We're moving!

My family isn't moving, just my blog.

This blog is being incorporated into a pre-existing one I started up early last year. No sense in having two!

The address is peekintotheworldbeyond.blogspot.com. I'm working on finishing my Panama updates (yes, that was last March...), then China, then Guatemala, and in two weeks I'll be back from Bolivia! I wish I still had my letters I wrote to friends while I was in England and France in 8th grade, I'm sure those would have been quite interesting to read. Moreover, I wish I had journaled when we went back in 2007. Lesson learned: document everything!!!

Saturday, Day #2

Today came early with a wake up call at 6:45, breakfast at 8, leaving at 8:45 for Fudan University for chamber music rehearsals. We hiked what felt like "across campus" in extremely hot weather to what I guess is their art/music building? Up some big winding stairs to the 3rd floor, where we found practice rooms! Chinese practice rooms! They are deeper than ours, but not as wide. Plus, they aren't air-conditioned, and if you think our pianos at App are bad, theirs are horribly out of tune. Ick. Warmed up and rehearsed in the hot stickiness while Alisha took pictures. Hiked back to the rehearsal room, sat and listened to the last few groups, the went to lunch!

Lunch today was in what looked like a very fancy room, but for all I knew, it might not have been. Everything was red and trimmed with gold. They brought out a bunch of food as usual. I sat next to Daniel who was hyped up something awful on caffeine; it was fun to listen to his stories pour out so enthusiastically.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel to grab our concert clothes. Went to Shanghai Concert Hall - we had to make a couple of circles around it before we got in the right lane to turn - which isn't too bug or too little. The stage is pretty deep. We found our dressing rooms downstairs, which look like every large American dressing room, complete with flourescent lights. They hadn't set the stage yet, so we had time to sit around and take pictures. Chris gave my shoulders a kiatzu (spelling) massage, which worked wonders on my knots. Of course, they're all back now, but it felt good then!

The Fudan students arrived en masse and we assembled. (I don't know why I just chose to use that word. Assembled?) The plan was to run the program in order. The joint orchestra opens with the 2 countries' national anthems, then ASU chamber music, then their wind ensemble, then their chamber music, then joint orchestras again. Yeah. Loooooong. Dr. A ended up cutting the DMO cello piece. Grieg opened and Hunt (my quartet!) closed that section. It was interesting to listen to the crowd during the chamber groups (to certain groups in particular) - whenever there was a particularly out of tune note, everyone (mostly Fudan) would make a sound of slight pain, which made me chuckle. After I grimaced, of course. :-/ The point of this is that this rehearsal was incredibly long. After my group played, we had a long while before the orchestra portion. Several of us went into the lobby, which was very tall with a large, pink marble staircase. The wind ensemble played only movie music - The Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, The Incredibles, Sound of Music and Back to the Future. Also, their string quartets were realllllllly good. So, yes. As we were waiting, the time kept creeping along - we were supposed to eat at 5:30 but at 5:20 we were nowhere near finished. (I wrote this paragraph on a bus, so imagine really sloppy handwriting.) So, about 5:40, we learn that we won't be playing again before the concert. Well dang, we waited for close to 3 hours. Oh well, no harm done.

Went downstairs about 6:00 for dinner...which was KFC. I honestly cannot remember a time that I've eaten KFC before this trip, but it was actually quite tasty. Though I've been told Chinese KFC vs. American KFC is quite different. I had a sandwich. Mmmmm. Changed clothes. Most of the girls had long, black, very similar dresses. Some had knee-length skirts. I noted that none of them were wearing pants, and all of us were, except Lindsay. Elizabeth just told me that one person asked her if "we always wear trousers?" E explained that it's hard to find long, nice black skirts in the states. *Side note: journaling takes a lot of perseverance! When I wrote this it was a week later on Sunday. Slowly but surely.* Oh, and this was the day my feet hurt like no other. I switched shoes and didn't wear my Chacos, so I'm pretty sure that's the cause. But man, sometimes I felt like my feet were going to split in half.

Moving on. We all (Fudan and App) gathered backstage. All the App students were expecting to go on about 7:15, since the concert started at 7:30. At 7:25, they still weren't letting us on, so I asked Hower if they normally do it like that (just going on when it's time for the first piece, instead of warming up). I don't really remember what he said, just that it didn't answer the question. Later Dr. A said it's a European thing. Oh.

Anyway, turns out they have MC's for their concerts! Well, more like just a pretty girl that welcomes the audience and introduces groups. The US national anthem was first, but Dr. A gave a speech with David translating. The first thing he says is (pronounced) "Nee-how!" which is Chinese for hello. And everyone starts clapping. :-) A few more touching words about how music unites us and off we went. Conductor Li did the Chinese anthem.

