How did that audition go? Oh, and prizes!

The "audition" went great.  Mary Sue and I basically just flipped through my arias book and she had me sing random things to test me out through trouble spots in certain arias.  It was really a lot of fun!  Of course some things I hadn't sung in three or four years, so they were very problematic, but she also wanted to see how quickly I could change and how I take advice.  I ended up getting a great little lesson.  The biggest problem was that I had just come from an hour long lesson and the only break I had from singing was the bus ride to the church!

So, some cool things she told me: picking the best pitch in the phrase and sing around it, counting my vibrato, and of course using my air more.  So, picking the best pitch in the phrase was kind of cool to keep from switch the timbre too much.  This worked especially well in phrases going from low notes up to my middle voice to keep me from pressing too much on lower notes and then not having the right position in my middle voice and thus losing overtones.  I'm going to go out of order from my list to talk next about the air thing.  It was the same problem I encountered when I had a coaching with Mark Trawka at Pittsburgh Opera last year in that I often back off the air when I go down in pitch instead of keeping the sound alive.  Also, I change the majority of pitches in my throat, not with my air, which is bad.  So, that's something we worked on a bit and I know needs to change, so it's sort of up to me.  But my coloratura was really cool when we figured it out in that brief amount of time.

Now, the coolest thing was counting vibrato.  I'd heard of doing this to get a more pleasant sound, but never to actually know how to release a note.  She had me count how many reps my vibrato went through on high, dramatic notes, and then always release on an odd number; that way I was always releasing UP instead of down.  It was so cool!  The sound keeps going after the note, and it works especially well if a note needs to be released tenderly instead of dramatically.  Probably the coolest thing we talked about.

So afterwards we went to get some coffee and talk, and then walked around Florence for several hours.  It was a great time.  She said she'd like me to come to Arizona to visit her Rotary club and maybe do a concert.  She also wants to introduce me to some great directors, conductors, and composers.  So exciting!

So, speaking of Rotary, I've had some great dinners and social events with them lately.  Last night we had a gala d'auttuno with the theme of Casino Royal.  I was afraid that more people would be in tuxes and only a few of us with be in suits, so I wore a black suit, white shirt with French cuffs, and a silver tie.  Some guys had tuxes, most of us were in suits, some were in jeans and hoodies.  It was really cool though because we got a lot of chips and two free drinks with our cover charge.  The only games they had were Poker, Roulette, and Blackjack.  I was holding out for a while on Blackjack, but I gave up and began playing Roulette, and losing a lot.  Also, I had to explain how to play to some people all in Italian.  After a while of losing and being down to only a few chips of hundreds and a 500 I left, hung out with friends, and kept having a great time.  But eventually I went back, played at a different table, and did alright back and forth and got a little bit of money back.  Then I got mad because the guy spinning the wheel sucked and the wheel would stop spinning before the ball finished.  Not exciting, so I left.  Same thing of hanging out with people, dancing, making new friends and everything.  Then a friend gave me some chips because he had won a lot at Poker and was going to Blackjack.  So I went back to a table, and started playing high stakes and getting a lot of chips back.  It was a lot of fun and on the last spin I bet 2,000 on black, 2,000 on the cross with 35 black, and I bet around 6,000 or 7,000 on the column below 35.  And, as luck would have it, the ball landed on 35 black!  But then the jerks just said, "okay, done!" and left.  They wouldn't even pay us!  And then I argued and they just kept telling me it was the last roll and didn't matter, but of course there were prizes to win and I'd won something like 16,000 or 20,000 in chips.  They didn't have enough 500's for me!  So, I told some of the guys that knew me and they helped explain it to the guys giving out the prizes and I won a gift certificate for two to a spa outside of Florence and two more free drinks!  Great night.  Made a lot of new friends, got prizes, and was the only American not speaking English.  There were at least two American girls there that I only really met by them being at my table or because I heard them talking to other people, and they weren't even trying to speak Italian.  Not even for simple colors and numbers!  Very strange to me.

So anyway, had a great night and met a lot of new people and got closer with my other friends that were there.  Soon I'll update you all on the really cool Italian Thanksgiving I had!

Audition of my lifetime!

Hello all!

So sorry to have not been posting very much.  Such is life I guess.  But, I have an extraordinary story for today! Today it was like everything just magically came together by meeting one person.  Mary Sue, and I don't know her last name, was presenting a check to St. James Episcopal Church here in Florence this morning.  She had actually sat two rows behind me the whole service and I could tell she had some sort of musical experience when we were singing the hymns.  It was an extremely musical day today!  There was a wonderful tenor there today who sang three very lovely pieces, the last of which was Panis Angelicus as a duet with our music director.  He sang from the altar and she sang from the choir loft in the back of the church.  A-ma-zing.

Anyway, my morning was filled with music.  After the service, Mary Sue and I began talking about what I do and where I went to school.  She almost went to CMU for voice, but decided on Curtis instead.  Yeah...but she was a great friend of Lorenzo Malfatti and was actually in Lucca when I was there two years ago, we just never met!  I gave her my card and she saw Rotary and said, "hey, I'm a Rotarian!" and I proceeded to tell her that I'm an Ambassadorial Scholar and she demanded that we meet again sometime this week.  She also wants to go to a meeting this week, so I just sent a quick e-mail to try and find a meeting to go to this week and I'm very excited.  We talked off and on a bit more and it was all fantastic.

Afterwards I went with our guest tenor, Grahm, to grab a drink with Mary Sue and a music director at the music school in Fiesole.  So, Mary Sue and I began talking more about what I do, what I want to do, etc.  I talked about my senior recital and the recital I just did here so that she could get an idea of my rep, and when I mentioned the Old American Songs by Copland she taught me an amazing lesson.

Aaron Copland, Lee Hoiby, and Lorenzo Malfatti were three of the first Fulbright Scholarship winners EVER and they all studied in Italy at the same time.  Copland wrote the Old American songs FOR Malfatti, who did their world premiere at St. James Episcopal Church WHERE I SING IN ITALY and I sang six of the twelve on my recital, in St. James Episcopal Church.  O-M-G!  Chills when she explained this to me.  She also knew Copland and still knows Hoiby.  She thinks I should meet Hoiby and perform some of his work....

So, she said that she has to hear me sing.  Thus, we are meeting up on Tuesday of this week and I'll sing for her.  SO NERVOUS!  To me, this could really be the audition for me.  She knows so many people, and is so gracious, a Rotarian, graduated with Dr. Page's daughter from Curtis (yes, they're friends and were in the same class I believe).  And she wants me to come to Arizona, where she lives, and perform for like Rotary or something.  Ugh, overwhelming.  Anyway, that's the newest and biggest news.  Hopefully I'll have a great follow up this by the end of the week!

I have Internet!

