Tuesday, January 27, 2009

I'm going to have to work on titles for these...

Hello All,

I’m back and doing well. I suppose this week wasn’t quite as eventful as the last, but still wonderful nonetheless. We continued with our German classes and I got myself into a good routine. My German class isn’t until 12:30, but I’ve been going in to the IES Center around 9 with Brian and Danielle for their early morning class to get work done. It has turned out to be very productive because I work really well in the morning and there is no distraction. Then when I get home after class I can just chill and hang out with my roommates before talking to Aaron and then go to bed.

My roommates and I are all coming to accept the fact that there is a ghost in our apartment. Tyler had an encounter with her in a dream and informed us that her name is Lynda, she is blonde and 22. I suggested that he ask her out in the next dream and see if she will stop making so many noises at night.

On Tuesday, a bunch of us got together to watch the inauguration at the IES Center, which was pretty incredible. They streamed it through a projector so it was nice and big. I remember thinking to myself “When I think back on this moment years from now, I will remember sitting in a castle, eating a Kabob and drinking a Fanta” That morning it was also exciting to get off of the train and see that the headline of the news paper read “Die Welt Hofft auf Obama”--- “The World Hopes for Obama.” Pretty exciting, eh?

On Wednesday, we found out our ensemble assignments for the Performance Workshop. I was assigned the role of Susanna in the opening duet “Cinque… dieci…” from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. I’m excited to sing with Nate, who I’ve been paired with and I am already familiar with the opera and role from other arias that I’ve sung. I’ve also been assigned a piece from Lester Trimble’s setting of The Canterbury Tales. This should be challenging both rhythmically and phonetically since it is in middle English, but I’m sure it will be fun. For this set, there are 3 other vocalists, an oboe, flute and piano.

It was a pretty eventful weekend. On Saturday, my roommates and I went to the Fleemarket. This happens every Saturday and is basically a giant garage sale. It is located at the end of the Naschmarkt, an open-air market where you can find all kinds of fresh fruit, vegetables, cheese and meat for really good prices. I got a pretty green scarf.

That night, Angie, Christa and I made a valiant attempt at making cookies without vanilla extract, or measuring mechanisms… they turned out pretty well actually. We then accidentally fell asleep at 9:30 at night and proceeded to sleep for the next 12 hours! It was fabulous.

But the most exciting parts of the weekend, going to my first Viennese operas!  On Friday,  we went to see (for you UNHers reading) The Magic Flute at the Volksoper. This is an opera house where every opera that shows is in German, we paid 1.50 Euro for standing room tickets and then were able to take the empty seats after the overture. The show was very well done. And there were lots of little kids in the audience who laughed at all the German jokes, which was adorable (because the opera was written for children).

Then, on Sunday, we went to go see Massenet’s Manon at the Statsoper, which was amazing! The staging was brilliant, the musicians were flawless, the opera house was gorgeous and I was drooling over the French, just because I love the language so much. It was fantastic and I’m looking forward to going again.

I think that is all for now. This is our last week of intensive German, then I’ll go with other IES students on a tour of Berlin. The next week we will start our regular classes. I’ve contacted my recommended voice teacher and will hopefully meet with her before the end of the week, and on Thursday, we are going to a ball! I’ll be sure to post more pictures soon. Thanks as always for reading.  I’m sending my love your way.

Until next time,

Caitlin

2 comments:

  1. Hi Caitlin,
    A ghost, a castle, a great role in Figaro, an opera and a ball! Sounds like a lot of fun to me.......good for you. I bet you're excited to start the music piece of your study - have fun. Tomorrow is Wednesday, so that means it's going to snow in New England. Here we go again. I bet we have more snow than you do!! :) Have fun with everything and we're glad you are keeping us posted about your wonderful adventures. Enjoy every minute. Love from all the Morneaus (including Kasey)

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  2. I didn't know cookies were made with "mechanisms". You'll have to show me sometime. You sure whatever you didn't measure into those cookies didn't put you all to sleep instead?

    That ghost sounds pretty scary. But ironically down-to-earth... heh.

    And (E)1.50 for an opera!? I'm a tad jealous mannnn.

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