Next was chamber music, which I'm pretty sure everyone rocked. I messed up my "solo" a tiny bit, but I'm sure no one really cared. It was still awesome. After that, some people went downstairs, some stayed up, some took naps - we had a long wait. They told us afterwards that we set a record for the longest concert in that hall. Three hours. No joke. The hall was noticeably more empty went the orchs came back on for the last part. We played 3 Bizet pieces, Coppelia waltz, and Happy News, a Chinese piece that Dr. A conducted and was super exciting. Another thing they like to do here is give out flowers. All directors got an enormous bouquet, plus the two concertmasters. Neato.

We came back to the hotel and decided to go up to their "Midnight Bar" or something like that - a bar on the very top of the 26-story hotel. We couldn't really see much because it was foggy and rainy, but it was still nice to relax and enjoy each other's company. After we were done there we went to the little c-store across the street (different from the afore mentioned one) and got some more 30-cent ice cream. Yummm. Hung out in David's room then went to bed. Woohoo!

More pictures to come soon on this post. My internet is being silly.

First Full Day!

This morning after the housekeeping incident, I couldn't go back to sleep so I hopped in the shower, desperately trying not to get water everywhere while still maintaining water pressure. Dressed, journaled. We went downstairs at 11:50 for lunch, which was in another hotel.

They totally serve meals on lazy susans.

Gigantic ones! At least that's the way it's been at the 2 restaurants we've been to so far. It's family style - our dishes included fried mystery meat that tasted like chicken, tofu, more mystery meat that was really good, delicious fish (however, they like to leave the bones in the meat, so we had to constantly check for those), potatoes, soup, rice and something else. One drink is included with every meal, but that drink is an 8 oz glass with no free refills. The plates are the size of soucers, and you get one or two little bowls for soup and rice, one with a spoon. To drink we could usually choose from water, tea, Coke or beer. I think several people would have gotten beer if we didn't have rehearsal right afterwards. Sluggish musicians aren't good! A little ways into lunch, people went to the bar and got some water for 10 yuan - I keep wanting to say yen - which is about a buck and a half. One guys almost got beer because apparently the bottles are rather large. I don't know much about beer, but their bottles looked about 2X the size of ours.

It's interesting how full I felt afterwards. It's really hard to gauge how much you eat off that tiny plate when you keep refilling it, plus you have to account for what you lose off of the chopsticks. Ha. Oh, and we've told to try KFC, it's supposed to be good.

After lunch we went back to the hotel to get instruments. Jenna and I made a stop next door at the Construction Bank of China, or China Constructions Bank or something like that, since I can use that one without any fees. At 2 pm, we all left to drive to Fudan University.

Fudan University apparently has about 50,000 students. The campus is incredibly large, and has high schools (at least one) there too. From where we rehearsed, the campus extended at least another 2-3 kilometers, Alex said. We rehearsed in a classroom-turned-orchestra room, which was very cramped. They're used to getting closer to each other than we are. Most all of the kids speak English, so that's a relief!

Rehearsal went pretty well - Mr. Li basically did the first half. He doesn't speak much English at all, so he would sing the wrong way of doing something, the sing the right way/how he wanted it, we would play it, and that was that. We went to dinner (not sure when - I sort of lost track of the time) with the students, some who rode on the bus with us. There I met Hower and Violet, both violinists. At dinner, me, Jenna (both violinists) and Hannah and Nick (cellists) sat with Maggie, Tiffany, Eysen, Adolf, Hower and Violet, all violinists. It was fun - we compared differences between countries and asked various questions. Also, they showed us the correct way to eat the food (bowl vs. plate). I didn't feel so bad the rest of the trip when I dropped food with my chopsticks because they did it too! They also put what they don't want on the tablecloth, while we just tried to keep it to one side of the tiny plate.

Back to rehearsal. Anderson did most of this one. He figured out most of them spoke English, so he talked a lot more than Conductor Li. I keep wondering how much of him they actually understood. I don't know, but we all came in at the right places. Li did the end, then we headed back to the hotel.

I often crave sweet foods at night (ok...well all the time) but I was in the mood for ice cream. A few of us went down the street to a 24-hr C-store to get snack food. Now, Alex had cautioned all of us to cross only with the locals and/or only with the green lights. Well, we did the first leg, with the green because there weren't any locals, to the middle of the road under a bridge. The other side was red, so we waited...and waited...and waited...it definitely never turned green, so we just went. Got a bunch of food for 18.80 yuan, which is less than 3 dollars. woot!

Came back, slept, day over.

Getting There

Alright! Back in the States and blog working, so here we go!

I woke up this morning in CHINA. How often can one say that?! I awoke to our doorbell ringing (yes, our hotel room has a doorbell) and the oh-so-familiar, "Housekeeping! Housekeeping!" I was only halfway across the room when she came in (she had been knocking/ringing/yelling for awhile, I think). She realized we weren't quite ready ready to have our room cleaned - Jenna was still conked out in bed - and switched to, "Laundry? Laundry?" while tugging at her shirt. No thanks, was my response, but I'm still wondering if the laundry service is free here? Before I get ahead of myself, I have to tell about our fabulous 24 hour+ adventure that got us to this cute Chinese housekeeper lady.