Woo-hoo!  I finally have Internet at my place.  I'm not completely sure when it started working.  My landlord came by on Tuesday to help me with it, but before he arrived I turned on the router and tried to bring up the problem pages on the web, but it worked!  Everything all of a sudden worked even though the router still didn't have all the appropriate lights.  The landlord came over, we put in the username and password information and now I'm good to go.  I think I'll be fine from here on out.  And the connection seems to be pretty fast.  I still haven't gotten to test Skype yet though.

So anyway, life in Italy gets better every day.  I've figured out that in combination with people not speaking to me in Italian when I first got here, I was also frustrated with the lack of help from Rotary and also the lack of company.  But things are better now.  I have fantastic friends that are American, British, and Italian.  I also have been getting great help from certain Rotary members and the Roteract.  I went to a murder mystery dinner with the Roteract kids and last night had a fantastic dinner with the Todescans, a family of Rotarians.  I love that family.  We speak all in Italian, but the Mrs. speaks English just in case I don't get something, plus they feed me fantastic food and lent me an old bike today!

Anyway, all is going well here in Firenze.  I can't write too much now because I have to write several essays for Rotary before next week.  In English and Italian...ugh...

Rotary thus far

Actually a very old post, so not actually anything about "last night" lol

Grand dio!  Tutto andava bene!  Benissimo!  Tonight I went to my first Rotary meeting tonight, thanks to the wonderful Elaine Poggi, and had an amazing time.  E tutto era in italiano!  Elaine only knew two or three people there, but she is a very outgoing person and immediately started introducing me to people.  She started with the nearest group of people, who after a while I found out were a bunch of teenagers.  They were nice, but basically talked amongst themselves.  There was also an American girl there but I continued speaking to her in Italian when they introduced me to her, but then I found out that she doesn’t really speak any Italian.  Alas, everyone in that group was between 16 and 18.

Then I found Elaine and told her that those kids were too young for me so we found the group from Roteract that were all around my age.  I ended up meeting a lot of people because we all sat at a table together.  It was a lot of fun and really funny because every time I was introduced to someone they would great me with what little English they knew, but then became very excited when they found out I could speak Italian.  Thus, I had a great night and great dinner with new friends and picked up my first Rotary banner.  Sadly, I didn’t take one of mine so I couldn’t give them one, but they’re letting me come back in the spring to present them with a banner.

Since then I’ve been to a couple other events for both Rotary and Roteract.  I was working on this post like a month ago and as per usual I didn’t finish and kept forgetting about it.  One very fun event though that I recently went to was to play Wii with the Roteract and Interact clubs.  We played Wii Tennis, which was very fun and surprised them that I knew how to play so well.  It was also funny because the Wii announcer still spoke English but all the text on screen was in Italian.

So the next step is being an actual member of Roteract.  There is some big dinner I’ll be going to next week.  I keep getting confused about what’s going on with membership and payment because they always explain it to me very, very fast.  So, things for Rotary are going pretty well, even though my “host” has only spoken to me once in the last couple months to basically say he’s been busy and I still won’t be able to speak at his club anytime soon.

Okay, if you read through all that, great.  This is basically a month or two old and I’ll try to be more up to date next time.

La SpeeeeEEEEEEEEranza!

I’m prefacing this with the fact that I originally was writing it like September 23^rd or 24^th as a word document and I’m just now posting it.  Sorry!

Yesterday I received an e-mail about events that are happening in Florence for students this week.  In that e-mail was information about a concert that night of Porgy and Bess.  And what was even better was that the tickets for students were only 5 Euros!  So of course I planned on going.

So, when I got home I went for a run (because I’m running in the Corri la Vita this weekend) and went about 2 miles I think only really stopping at stoplights.  I got back and had hoped to cook dinner before going to the concert, but realized that to get there in time to buy a ticket, even by bus, I needed to shower and leave.  So I did and then looked up a quick bus schedule.  Well, I couldn’t find any evidence of this bus around my house, so I hopped on one that came by, asked if it was going to the theater, and several people on the bus said yes and a young couple told me to go with them.

So, I talked to them for a while and we got to the theater and looked for the ticket office.  They had purchased their tickets online, and apparently so had a few other hundred people and they all had to stand in the ticket line to pick up these tickets.  We finally found the end of the line, about a block long, and took our places.  The guy told me that he didn’t know about any tickets being left, but I could always try.  So I stood there.  As we got closer we started seeing signs saying the performance was sold out, but I was already about 20 minutes into the wait.  So we talked about it and decided that maybe people didn’t show up and I should keep waiting because I had already committed over half an hour (and the show was already about 10 minutes late.  So I got to the point in the line where you just stand and wait for the absentee tickets.  My new friends wished me luck and get their tickets.

I continued to wait.  I was very confused by the line because no one was assisting us and we were all just standing there.  Then finally they started giving out tickets.  Most were for 35 Euros and I thought about buying one and trying for a discount of like 10 or 15 Euros.  Then all of a sudden they said that they were not selling any more tickets because they had to start the show.  We were all extremely let down.  But then some guy showed up behind all of us and he had a single ticket and it looked like he had a girlfriend for whom he couldn’t buy a ticket.  I asked him how much and he only wanted 5 Euros!  But then they said they were closing the doors and he thought the ticket wouldn’t matter.  The people behind the desk said I could still get in if I hurried.  So I gave him the money and took off running.  The ticket was for the floor seats but the door was closed, so they took a last minute group of us upstairs to the second tier.  We walked in as they were finishing tuning, but it was amazing to make it in like that!

So, as for the concert, it was decent.  From the tier I could hear the singers on stage right pretty well, but for the second half I moved down to my actual ticketed seat and could only really hear people on stage left.

After the concert I went around to the stage door, of course, and waited for performers.  The chorus slowly filed out and I actually knew a few people, one of whom because he had sung Colline in La Boheme in Lucca when I was there two years ago.  Super cool!  My voice teacher’s wife was also in the chorus and the music director for my church.  The only soloist I saw come out was the tenor who sang Sportin’ Life, Ronald Samm.  I talked with him for a bit and he was very nice.

Overall a very fun and exciting night, made all the better by the suspense of whether or not I would get in to see the concert!

Now, as you all could tell it took me a while to get this post up.  My Internet is back to not working at my apartment.  I’m starting to look for a way out of the agreement so I can move at the end of this month or maybe for the next semester.  Internet is kind of required in this day and age to stay in touch with friends and loved ones.  Also, I have a couple more blog posts written up in word perfect so I’ll try to use this week to get everything up.  Try not to miss one! 

I'm still here!

Sorry for taking so long to update my blog.  I’ve been sort of busy, but I also always just forget that I should write these updates in Microsoft word and then post them online when I have Internet.  Instead I usually think about writing something when I’m sitting at an Internet Train paying to use their Internet.

