First Week of School!

I've completed my first full week at the Academy! Huzzah! Thursday was my first full lesson with Hőna (HOO-noh), and it took another good bite out of my ego. We worked for an hour on two exercises. His method is more like a regiment than a routine. I won't go into the details, for the sake of the lay-people reading this, but it is strict and it takes a lot of concentration, and every time I did part of it out of order or missed a bit, he would take time to explain again and again what needed to be done. At the end of my lesson I had a good idea of where I needed to go musically and what I have to do to get there.

I've been working on it every day, at least 2 or 3 hours each. Jack also took me to a huge sheet music store with lots of Hungarian publications. There's a lot of trombone books I've never seen before, and I'm eager to try them. I picked up a quartet and read through all the parts. It should sound pretty good together.

The weather here as been cloudy a good deal of the time. Over the past three weeks, I think we've had only 3 or 4 nice days. The sun broke out a little this morning, but unfortunately the practice room I chose had a great view of the neighboring wall. I'm currently in Szábadshag tér hoping that it will come again, but I think I'm going to be disappointed. Come hither, spring...

Here are two reasons I love this city. One is that the buildings are really interesting. Most residential buildings have architecturally similar with minor variances, but are usually different colors, mostly tan, brown, grey or yellow. See the pictures on Facebook for a few shots. The other reason is because I see dogs all the time. Szábadshag tér is like the Boston Common of dog walking. Today I've pet a golden, a huge St. Bernard (with some Newfie, I think), and it's just past one.


From the vague and repetitive CNN channel, I hear that Iceland has collapsed, people are still losing their jobs, half of Australia is on fire and the other half is flooding... and that Michael Phelpes smoked a pipe. It must be the apocalypse.

We tried getting our Residence Permits on Wednesday. It was an adventure in bureaucracy, shall we say? I'll just leave it at that, but add that NOW I am ready to reapply on Wednesday.

My keyboard is now formatted á la Magyarul, which means that Y and Z are switched, the keys by my right pinkie are accented vowels and I can't find the 'at' sign. I am still loving every second of my time here.

And the sun came out just as I typed that!

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I found an e-mail from Nick, a director at Friends Music Camp, offering me a job this summer! I'm so happy to be going back to one of my favorite places in the world. Spending the summer with Margaret is going to be fun. We haven't had one of those together since... FMC 2öö4! (sorry about the accents, I can't find the number zero on this keyboard setup, either.)

Up for next week are concerts cheap and free, the exciting one being the Philly Orchestra playing at the stunning Palace of the Arts, of which I'll put pictures soon. Here's to you, good lookin'.