remember remember!

so it is almost the 5th of november so my blog entry is aptly titled.

i'm blogging mainly because patrice assigned it to me as homework and seeing as i don't do any of my homework for grad school, i guess i can do this. speaking of gradschool:

there are parts of ccm that are really hard and there are parts that aren't. the hard parts are all the viola parts, like my lessons and all my viola classes and stuff. we're supposed to practice minimum 5 hours a day so that is quite an adjustment from dpu. also an adjustment from dpu is the fact that apparently i didn't play any rep of significance, so my first lesson with masao kawasaki was a bit of a clusterfuck--so mr. kawasaki is like one of our two main teachers (dr. carroll is the main one) and he teaches at ccm and juilliard. but he looked at my rep list and was like...this is all you've done in four years? really? you went to undergrad? and i was like...ouuuch..but i sorta expected it since you know, i left dpu without playing walton...or bartok..or hoffmeister..or jc bach...you get the idea. so that kinda sucked, but then i had good lessons with dr. carroll from then on. it's weird because we have a different lesson time with a different teacher each week, so you really have to be on your game cause you might have a lesson on friday and then have to turn around and have one on monday (which sucks). i'm taking an orchestra excerpt class for viola (an undergrad class since we didn't have one at dpu) and a bowing class for viola and viola da gamba, which is really badass. i wanna take it the whole time i'm here but i can't next quarter cause of class conflicts and also it sucks to carry it around.

my academic class (yeah, just one history class) is super easy--it's like the same level as balensuela's sophomore class. people who come here from like juilliard and eastman and stuff flunk out of ccm because they think the academic classes are too hard...so i will say that dpu over prepared me academically.

my string quartet is pretty cool--it's me and three international asian students so that was weird at first because none of them wanted to talk and were like depending on me for a lot of decision-making, but now it's all good. our coach's dad is castle grubb (the music professor who worked at depauw for like ever) so he knew what depauw was which is pretty cool. i like him a lot.

my social life is pretty non-existent, mainly because of me. i basically just sit at home in my apartment and watch hulu and don't talk to anyone. i have friends here from blue lake but they're all brass players and i never see them. the viola studio here is 39 people so it's really hard to be tight like we were at dpu, but everyone is really nice. my closest friend is probably blake, i met him when we auditioned on the same day. he came over for drinks last night and it was really fun. i go to dpu on the weekends to see patrick or he comes here...he came for the two weekends of his fall break and we went to the zoo! it was awesome because they have manatees and so he was like in heaven, it was so cute to see him so happy. he's doing pretty well at depauw though, even though he doesn't wanna be there. oh well. he's thinking about auditioning for orchestral conducting here in 2 years, so we'll see if that happens.

i work in the admissions office and it's awesome--the best part is the applicant personal statements that we get from international students who clearly have like typed it in their native language and then put it through like a free translator. so funny. i work with some very unique people but they are fun and they add variety and humor to my days here. my boss went to school with OGS. anyway, this is way too long and not very interesting but i wanted to get an A on my hw patrice!!

i love and miss you all. now look at this cute dog!!!
http://slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/2009/heartpuppy.htm