Speaking of which, I’ve had quite a grueling time with the internet.  I’m so very, very close to having a connection in my apartment.  In fact, after I write this it may even be uploaded from my room!  But we’ll just have to see.  As the Italians say, “Non c’è fretta” or “there is no hurry.” So, how am I so close to having Internet?  Allow me to chronicle the tale to you, and teach you all a bit about the Italian system!

So, I’ve been calling my landlord every week for about a month about the Internet situation at my apartment.  He kept telling me that he had given Vodafone (telephone and Internet provider) his number and that they would call him when they were available and then he would call me.  Now, this seems very useless to me. Why not just have them call me?  Though I guess my Italian is a bit limited, but most of them speak English well enough.  So this went on for a while until it became, “I’ve signed the contract.  They should be there this week.  Ten days at the max!”  Well, of course they tried to schedule at 6 p.m. on a day when I have class until 5:45 p.m.  I my landlord, whom we shall now refer to as Nello as that is his name, that it was possible but I might be a few minutes late because I had a class.  He decided we should just put it off until Saturday.  I said, “No, I’ll be there.   We can’t keep putting this off.”  He said fine, then changed his mind to 8:30 A.M. Friday morning.  Ugh.  Well, of course I arrived home Thursday evening right at 6 p.m. and Nello and his wife were there and we talked for a bit and he dropped off the router with me.  Yay!  Il rooter!

So, next morning I wake up early, have some espresso, save a bit for my guest, and then get the place ready for company as best I can.  The young man that showed up may not have slept for a week, but it had not phased him one bit.  He was wired super tight.  All I said was, “Buongiorno!” and “Va bene,” in response to him and all of a sudden it was understood that I spoke Italian, and then some other stuff was said…idk.

Now I know I’ve been complaining and dying to speak more Italian, and I was happy to speak with him, but I have quite honestly never heard anyone speak Italian that fast (even faster than the Don Pasquale duet I believe) and he thought I understood it all!  And this was 8:30 in the morning!  On a FRIDAY!  But it was still funny as I woke up more and more and we talked a bit and as I understood every third or thirtieth word.  There was a lull at one point and I asked if he would like a cup of espresso and his response was, “no, grazie,” followed by an explanation of why he didn’t want any and some gitters like a Thriller Zombie that gave me the impression that if he drank any caffeine his head might explode.  That would have been bad and left me with no DSL.  Or ADSL as it seems to be referred to here.

Okay, so, everything was installed in the walls, lines checked, very little cell phone service in my dungeon, but the router was hooked up.  Now, this makes no sense to me, but the router is plugged into the wall by a data cable (resembling telephone wire), but it also needs a jumpdrive that holds a SIM card to be plugged in as well.  I’ve never seen something like this before, and it sort of makes sense for paying on your cell phone bill, but it was very annoying and useless to me.  Why?  Because the jump drive and SIM card weren’t in the box!  The codes for the network access and SIM card were in the box, but no such luck otherwise.  So, I mentioned that maybe Nello had them.  I guess he didn’t get this because he just kept telling me that I needed to go to the Vodafone store and talk to them and I could get it taken care of.  I said okay, we chatted a bit, laughed, and he left.  Very nice, very crazy guy.

So, it’s about 9:30 a.m. at this point and I get ready to make the long walk across town to the Vodafone store.  I thought several times, “Just call Nello; he probably has it,” but it seemed early and I was ready for a bit of a walk and maybe some store browsing.  I arrived at the store and explained that my landlord had purchased the router, the guy and I set it up, the line was good, but we didn’t have the “Internet Key.”  He told me I would have to get a new router because whoever had it before probably kept the key and I needed a new one.  Then proceeded to sale me on a new plan and such, though I was pretty sure Nello had all that taken care of beforehand.  So I stepped outside to call him and of course he had the key and he and his son were coming by on Saturday to set it up.  He had already mentioned this to me the day before, I remembered, it just didn’t click.  So, now I had a whole day with a brand new router sitting at my house and no Internet.

Okay, so I anxiously wait all day long for Nello and his son, Luca, to arrive and set everything up.  Got some reading done and listened to Joyce DiDonato’s “Pasion” CD, very soothing.  They arrived and began working.  So, I needed to install a program using a CD/DVD and we tried this and it just wouldn’t work and we couldn’t figure it out.  Then I remembered, haha, I’m in ITALY!  My computer è Americano.  Stupid region codings.  This was pretty hard to explain (neither of them speak English), but Luca agreed with me and then explained it to Nello.  Luckily they had brought another laptop and it worked.  Now, at some point while the ball was rolling I didn’t notice that Luca went through an online setup and established the password encryption as WEP instead of WPA, which it had been originally and I had actually connected my computer and iPod to it regardless of the lack of Internet.  It’s still a network, after all.  The problem with this is, other than the fact that WEP is less secure, is that my computer only recognizes WPA encryptions, so I couldn’t connect to the network anymore.  It took a while but I finally figured out what he had changed, but I didn’t know HOW he had changed it.  I explained a few times what I believed the problem to be, and I think he got it and sort of agreed, but kept trying other things.  This went on for a very long time and at one point Nello asked if we were done with the other computer.  I was thinking, “NO NO NO!” but didn’t say anything fast enough so it went away.  In all our waiting and deliberating though Nello did bring us a couple of espressos, which was very nice and a good little break as we sat and sipped on them and discussed what was going on with the Internet.

Luca decided at one point that maybe it was because Vodafone had not yet activated the DSL line and thus we couldn’t connect to the Internet.  It took a bit but I explained that I had already connected my computer to the network and that there was wireless in the room, but just no Internet.  I explained that it shouldn’t matter if there is or isn’t Internet, there is still a network.  After a while more of staring and clicking I finally got out my iPod with my handy dandy UltraLingua app (thanks Carnegie Mellon) and figured out a few new vocabulary words and used a few stronger words such as “I believe” instead of “I think.”  This worked a little better, and then I thought to connect my iPod to the network.  I did this and it did work (because though you may all think this is a win for Mac it just proves that they care less about their quality of wireless security as compared to PC users who won’t even acknowledge WEP :-P) and I was able to go to the webpage and change the encryption back to WPA.  I did this, the iPod disconnected, a few seconds of anxiety passed, and all of a sudden my laptop connected to the network!  Tutto bene!

We were fairly celebratory.  But still, no Internet; just a network connection.  My hopes had been that I would leave for a while and some server off in the distance would switch on my Internet.  No such luck.  It apparently must be a person somewhere.  So, I wait.  I watch all the little flashy lights and wait for one more to pop up.  In fact, only 3 out of the 5 are on now.  There were 4….must investigate.  Oh yeah, there is a LAN connection light.  I’m not wired in anymore so it’s off.  No worries.  So yeah, still no Internet.  Maybe one day.  It’s almost my one month anniversary in Florence.  Maybe that will be my present.

