traverse city and back

I'm sitting at work in my Grandpa's office at Delnor hospital in Geneva right now. If Karen were here, she could tell me how to do the mass of filing that's sitting all around me, but she's gone until 1:30, which is why I'm sitting here, babysitting the desk for her until she comes back. The phone's not ringing. All the payments are in order. The last patient is through. Nothing much is happening... but there's chocolate :)

This is pretty much the first thing I've done since driving back in late last night. When I drove into St. Charles, there was vicious lightening brightening the sky every half-second and by the time I pulled into my driveway it was raining hard. I sat in the car as my brother and my dad and then the rest of my family came out to greet me and try to get me out of the car. The thought of unloading the harp in the rain was depressing, and I didn't feel ready to be home yet. I'm high on the excitement of moving to France this fall. I rolled down my window a crack and told my brother, I don't want to come home!

But really, I do. It's nice here, and Linda is visiting. She's so charming. She's my little cousin, adopted from Guatemala some 10 years ago. She's about 13 now. This morning she woke up and had breakfast with me before I went to work. Last night she hung out in my room while I unpacked, exclaiming about how much she loves my room and how she would like to live there. She even has my stuffed animals named already.

Anyway, the main point is that I was just in Traverse City, Michigan for the last week. It is so beautiful up there. For anyone who hasn't been there before, find an excuse to go sometime. It is gorgeous. (I don't have photos because I'm a loser.)
Isabelle was teaching a harp workshop for the week, which was a great chance to get to start out studying with her before I go over to Paris in a couple months. I had four lessons while I was there and got to observe everybody else's lessons if I wanted to, which was almost just as valuable. I could go on and on about how much I love her teaching style and how nice she is as a person. Isabelle completely loses herself in her teaching, sitting right up next to you, singing solfege along with your playing, or acting or dancing along, beating on your leg for rhythm or grabbing your hand suddenly to make you dampen in a place you hadn't even realized the strings were still ringing. If you're doing something wrong, she'll demand to know why you thought it should be that way, correct you, and if you don't get it right when you try again, she'll stop you with a blunt "no" and wait patiently until you correct it. On the other hand, she puts no lid on her expressions of joy if you do get something right. In this way, making music becomes exciting and motivating.

In general, it feels good to be out of the unstable transition period between teachers. I'm finally under somebody's wing again. It was also really good to be around her to get to ask questions and hear advice about my move to France. In fact, I now know where I want to live. This is the apartment that the father of one of her students tracked down and recommended that I get:
http://www.paristay.com/paris-apartment-rental/55/Parc%20Monceau/75017/studio-rentals-in-paris-france.html
Isn't it pretty? Isn't it tiny? It's within a block of both the conservatory and the Sorbonne, where I am going to take a French class.

All the students in the class too were wonderfully nice people. We couldn't have had a more welcoming and pleasant group. One might laugh and say it was girly to the max, but sometimes I feel most comfortable with that. Everybody talked with sensitivity to other people's feelings, using please and thank you whenever they could, commenting on each other's oufits, always being positive and supportive about each other's playing. I guess I was more sensitive to that after having spent the weekend with Joe and Dan, where things often degrade into dirty, shocking kinds of humor. I can do that too, but the harp girls made everything feel clean and civilized by contrast. It was so fun! We worked hard--practicing hours and hours and then taking notes during our masterclasses--and goofed off hard too--driving around the bay, roasting hot dogs on the cook-out fire that we watched Marie burn all her homework on--and bonded so quickly--staying up till late talking to Syliva about her harp gigs all around the world, Ann Marie about her miraculous recovery from the car accident, Kathrine about all the advice I can think of for going in as a freshman to U of I...

I want to go back next year!!