Mom and I left the house at 6:47 am, grabbed some coffee and headed to the airport to meet the rest of the orchestra at 7:30; they were coming from Boone, meaning they left at 5:30. Eww. But hey, they were right on time! So far, so good. We went to check in, all was going smoothly (we didn't even have to pay the $15 bag fee!) but then something happened with Keagan and Kimberly's tickets. Not quite sure what it was - we heard their tickets weren't grouped with our and they had to go on another flight (?!) but that got fixed and they came with us.

*Two side notes: There was just a massive amount of honking outside my window, i.e. it lasted about 20 seconds. I can also hear a violin playing scales and arpeggios. I don't think I'm going crazy- I'm hoping it's Kimberly or Vanessa warming up in the room beside us.*

Anyway, we all got through security, got to the gate, got food, came back. I managed to find an apple and an orange! So exciting. Plane ride was pretty uneventful. I sat next to Daniel, one of our tuba players. (Mr. Anderson likes to call him a trombone because of the part he plays. I don't know if Daniel appreciates that too much.) Daniel had never flown before or been out of the country, so that was fun. He helped me with my easy sudoku after I messed it up no less than 3 times. Oh, and our group was greeted over the speaker by the pilot with, of course, App-uh-lay-shun. Ha. Onto NY.

Got onto the "Airtrain" which people were very excited about, got to our terminal and to the place we thought we were supposed to check in. No one there, but Anderson said they didn't open until 4 hours before the flights, which would be 12:30. It was 11:50, so some went to get food, some, including me, just stayed there and played cards. At 12:30, sill with no worker in sight, we realized we were at the wrong check-in counter, but thankfully the correct terminal. We all checked in; Mr. (now Dr!) Anderson and some other that were at the front sat down to play cards while waiting for everyone; we finished and he told us to go through security...we left him on the floor playing cards. Ha.

About 7 of us went scavenging for food, only to find $9 sandwiches. I don't think so. I managed to find a $5 hot dog/drink combo. Woohoo. We boarded at 3:50 for our 13 hour flight to Beijing. Before that, we saw our plane out the window, and it was huge! Two stories! (The top was for first class, the lucky dogs.) All (or most) of us had aisle seats. Callie (harpist) and I were on the ends of the middle row of 4 seats. Miraculously, no one showed up to sit inbetween us! Oh so nice. We took off at 5:15, which is when I woke up since falling asleep at 4:30. All of our attendants were Asian and very pretty. Some of realized that sleep wasn't going to happen anytime soon, so we walked around a bit, stopping in front of the emergency exit and Dr. Anderson, who was completely conked out for almost the whole trip. Some 31-year old guy with an Air Force shirt came to talk to us; he's getting his MBA and doing a research project in China. Then he started talking about something that none of us quite followed, and only at the end did we realize he was talking about Google. Mainly because he asked us if we had friends at Google, then gave Vanessa his card and said to email his friend. Still not quite sure what went down.

I slept a little bit after that, maybe 2-3 hours. *At this point, I have a lot more written in my journal about the food, which isn't important, so I'm skipping it.* I don't think anything else exciting happened until the end of the flight. We stopped at the gate, everyone got up and got their stuff, then they made us sit back down. Two guys came around with stun-gun-looking things and pointed them at people's forehead's. It made a circle of light when they pulled the "trigger" along with a beeping sound. They were taking temperatures - and totally skipped over me. Not gonna lie, I felt a bit left out. :-(

Got off in Beijing! Turned in our health forms and promptly received a text message that read, "Welcome to China!" cool. Went through customs with no incident, except I had to give up my water again. Oh and Blake, Matt, and Dr. Semmes' luggage is still in New York. That stinks. We got to our gate 3 minutes before we were supposed to board (we still had a 2 hour flight to Shanghai), but had to wait for the rest of the group. I sat next to Elizabeth, and we both conked out almost immediately. Landed in Shanghai, met our tour guide (Alex Xue, he stayed with us the whole two weeks, and David) and headed to our hotel. There, we were greeted by two large posters of us and Dr. Anderson, advertising our tour. Pretty cool!

To get into our rooms, you wave the key in front of the door handle, like a FOB. The rooms also have a doorbell and you have to leave your key in a slot in order to have power. When you walk in, there's a sitting area/foyer type deal with a big armchair, a desk and chair, 2 closets, a mini-fridge and the bathroom to your left with a sliding door. You go down a short hallway (7-8 ft), one side of which is a ceiling-to-floor mirrored wall. You get to the "bedroom" with 2 just-slightly-larger-than twin beds, a TV and another chair. Plus the window, which looks out at another building in front, some really old houses (some might call them slums) on one side and new, tall skyscrapers on the other. The juxtaposition of the buildings here is quite interesting.

Jenna (another violinist) and I are rooming together. We settled in about 12:15 and decided to look for computers, which we heard would be available. They were, but not for free, so we went back up and went to sleep, which led us to the housekeeper previously mentioned.