Okay, that was a really long post, but that’s only one of the crazy things that have happened since I last wrote!  I have a few more good stories that will hopefully be sorter.  A few more quick words about Nello and Luca.  Before they left Nello sort of showed Luca around and he was using regular vocabulary and I have recently learned new vocabulary for such tiny living conditions and I was sure to point that out.  Also, Luca had seen my goggles sitting on my desk and asked if I was a swimmer.  I said I try, but I’m more into biking and only do the swimming because I was interested in doing triathlon.  I also pointed out that I had noticed his RoadID bracelet, which is a little bracelet to wear with all your medical information on it so that if you’re in an accident on a ride or run it helps the doctors work faster with you.  He then pointed out that he was wearing a Florence Half-Ironman shirt and that he will be going to the world championships in Florida next year!  How cool!  I mentioned an upcoming 5K here in Florence and found out that Nello is the organizer!  So I kind of have to run.  It’s actually next Sunday and the furthest I’ve run without stopping is 2 miles; 5K is 3.1.  I told him I didn’t know about church obligations yet (bum, bum, bum!  What’s this?!  A preview of a future post?!), but I would find out and try to be in it.  So I’m free and will try to enter tomorrow to run in it and spend a couple days this week trying to build up my mileage.

So, that’s it for now.  Sorry it was so long and drawn out, but that’s what it’s like in Italy!

Update:  Internet has worked at my apartment long enough so far the I could update my Facebook status once.  I had to get a Vodafone SIM card to call the service line, which doesn't work in my phone so I have to pay for it with my Wind SIM card anyway.  And the service in my house isn't really good enough to stay connected and understand the Italian anyway, so I'm kinda stuck for now.  I spent all day today working on it and by the time I get out of class I'm betting that they won't be open anymore.  Another update very soon.

Don't second guess the milk!

So, you know how in the US we see the expiration date on that milk in the fridge and if it’s like, day of or a couple days after we’ll smell it and say, “Oh, it’s fine, just drink it!”  Don’t do that in Italy.  I made my regular cup of espresso yesterday morning, and normally I use a regular size mug, put in one sugar cube (that delicious cane sugar of course), fill it about halfway with espresso, and the rest is milk, and it tastes AMAZING.  I did just as that yesterday morning and as I poured my milk it seemed to me that I was pouring cottage cheese into my coffee…which is not what I had intended.  I smelled the milk and it smelt like it always does, and then observed that the bottle said “1 Sept” so I just assumed that, it being September 1^st, it should still be good!  So, like an idiot, I poured a bit more, thinking that maybe the milk had frozen a bit, but once again it was like cottage cheese, or maybe mozzarella because that’s more popular here and also sits in more liquid than cottage cheese does.  Rather perplexed (all this was shortly after I woke up, mind you) I grabbed a small glass and poured the milk in there.  It didn’t smell bad, but did appear to be expired, or have been sitting in the sun for some period of time.  I resolved that it had indeed gone bad as the clock struck midnight on September 1^st and poured out my coffee and threw the milk away.  Luckily, it was mostly gone anyway.  But, moral to the story is that milk here goes bad when it says it does.  So don’t push it!

So all the students for LdM arrived yesterday and are in orientations for the next few days.  My orientation is Friday.  I’m pretty excited to actually be meeting some people here!  So far I’ve found about five people attending LdM who are from Arkansas or attend school in Arkansas and there is another Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in the same district as me here who is from Oxford University in England.  I’ve sent e-mails to a few of these people to try and find out more about them.  Haven’t heard much back, but it’d be nice to find some people to go to the museums and such with, or get coffee or a bite to eat.

I’ve sent, or at least written and I’m just missing the addresses to, all of my postcards.  Well, just the first 12.  I’m going to buy some more, it’s just that they are annoying expensive to send.  They cost a total of $1.25-1.55 per card.  So you who are receiving them know you’re special!  I’m actually getting very into it and it’s fun to write them now, I think just because I have an Italian address and also because I remember how exciting it is to get postcards from friends abroad.  Which for me is now all of you!  Send me letters the good old snail mail way!  And don't forget to send me your addresses so I can continue to send postcards.

Scott Beasley

Via San Niccolò 80

50125-Firenze

Italy

I got some contacts ordered today!  Actually, I ordered them yesterday, but when asked for my phone number I couldn’t remember the last four digits and so I had to go back today and give them my number again.  But there were very nice!  After a while at least because when I showed them my handy-dandy prescription card they said that “Oaysis” contacts didn’t exist, but they’re really just a category of Acuvu, which I told them, and they said, “No, non è vero, aspetta,” and then he looked it up online and of course, j’ai eu raison.  So he happily ordered them for me after I told him I live here.  So, good stuff!

Today has not been a good day for saving money, sadly.  I try really hard and it just doesn’t always work. I went to a café today to get some lunch and went there SPECIFICALLY because they have free wifi.  I tried to sit outside because it was so nice today and I was in the shade of the Duomo (awesome).  Well, it wasn’t working and the waitress (who so far speaks Italian, Spanish, English, and German) and I decided that maybe it just didn’t work outside, so I ordered and then went inside.  Well, it still didn’t work and I was stuck there.  Then I got my glorified coffee, which was a substitute for a soda that I didn’t want but was supposed to come with my meal, so don’t freak out, Mom, and it was gorgeous, but just okay.  My homemade coffee with rotten milk would be tastier I think.  And then my chicken sandwich came and it was terrible.  I had eaten there before and used the Internet with success for a couple hours and had a delicious hamburger, but I attempted to cut my sandwich and the bottom bun was so hard I couldn’t cut through it!  I ended up picking it up and could barely bite through, and even at that I eventually got rid of the bottom bun and sort of nibbled on the rest of it.  And the fries were less than good.  Sadly, I have not had good French fries since I’ve been in Italy, but (of course) they were pretty amazing in France!  I should have a running tally on French and Italian food wins and losses….

So anyway, no Internet and a crappy lunch.  Sad day.  What was funny was seeing a group of teenage American girls come in and the first thing they asked was how big their margaritas were.  I’m assuming they had escaped their parents for the day and wanted to have a little fun.  This was at 12:30.  Ah, la vita bella….

I have now mended my Internet ways and returned, once again, to Internet Train.  This place is fantastic and reasonably priced.  And the guy who works here (and isn’t here today for the first time!) is super nice to me and has always spoken to me in Italian, even though I’ve heard him speak English to other people.  And this place does everything: faxes, copies, telephone, wifi, desktops (I’ve paid for both services because it’s nice to not always have to carry my computer and bag), postcards, bathroom, printing, routers and phones for sale, drinks, and snacks.  Of course, this also led to my other extra expense today.  I had to make copies of every page of my passport, which was only €2.25, but I had a €10 or a card, and the new guy didn’t have any change other than €.50 coins and my card didn’t work.  So I just bought a Fanta and said whatever.  I still got a handful of change and he felt bad, but I’m all about customer loyalty and this is one of the few places that’s been really kind, reliable, and spoken to me all in Italian!  So, it’s all good.  And I’ve been craving Fanta for about a week.

