And so it begins!

I decided to do this blog in an effort avoid inconveniencing everyone with mass produced emails that seem to come at the worst possible times. Read this if you like without the extra email in the inbox. I’m online a few times throughout the day, so feel free to email me – I’d love to hear what everyone is up to!

I have no idea how to even begin explaining how wonderful it is here. I’ll give it a shot, in no particular order.

To start I suppose the obvious is the scenery, you can see pictures here http://jmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2137894&l=77cc5&id=7808985 because I don’t think words can describe it!!

Next would be the food. I’m still figuring it out, but there must be a national vegetarian society, because all vegetarian food is marked with a green “V” symbol on the package. This cuts grocery-shopping time in half, I no longer have to read labels! Also, real ingredients are used, like sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup in everything - even the “cheap” store brand. We go to Tesco, the local store, weekly. All fresh vegetables, fruit and animal products come from within a ten-mile radius. And once again, this goes for the Tesco brand as well. The treatment of the plants and animals is always humane with no hormones/pesticides added, so everything tastes better and lasts longer!

I have two flat mates, Judith and Mime. We are in a three-bedroom, one and a half bath, one story house. Judith is from Georgia; she just graduated from UGA in flute performance. We met in Albuquerque at Trevor’s class in August of 2006. Mime is from Japan and knew no English when she came here. She just graduated from a Christian College in Kyoto. Trevor goes to Kyoto annually and she has played in his class a few times over the past three years.

We have a great living situation so far. Obviously practicing is never an issue because we are all understanding of the need to play high annoying notes and repetitive fast passages. Judith and I are relearning English while teaching Mime – Trevor says (and I agree) that we have a huge responsibility to make sure she learns everything properly. We are both more articulate and speak slowly in an effort to include her in all conversations, and we are also improving our own vocabulary. It’s never irritating with Mime because she is learning so quickly and isn’t scared to ask questions when confused! I can’t imagine moving somewhere that I’ve never even visited, and then to not know the language! Traveling is difficult enough!

As far as flute goes… well I’m improving by leaps and bounds daily. It’s not easy, but I’m so focused progress comes quickly – at least for now! We have two classes per week, Mondays and Thursdays. Each class begins at 9am with a warm-up consisting of a melody we learn by ear and then imitate one another. After this we do scale and arpeggio exercises. We memorize all the exercises as fast as we can throughout the week – for now we can use the music in class but I don’t think he’ll be so kind in the future… Following this warm-up, about one hour, we do either studies or repertoire (Mondays are studies, Thursdays are rep). The studies consist of Andersen etudes, Moyse 24/25 melodies and Moyse’s variations on Bach’s Allemande. For the repertoire we have been given a general layout for the first 10 weeks. It’s generally one work and two orchestral excerpts. This past week was Hue Fantaisie, Beethoven Leonore #3 and Debussy Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Monday was our first class so things went pretty smoothly, he was understanding and forgiving on a lot of things and helped us better understand what we should be working on while practicing. Thursday he began to reveal a little more of his true self – which is why we’re here anyway! We had random scales/arpeggios called and we basically all failed miserably. The performances of the rep went ok, but we know a little better on how to prepare for future classes.

In addition to the class we have weekly and semester assignments. They aren’t anything to stress too much over, and they are very useful for our flute careers. He has given us a list of rep/performers/etc. to listen to, and a topic that goes along with it. We are to write a brief amount on what we hear (this is for the weekly project). For the semester we have a research project where we are to read through some of what he has and write the history of the flute – it’s broken by year for the Fall and Spring.

Aside from missing everyone, I love it out here. I could really get used to this lifestyle. When we don’t have class we wake up between 8 and 9, make breakfast and then shower. Once we’re ready for the day we practice for a few hours, cook lunch together, practice a bit longer with a snack break, cook dinner and clean the kitchen, have our evening walk with Trevor, come home for another hour or so of flute, then sleep. Of course the whole day isn’t playing, we take breaks and chat a bit in the living room, play on the computer (now that we FINALLY have internet) and listen to what we’re preparing for Thursday’s class. Evening walks are at 8pm daily. Trevor picks us up at precisely 7:42 where we then grab the other two studio members, Ritsuko (Japan, second year here) and Marta (Croatia). We go to Trevor’s where the walk begins. Each night we do about and hour’s worth of walking, with breaks to visit with the village pets. I’m still learning names, but it’s about 2 dogs and 4 cats we always see. Tonight we took a different route that included stopping to visit with some horses. Two nights ago it was cows we detoured with…

On Wednesday we went into London to take a tour of Buckingham Palace. It was amazing. My favorite aspect of the palace is that everything in it is used often. It was setup like a museum for the tour, but when the Queen is actually living there (she spends her summers touring) everything is used! I hate visiting places where things just sit in cases and are only looked at. I understand the importance of keeping precious things in good condition, but if you simply take care of them when in use there’s no problem! After the palace we went to the National Gallery, which was also amazing. We walked through a good bit of London but not seeing everything I want to (see come pictures here http://jmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2137912&l=74095&id=7808985). Hopefully we’ll be able to go back often! Trevor picked up sushi from the city while we were in the National Gallery and we went back to his cottage (about 1 hour and 20 minutes train ride) to eat with his wife, Dot. It was so good to eat sushi!!!

The weather hasn’t gotten too cold here yet. It’s probably in the high 60s during the day, and low 50s at night. The wind is very strong and often wakes us up in the night. Pretty soon it will drop drastically in temperature, but the possibility of snow is not yet known. It’s very similar to VA here in terms of winter, except I’ve been told they don’t get much ice. When there is snow everything shuts down since they’re not equipped for it. The roads are all so narrow it would be impossible to plow anything.

FYI - My mailing address is:

Lindsay Carr
The Dairy – Elmsted Court Farm
Elmsted
Ashford, Kent
TN25 5JN
UK

With love,
lindsay

Things I’ve learned so far:

• I will probably improve more this year than I did all through college, simply because I’m not focused on anything but flute.
• A fortnight is two weeks.
• Having one faucet that you can adjust the temperature with is much better than two, where one is for hot and one is for cold.
• No matter what country you are from you will always feel ignorant when you travel abroad.
• In Japan when making rice it is most common to add 20mL of water for every 100 you have – meaning 100mL rice, 120mL water.
• Dial-up will always and forever suck.
• I will always have too much to do in one day.