Time has never flown so quickly ever before in my life! It's shocking that I have been in London for almost 2 months already, and there's still so much I want to do in this last month or so. With this mindset, you can imagine how unmotivated I'm feeling with my school work. Who wants to sit cooped up in their room or the library doing school work when there's a fantastic city to be explored less than an hour away?!?!?! Well, sometimes I do, but more often than not I just want to do fun stuff, i.e. NOT read Shakespeare or sing Handel's Messiah. To be honest, the whole Messiah thing and I have a love/hate relationship. It's hard to explain, but it feels a little bit like forcing yourself to eat healthy or take vitamins or workout because you know it's good for you, but you don't really enjoy the process sometimes. Ok, moving on.
Wednesday morning was a relatively early one because I had to finish Henry V and answer questions about it for class that day. Not a fun reason to wake up early. Do you ever have those days when breakfast is the only thing that pulls you out of bed? Back home, belgian waffles and espresso do that for me. Here, it's usually a crappy song on the radio/alarm that I absolutely must get out of bed to turn off. If it's not that, I look forward to my large mug of tea with milk. It makes even doing homework better. So, with my tea I finished my reading. The cleaning lady came when I was finishing up some stuff, and we talked a bit about dogs, ha. She's super nice and a big dog lover apparently. Then - SHAKESPEARE class which was a drag, again. I feel so lame about baggin' on that class all the time, but there are so many more interesting things here than reading drama and sitting through boring lectures on it. My "English major" identity is having a mid-college crisis.
Finally, Shakespeare class was over, so I did some other work before meeting up with Marta to watch a couple more episodes of Glee. Oh man, I love that show. True, it can be controversial and outlandish, but it makes me laugh and I get musical goosebumps almost every time I watch it. The communal talent is overwhelming. After wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes, I went to Bible study. (Is that too weird a sequence of events???) Oh well. Once again, I loved Bible study. I will be sad to leave my darling English Bible study friends, but I'm looking forward to coming back to FBCFO where I can feel truly connected. Because I knew that I would be here for so short a time, I didn't want to get too attached or invested in a church here anyway because it would just make things more difficult when I left. I think God has provided a very good balance for me. One of the kind ladies at Bible study gave us a lift back to campus where a few us promptly got together to plan a trip to Oxford this weekend! I love that we actually scheduled a meeting for 11:00 at night. How "college-life" is that?
Last night, I told myself, "I'm gonna set my alarm for a little before 7 to see if I can actually get up on time tomorrow." The intention was there, but once again, my body didn't follow through. Oh well, I'm not stressin' too much. The work still got done. After class, I decided to make some pancakes just because. Pancake session soundtrack this time? - The Script. You should see me in the kitchen over here when I've got my iPod and I'm groovin' with my spatula-thing conducting some invisible orchestra or something. I probably look like one of those people who jam to their tunes on the street corner while dancing with signs for some business. (I didn't sell my pancakes.)
In preparation for yet another 3 hour Messiah rehearsal tonight, I listened through the score and then spent the next 1.5 hours sleeping. What is this power that Shakespeare and Handel have over me to totally zonk me out? It's shameful and wasteful really . . . BUT I love my naps :) Once classes are over, I'm hitting the town in a serious way and doing myself a load of traveling. None of this habitual napping stuff. One plus to today's situation though was that I had plenty of energy for rehearsal. Aside from the loud lady sitting next to me who smelled weird and sang flat way too often, the evening wasn't that bad. I caught myself enjoying some of the other personalities in the room like the new (and pretty good looking) head hauncho conductor who will be conducting the actual concert next week, and the man in the bass section who makes such hilarious faces when he sings! Oh man, it took some effort not to laugh out loud. Plus, I know he is actually a funny guy anyway, so that didn't help.
Ok, I think I need to take a moment to mention the great amount of pleasure I find in hearing knowledgeable men play/conduct/sing/talk about music with those lovely British accents and rich voices. One of my professors is from Belfast (=wicked accent), and he's crazy talented/knowledgeable too. I could listen to him talk and play the piano for hours upon hours I think. (Usually vocal ticks bother me once I notice them, but when he starts off every other sentence with "Right, ok" in his fantastic accent, it doesn't bother me at all. It's awesome actually. So Irish!) And then there's my voice teacher who has such a pleasant demeanor, but ironically he also has this fantastic operatic laugh that makes you think he could be some kind of villian who revels in the dubious nature of his master plan to overthrow the medieval king and all his serfs or something super theatrical like that. Of course, he's far from villianous, but he's got a great voice and he gives good vocal advice. Both the temporary and permanent conductors for Messiah have their own charming idosyncrasies as well. They are both very demanding, but they are so complimentary to the singers at the same time. "Well done, yes, well done chaps. Ladies, never louder than lovely on those high notes. Sing it like [ ] Yes, well done, well done indeed." These British music men are one of a kind, I think. Why can't I find a quality one my age in America? Shoot. I don't want to try to answer that right now.
When I got back to my room, I spent about 1.5 hours trying to figure out a music assignment that I had forgotten was due in the morning. Because this blog is already horrendously long, I won't vent too much, but I will write a few things. For one, I'm sick of this disorganization and these ambiguous expectations. I can't learn this way. You don't just throw a baby into the deep end of a pool and expect it to swim. At least throw us beginners some floaties or something. I feel like I spend more of my time being confused about what I need to be researching on my my own than I do actually soaking up useful musical information. "Why don't you ask for help?," you might ask. To a certain extent I have, but people over here don't exactly make themselves the most available to students who just need to drop in with questions every now and then. Plus, I want to ask educated questions, but I feel like the professor will just say, "I posted that on that link on that one page on that one website under that one section. Why didn't you check that before asking me about it?" Or worse, my question will only lead to more confusion. I always feel like I'm missing something over here, and it's starting to get to me. I'm looking forward to being at Sac State again where I know how things work, for the most part.
Wow. This entry was super long. Congrats on making it this far.
Random comment: I can't get Handel's Messiah out of my head, and it's annoying.
Prayer Request: That I would make sense of my assignments and progress efficiently with them.
I totally understand your thing with Shakespeare class: you want to learn about him and there you are WHERE he lived and worked so why would you want to sit in a lecture hall when you can LIVE IT. Duh, don't feel any guilt. If you every have insomnia problems you have two solutions: Shakespeare & Handel! ha ha You will never need medication!
ReplyDeleteRe your e-music class (from a professional): poor teaching cannot make you a poor student (just a frustrated one!). And remember you are getting more music than you did at CSUS!