On a final note, as I was sitting here writing this a rather large couple, pretty sure they were Americans, walked in to use the Internet.  They just read the signs but never approached the counter.  They sat down and began to put a credit card into the card reader on the computer and I quickly explained that you had to purchase a card with time on it and that was what you used to access the computer.  They just sort of said, “Oh,” talked quietly to each other, helped each other out of the chairs (rather large), and then left.  They never even attempted to ask for help.  I see people come in here all the time who don’t bother to try and speak any Italian, not even a “ciao” or “buongiorno!” but they’ll still go up and ask for help.  It was just truly shocking to me that these two were either so independent or so scared of talking to anyone that they wouldn’t even approach the counter to try and get Internet access.  There are so many signs here you could easily point your way through the whole process if neither person spoke the same language!  So today’s tip:  just try; don’t let little things like a language get in your way.  I survived in France because my wonderful language teachers would always make me describe things I wanted to know about, as best I could, in the language until I could get an answer for the word I was looking for.  So in France I was always making up my own words or phrases and then asking what the real word was and half the time I was already right or really close!  Now, if only I could convince these dang Italians that I can speak Italian if they’ll let me practice and get back into the flow of things….

p.s. I was very humbled yesterday when after writing to my old Spanish teacher and telling him I didn’t really remember any Spanish anymore, I left Internet Train and immediately encountered a Spanish couple trying to use an ATM that didn’t have a Spanish translation.  I did my best but the only things I could really say were, “You speak Spanish” and “Ummm…if you go…” and the such, trying to tell them where there was an ATM with Spanish on it.  Alas, they were in a hurry and didn’t have time for my blundering and ran in the other direction.  I reflected on it a couple hours later and thought of plenty of things I could have said, but my Spanish just isn’t there anymore what with French and Italian floating around in my head.  Maybe I’ll pick it up again eventually.  Also, to my credit, I think they were speaking in Catalan, or at least they had very think Barcelona accents…

One week down, several more to go!

So, it's a gorgeous day in Florence and the heat is actually not terrible for once!  I'm once again sitting at Lion's Fountain Irish Pub because I get free Internet here and there's hardly ever anyone here, so I don't feel bad about sitting here for hours if need be.  In fact, yesterday there was a soccer match and I just slipped in and sat down and waited for someone to take my drink order for about 2 hours, but no one did, so I had like 2 hours free Internet.  Alas...

As I've been writing this I've been catching up with a friend that lives here and friend from Belle Ile and now it actually is getting hot out.  Not terrible though.  I don't think I've talked about my frustration with how this is such a touristy city.  When I was in Lucca, I don't know what it was, but I apparently looked the part of an Italian and people would speak to me in Italian, but I guess since there are so many tourists here that I just look like another American and everyone just speaks to me in English.  Even if I speak in Italian they speak to me in English.  And thus my Italian is becoming slower and slower and harder to use.  So, I think I'll steal a trick from someone at the music festival I just left.  One day someone was speaking to him in English instead of French, so he said he was Spanish and didn't understand English.  So I think I'll start saying that I'm French and don't understand English.  I may get busted, but I think I speak enough French now that I'll slip by.  And if nothing else I'll get to keep my French up.

I guess there's really not much more happening.  It's their vacation time here, so there really aren't that many Florentines around.  I haven't seen my host since my first day here.  I've only talked to him once since then just to let him know I found a place to live.  The first Rotary meeting here will be September 7th at 8 p.m., so I'll be going to that.  I'm hoping I have all my supplies I need by then, but who knows.  I don't even really know my address here yet.  I don't think I even have a mailbox at my apartment.  I feel like it will be the kind of thing where stuff is just slipped under my door or just left outside of it.  The biggest thing I want is my bike. It would make it so much easier getting around I think, plus I've been seeing lots of cyclists out in the mornings.  I also found this site http://www.ibikeitaly.com/ that seems really cool.  I may try it this week or next weekend just to get on a bike again.  I really hope I meet some Rotarians who are into cycling and maybe I can go on some rides with them.

Well, I thought I had more to write about, but I guess I don't yet!  Hopefully I'll start meeting more people this week as I think most people should start arriving for school.  A presto!

Starting to settle into Florence

So, I'm in Florence and have a little apartment!  A very little apartment.  Pictures to come.  I think I'll have Internet in the apartment, it's just that there is a key for the wireless and I don't know what it is and my landlord hasn't called me yet.  I'm betting he's still on vacation, so I may not have Internet until September.  But, I have figured out how to work the washer, which was quite a feat and now my clothes are hanging to dry very very slowly.

The first few days here were horrible because I was just sort of left on my own and didn't know what to do and didn't have a place to stay or even leave my bags, so I was constantly lugging my bags around with me in 90 degree heat.  But, since I finally got a place to call my own and a phone things have been becoming much nicer.  My Italian is improving, but kind of slowly.  Since this is such a big tourist town a lot of people speak English anyway.  So, seeing as I have mostly American t-shirts, I get spotted pretty quickly and people just speak English to me.  Some of them though will speak Italian if I just keep going with it.  I do miss speaking French though.  I've been writing to friends from Belle-Ile in French, but that's a whole different challenge.

My house is across a bridge just outside of the center city here.  I found out today that it's about a 25 minute walk to school.  But I'm in the middle of a lot of museums and up above me are big gardens of historic names.  I tried to go up to them one night but apparently they're gated and you can only get in at certain times.

Anyway, I was about to start uploading pictures, but since I'll have to upload one file at a time and I have probably 100 from Belle Ile, Paris, and here, I'll just have to wait until later or something.  So, until another time!

In Florence!

Just a quick update that I'm in Florence.  Not exactly the warm reception I expected, other than it's really freakin' hot.  And I've been hauling 100+ lbs of luggage everywhere with me.  Got a hostel last night that was nice, today is the search for an apartment.  May have a hostel for the next few days as well while I search.  Wish me luck everyone!

A la fin!

I've come to the end of the festival.  And I'm actually leaving a day early!  We finally got all that sorted out.  We weren't supposed to sing in the last concert anyway, but the festival wanted us to stick around for some reason.  Finally they just gave us our tickets and told us that if we wanted to leave early we'd have to change them ourselves.  No skin off my back!

