going to give it up."

Pianists were the only ones who had to audition for the week, and not everybody got passed them, so I kept on telling myself that I wouldn't have been there if I wasn't a good pianist. I just had to keep on keepin' on.

Experiences galore!

From Sunday, June 13, 2010

Okay, so two really big things happened this week: On Tuesday I played in the MMTA Composition Contest recital, and a teacher wanted to BUY a copy of my original piece (!!!), and last night I played in the Honors Concert at Northrop Auditorium!!!

Which experience was cooler?

It's hard to say.

I was speechless when this teacher said to me, "I have a particular student that I think should play your piece." I luckily had an extra copy I gave her. That's right, I gave it to her and didn't take her money. I had no idea what sheet music costs, especially when it's just a few loose sheets of paper. It didn't really matter to me. She asked me to sign it, too, and that made me feel very warm and fuzzy inside.

Of course, this doesn't mean I'm always going to let my compositions go for free (I hope I can get into a more regular composing habit so that there'll be a lot more of them.)

When I told my own teacher about it, she said, "You should have asked for $50. $30 for you and $20 for your teacher!"

Oh, if only it could work that way.

Then the concert last night! After working my butt off to win the Minnesota Music Teachers Association state piano contest, my reward with 699 other kids was to play in a big duet on the Northrop stage. Two hours of kids from six to 19 years old played in their own age groups, usually about 20 pianos used in a piece, with a conductor. (who liked to sip juice boxes during rehearsal, if you like random facts)

I got to wear a really awesome formal dress, and it was red. Seeing what every body was wearing was...interesting.

With dress rehearsals, pictures, and sticking around for the whole hooha, I was there from 3:25 to 9:07 PM. It was a long day, but I'm glad I got the experience.

The song we played was a nice and easy blues that was only about two or three minutes long, so I knew it like the back of my hand. The part that was really nerve racking though was when we had to wait behind the stage. You have to be real quiet, which gives you too much time to think about what you're just about to do. But once I got up there, I made sure that I didn't look anywhere else but at the conductor, and I was just fine. I saw a bit of the audience in my peripheral vision, but nothing derailed my confidence, and before I knew it we were done. I think for me, my brain can't comprehend the number of people in a space as large as the Northrop, and we're so removed from the people that in a way, it's almost like there's no one at all--just a bunch of kids on a big stage. If I'm in a recital with just a regular roomful of people, then pre-performance nerves are more evident, which is really weird, I think.

So now that all of that is over, I can focus all my energy on preparing for the St. Olaf piano camp next week, which sounds like it'll be really intense. I mean like, soak- your- hands- in -hot- water- and- bandage- your- fingers-at-the-end-of-the-day intense. I say, Bring it on.

Wildflowers

Last summer I decided to plant some wildflowers. We're a big gardening family with flowers all around, like the azaleas...

Some tulips...

Some snapdragons and a marigold in the barrel...

And some vegetables and other plants in the backyard. I help take care of them, but I wanted my own plot. So, when we transplanted the strawberries last year, I took up the empty space, turned over the soil, and in a week planted my wildflowers.

My garden

I weeded. I watered. I weeded again. Then I waited. And then they grew!

This month, all these little orange flowers started popping up, and I'm getting excited for when the other ones decide to arrive.

Wild flowers are really fun because almost each month there's a new kind of flower popping up, and then by the end of last summer I had red, yellow, orange, blue, pink, purple and white flowers the whole length of the garden. It was just beautiful. Here's to summer!