Tonight will be my first time singing the bass solo in Mozart's Sparrow Mass.  I don't feel like trying to spell it out in German right now.  There was an older singer singing it for the first three concerts, but he's French and so he left early and I'm left to sing it.  It'll be okay I guess, it's just that I've never had any rehearsal for it and that can be a bit scary.  Last night was also our second and last cocktail concert.  I opened the concert with Questo Amor, vergogna mia from Edgar by Puccini.  Then halfway through Ryan and I sang the duet from La Boheme.  I've performed both better before, mais c'est la vie.  I had a coaching earlier in the day with a principal artist here whom I've become great friends with and it was fantastic.  He and I have pretty similar voices (I think) and so I've wanted to work with him a lot.  It's just hard to get instruction in a coaching and then be able to perform it 7 hours later in the same day.  However, everything is a work in process.

After the concert we all piled into a car and went to see the sunset, or couche' de soleil (the sun going to bed).  It was the second time I've been to see the sunset here, and both in the same week!  Since we live on the East side of the island we never get to see it set, so one of the drivers very kindly took us to see it twice.  And at two different places!  Yes, pictures to come, but the Internet here is so bad it just takes too long.  Maybe I'll open a Flicker account and put things there....though I do have a Google account and could use Picassa....hmmm...

So, not much longer here.  I think I maaaaay have housing worked out for Florence.  It still seems weird.  But alas, all will work out in the end!  Until next time!

A blog is a joke!

Woops!  I mean a blague is a joke...heehee... :)

That is, in French the word for joke is 'blague', but it sounds like 'blog' when people say it.  So yes, I had to look it up on Google translator to make sure I spelled it right, but I thought it was funny that this phenomenon of blogging around the world was actually, quite literally, a joke to French speakers!

Not much more progress since yesterday.  My host sent me a website that I'm trying to translate because it's something about student apartments.  Every day the French and Italian switch in my head is becoming easier, but it's still difficult.  Especially when people won't speak whatever language it is back to me!  arg...

Yesterday was a blast though.  Sang in a masterclass with Ryan.  The instructors were great.  Sadly we had to use music, but we talked to them before hand and they were perfectly fine with it.  It limited us some but we still worked for 45 minutes.  After that we got a little bite to eat with them; them being most of the cast of Cosi.  And then after that we went to a party for the festival at which some of the festival sponsors spoke and then gave us presents!

Body wash, hand cream, and a couple wrinkle reducers.  One for the day, one for the night.  All pomegranate  scented.

Also, I had a lot of pics I had forgotten to upload, so here are some beach pics!

Walking down to the beach

The beach

Ryan on the beach

Ryan playing on the beach

My feet getting hit by water that was really, really cold

Rocks!

Feet in the water.  Cold!

Ryan burying my feet in the sad under the water.  Jerk.

Underwater shot!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Little side beach past the rocks

Ryan perched on rocks reading.  I was perched on my own rock.

Good times at the beach!  Yay!  Off to another day of trying to find something to do on the island.

Oh dear....

Soooooooo.....I've been e-mailing a lot this morning with my host Rotarian in Florence.  We're trying to find a place for me to live, which is great!  Except that I had to send him my budget.  Now, while I'm very grateful for everything Rotary has done for me and the money they have given me, I discovered this morning that the scholarship given is more inclined for those studying in smaller countries than in big, touristy cities.  So, we're going to have to be creative.  After figuring out what I need for school and my plane ticket I came out to $6,211 or 4,697 Euros to live on for 10 months.  So, for an apartment and food, in a touristy city, it's not very much really.

Once again, I'm very happy with everything that Rotary has done for me.  They've helped me in numerous ways and given me a huge opportunity with this scholarship.  This is simply one more hurtle I must overcome.  However, I have learned not to be afraid to look for advice.  So comment!  Or send e-mails about what you think!  I've been e-mailing my sponsor back in the USA today as well and he is helping quite a bit and I know that some Rotarians and the Jonesboro Club and District 6150 are all following this blog.  So I'm looking for advice :)  I've hinted to my host in Italy about living with him or with another Rotarian, but I don't know how to actually ask to do that.  What would be rude, what would work, etc.

In other news, I think I'm 100% better.  I wanted to go for a run today but went to a masterclass here today instead and then had to work on a duet with Ryan.  We're going to sing in a masterclass tomorrow and get some advice on what to do to sound better together.  So then I had to cook dinner.  So no running, but I will get back into the swing of it pretty easily because the weather here is so great and it's usually beautiful scenery.

Okay, tomorrow I'll try and let everyone know how the masterclass went.  Until later!

Vending machine with a conscience and Robert Merrill

So, two things to post about today.  First is my story about a vending machine with a conscience and the second is about my favorite baritone, Robert Merrill.

The vending machine.  This week I went to a final dress rehearsal for one of our operas and I really wanted a fizzy drink.  Ryan lent me 2 euros (that's for a 33 cl can, super expensive!) so that I could by an Orangina.  Oranginas are delicious!  Sadly, I put in the money and the machine said that it was out.  I was very sad because I really wanted an Orangina before our performance!  So, I decided on a coke.  I hadn't drank a coke since 2009.  But I remembered how amazing cokes in Europe were because they're made with real sugar instead of corn syrup.  Well, apparently the machine felt bad for me because it gave me two cans of coke!  And on top of that, it gave me back the two Euros!!!!!!!!!!!  So Ryan got a coke and his money back.  I was very excited.  Sad part of the story:  the coke did not taste that good, which I guess is also good because I don't want to drink another anymore.


Now, onto Robert Merrill.  This has nothing to do really with current happenings in my life other than I just finished his autobiography about five minutes ago.  It was a tough read because he was a singer and not a writer, so it was sort of ordered chronologically, but it was pretty scattered none the less.  In the first few chapters it's all about his extremely difficult childhood and how his parents were always fighting and a lot about how he hated singing.  Then he finally decides to start singing and begins enjoying it.  The rest of the book is just the progression through his life but it bounces between him being very shy and humble and thinking that he's not worthy of certain roles or opportunities, to him thinking he is too good for things he is offered or simply thinking he is better than so many others.


It really had me debating how I felt about him as my favorite singer.  It is truly amazing to able to read the words of someone you look up to so much and know how they felt and what they were thinking.  Examples of his being too proud are that he won the MET auditions and then refused to learn any small roles.  These days you would just be fired and forgotten about, but he eventually got his way and only ever performed leading baritone roles.  But then when he was offered really big, important roles (such as Rigoletto, often regarded as the greatest baritone role) he turned it down saying he wasn't ready.  But then when young hopefuls would try to sing for him, as he often did when he was young to try and be discovered, he comments about how he would tell them to just go become a doctor or lawyer because they would never have a career in music.  All very strange.


But I think the thing that finally sold me on him was that for the whole book his mother had been portrayed as the villain and everyone was sort of on his side.  And if the things he says were true, she was evil.  The stories of her are too numerous to recount.  But as I wondered how the book could possibly end, it was actually with his mother's death, and he talks about how it wasn't really a surprise because she'd been pushing herself to death for years and had been going in and out of comas for several months.  But in the end he realized that she really was the reason for everything he had been able to do, even if she never seemed happy with what he was doing or wished she had had his life.  It ended up being truly touching.  In the end, I think it just took him a long time to grow up, but with time he did become one of the greatest singers of all time.

Check out this new layout!

I've been toying around with the layout on my blog to try and find something that's pretty simple to navigate but still has a lot of info.  I looked at some other blogs and saw things like "to-do lists" and "what's on my kindle" and "what's on my iPod."  Well, there are almost 30 books on my Kindle because most of them are free and there are thousands of songs on my iPod, so I just put the books I'm currently reading on my Kindle on the list and won't worry about the iPod thing.

So, almost everyone in this house got sick the last few days.  We believe it was the local cuisine.  Before one of our concerts, since there was a very small window of time, they gave us some pre-made sandwiches.  Most of the people who ate them had an upset stomach that night or the next couple days.  Of course, I had a fever before I ate it, so I'm getting by.  Don't eat the local food!  That's the moral of the story.


I was thinking this morning that my French has gotten good enough that I may see if there are any nearby Rotary clubs that I could visit.  Well, I just got finished searching and I can't find any, sadly.  I didn't really expect much on this little island, but one could hope.


I have started reviewing my Italian grammar again.  I'm also trying to think of most of my phrases in both French and Italian.  Come to find out, our Italian tenor is actually from southern Italy, so he uses a different dialect and isn't very useful for practicing speaking because he doesn't understand anything I, or anyone else who speaks Italian here, says.  Alas....


So, one solution I've found for people getting e-mails about my blog postings is to subscribe via Google Reader.  If you have a Gmail account, log in and look at the top of the screen and you'll see "Reader" and click on that.  If you've never used Google reader it should walk you through pretty easily.  But all you have to do is click on "Add a Subscription" and then just copy and paste my blog address (googlyelmo.blogspot.com) into that blank, click add, and you're done!  That should take care of it.  I think you may still have to check Google Reader, or have Buzz turned on.  Let me know if it works for anyone!

Let's try this again!

Okay, so I'm going to try posting again.  I mean, if you see this I was successful, and if I fail, then no one has to know about it!  It's just been discouraging to sit down and try and type a lot again after losing an hours worth of work on another spectacular post.  Here I am now though!  I'm recovering because yesterday I apparently got some sort of 24 hour bug.  I had a fever and chills and just aching.  I actually went ahead and went to a recording for France Musique last night and to our Musique Sacree concert, but after the first half I decided I couldn't stick around.  So I came home, took some meds, and went straight to sleep.  Rough night, but I feel much better today.  Just a headache now!  :)

So, in my last post I was talking about all that we have going on this week.  Saturday was supposed to be a day off, but they decided to have a rehearsal for Cosi, and thus we had to work in the middle of the day.  It's interesting how most of our rehearsal are scheduled from like 11 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m.  So, right when you may decide to have lunch through when everything for lunch is closed.  Very odd.  Anyway, on Sunday we had a morning rehearsal for a concert that night that featured all the young artists here.  Fun concert.  The people were very nice afterwards and talked to us a lot.

Then Monday we had another Rigoletto performance.  Tuesday was Cosi pre-final dress and the sacred music concert at night.  Today is the final dress for Cosi, tomorrow is another Rigoletto performance, the Friday Cosi opens for real.  Very stressful.  Also, France Musique is here.  They're recording some performances and such and broadcasting them around the world.  It's pretty cool.

Oh!  What I worked so hard to go into detail about in the last post!  Our second performance of Rigoletto.  So, the very first bit of staging that we do in the show is to come out in a party scene and blindfold a couple girls then put them up on a table with food and plates and stuff on it and have them walk across it.  Blindfolded.  From day one I thought this was a terrible idea.  The table is secure, but very bouncy, plus they are stepping on plates and sometimes fruit and stuff, so we have to hold on to them and then take them off the other end.  Well, during the second performance we ran out onto stage and there was a bowl of fruit on the table.  A glass bowl of fruit.  The bowl was also huge.  There had to be 20-30 pieces of fruit in there. So we began walking the girls across the table.  For the first girl I think we moved the bowl out of the way and then put it back in place.  But then when I was walking my girl across the table there was apparently no one there to move the bowl.  She stepped on the edge of it and sent it crashing down in front of me.  It was actually really cool to see happen because it sort of dematerialized in front of me.  Fruit went everywhere, apparently some of the glass ended up in the orchestra pit.  We all just started kicking the glass under the table and then realized that we had to move the table, so a couple guys got brooms and dustpans and began sweeping it up. The rest of the night was a little scary, but we got through it successfully.

So, I think that's all for now.  Hopefully I'll be posting more.  Thanks to Jonesboro Rotary and Rotary District 6150 for following my blog now!  I've been getting some good info about my club in Florence and am really excited!

Don't use Scribefire

I've been trying to use Scribefire lately, a plugin for your browser to create and edit your blog posts.  It was troublesome because you couldn't use it upload pictures, but I was still trying.  This morning I wrote probably close to a thousand words (just guessing), but I did spend over an hour writing a post, and then it said that it couldn't find my blog, I put in my blog info, and it erased everything I'd been typing.  No more Scribefire for me. Will try again later when I have more time.

Host Rotarian Found!

I received an e-mail this morning that I have a host Rotarian in Florence!  His name is Michele Taccetti and of course I already did a bit of Facebook stalking and what not. I'm pretty sure it's the right person because that name only appears once on Facebook and the hometown is Florence, Italy.  He has a link to a website, www.china2000.it, and I checked it out.  This is amazing!  His father established a corporation to facilitate trade between Italy and China 30 years ago and it's still going strong today.  They export fine Italian goods such as clothes, leather, jewelry, and foods.  They also have locations in several other countries to help facilitate Chinese exports.  I know the US is in debt to China, but this is not a political blog or a place for arguing.  I think this will be really cool for my experience.  Now to brush up on my Italian!

Also, I've established a general rule of I can't speak French until after 3 p.m.  I sort of made that up arbitrarily, but it's pretty true.

In other news, I cooked chili yesterday.  Several hours on the stove.  It ended up being a lot spicier than intended, but quite delicious.  Ryan and I were frustrated when we sat down to our meal and realized that we had forgotten to make cornbread!  ARG!  Alas, that just means that we have to do it again.  Today or tomorrow I think we're going to make ribs.  I bought some at the butcher a couple days ago for 10.30 Euros per Kilo.  Not bad!  I only got half a Kilo anyway.  I am about to go to the store and pick up some ingredients for cornbread and barbecue sauce.  Sorry Mom and Dad, we ate out a lot at the beginning of the week because our schedule was weird for rehearsals and my per diem from the festival is gone.  Gotta pull some money out of the bank!  :(

Things are really looking up this morning with so much news from Rotary.  It was pretty worrisome for awhile, but I've been getting e-mails almost every day about info that the US Rotary is sending to the Italian Rotary and now I'm getting e-mails from the Italian Rotary with names of contacts and phone numbers.  I still don't actually have a place to live though and Dr. Taccetti is on holiday.

So that's it for now.  Also, to any of you who may be wondering as Steven did as to why Ryan and I are not eating more French food, it's because we are on a small island in Brittany and our French cuisine consists of crepes.  And they're all really expensive, too.  So, enough of that.  Sidebar, I installed multiple keyboards on my computer so I could get proper accents and such for French and Italian, but the French keyboard seems to not have a button for the 'e' with a hat, such as 'e^'.  So crepes is currently spelled wrong and it will stay that way until the French fix their keyboard layout!  Mwahaha!  Bye!

And I rested on the....ummm...what day is it?

Oh dear, it has been quite some time.  I'm still trying to figure out how to get this thing to send you all e-mails when I update the page.  Right now it looks like I can enter up to 10 e-mail addresses to get the updates.  Very odd.  I guess blogspot wants you to return to their page pretty often.  Probably gets them money somehow since otherwise it's a free service.

So, what's been happening for moi??  I'm actually going to have to refer to my last post to see what I last told you all about!  Man, almost a whole week.  Well, since then we've had the pre-final dress and final dress rehearsals for Rigoletto and started staging the chorus into Cosi fan Tutte.  Sadly Ryan and I haven't been making it to many of the Cosi rehearsals even though we're supposed to be covering the roles.  It's just that usually we have rehearsal most of the day and then a dinner break and during that they start rehearsals for Cosi or we have choir things for the sacred music.  Alas, we have gotten the impression that we were never actually covers, but actually just told that to make us happy.

I've been having a lot of fun practicing my French on the island.  Everyone told us how terrible the choir is here and how mean they are, but obviously they've never worked with a community chorus.  They're all the same.  A bunch of older people who enjoy singing, probably aren't very good at it, and enjoy talking.  Sometimes talking too much, but hey, it helps me practice!  It's really nice when some of the older people are familiar with the actual grammar of the language and they can correct my little mistakes.  There is a local restaurant and bar called La Chaloupe and the last few days I've been practicing my French with the waitresses there.

So, if you ever feel the need to vacation here, I'm sure it would be fantastic for like a week, especially on vacation!  However, we're working and in rehearsals during all the prime hours of the day and when we get out all the businesses are closed.  Also, there are very few resources on the island.  A few things to remember in you travels because you will be hard pressed to find it here:  deodorant, allergy medicine (such as zyrtec), anything sports related such as drinks, protein bars, etc., sunscreen (it's usually around 16-20 euros...), a hoodie or sweatshirt (cold nights!), and sandwich meat (1.10 euros per SLICE!).

So, the main singers here are pretty amazing for the most part.  I put up a video last time of a teacher of mine singing in the quartet from Rigoletto.  This time I'm putting up a video of the girl who is singing Fiordiligi in Cosi.  The only thing I could find was some Handel stuff, but it's still great.  She has already sung the Queen of the Night at the MET.  The video is in two parts, so the second one is the pain to the left.  So here is Amanda Pabyan!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX93GDsFTBc

Well, I started writing this a couple hours ago, then Ryan made dinner and we ate, then I answered some Rotary e-mails (exciting things happening!), and now I've lost my train of thought.  So, until next time I guess!

Summer nights, summer nights

I'll probably reuse this post title later because it has interesting and slightly fond memories from CMU.  Anyway, the summer nights here are amazing because it doesn't get dark until after 10 p.m.  Usually from about 10-10:30 is a really cool twilight (not the book, the real thing) sort of glow around the island.  Several nights here I've looked up and seen a planet in the sky, but I don't know what it is!  Of course, I could easily figure it out using google, but bonus points to anyone who happens to know what it is already.

Well, now that I've uploaded these pictures, I can't see the planet!  It's to the right of the moon, which is the white dot.  As you can see, this was after 11 p.m. and it was still pretty light out.  Fantastic.

Ryan Brock is here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  So very excited.  He got in Saturday night after coming straight from the states.  That's a really rough trip.  Two planes, two trains, a ferry, and a car.  We've finally gotten all settled in and it's really nice to have my best friend here with me so we can get into all sorts of trouble on the island.  We've done a bit of hiking, which sucked for me because I didn't bring any hiking boots/shoes.  And last night we went running, which sucked for him because he didn't bring any running shoes.

Rehearsals look like they are about to settle down because we have two shows here now, which means that half the day has to be put to the show that we're not in right now.  Of course, Ryan and I will be sitting in on a lot of the rehearsals as we are "covering" some of the roles.  I talked to Richard and apparently we're going to start having master classes during the days, so I need to get some arias together and probably some duets with Ryan.  Ugh!

I found out at a party the other night that my French has gotten quite good, but my Italian has suffered.  There is a new tenor here who is Italian and I was trying to talk to him, but to no avail.  I ended up speaking to him in French and English, not Italian :(.  It will come back though!  I had dreams last night in both Italian and French, so it's still there.  For me I think the biggest thing for the switch is to switch my accent.  Words sometimes look the same but sound different, so if I can switch that in my mind I will be fine.

So, until later!  Also, since we are singing Rigoletto a lot of the music keeps getting stuck in my head.  Then I remembered this video existed!  Three huge name opera stars and then one of our teachers from CMU whom I adored!  The woman acting all sexy in the yellow dress is Mildred Miller Posvar.  She's fantastic.  Enjoy it!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD9MxhSxSCM

Bon soir!

I need to start coming up with more creative titles.  Anyhoo, I've been in Europe about a week now.  Yesterday was a rough day of rehearsal, mostly because we didn't really know our music (our own faults) and it was also a super long day, made worse by not know music and getting griped at for it.  I personally felt bad because I was being so unprofessional.  So, I stayed in instead of going out for Bastille Day (or 14 julliet en francais).  Today was still a rough day of singing, but we worked mostly on act I in staging and things were a lot more secure.  However, tonight will be another night of act II study.

So, on a lighter note, I took some pics today!  Let's start with when I got off the train at Quiberon and went to catch the ferry over to Belle-Ile.  This was the first beach I saw and it was FULL!

This is the Citadelle on the island.  It was an old fortress and it has a museum and hotel inside.  We rehearse and perform in here, but this year it's apparently really complicated because they have a wedding going on and also an art auction, with a few Monets actually!

That's what it looked like when we rode up on the ferry.  And now, for today's pics.  As I was leaving the Citadelle I decided I just had to take some pics of the water.  You can actually see the different depths of the ocean and way out in the distance you can see part of the mainland.  It's really quite beautiful.  You can definitely see the mainland of France at night when it's all lit up along the shore.  Maybe I'll get some of those pics soon!

Hope you all enjoy!