What I'm Reading - June 2013 Edition

OK, I know that this book list is quite late, but I had a super busy summer, which I'll talk about in another post soon! But for now, here are the seven books I read in the month of June

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Synopsis:  Through letters, this book tells the story of what happened on the islands in the English Channel during World War II, through the eyes of a writer who investigates the goings on in the aftermath of the war.

Review: C This book got consistently good reviews everywhere I looked, but I really was not very interested by it.  If I hadn't been bored out of my mind cat-sitting for friends, I probably would have stopped reading a third of the way through. Personally, I find books written through the point of view of letters to feel very contrived, and this was no different.  The worst was when the main character meets up in person with some other characters and clearly the authors had to come up with some way for the story to continue.  I felt that the characters weren't fully developed and I wasn't really invested in them or the plot much at all.  But it is an easy read!

The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table by Tracie McMillan

Synopsis:  The author takes a number of minimum wage or sub-minimum wage jobs within the food industry and tries to survive on limited funds as she investigates where our food originates.

Review: B This book reminded me a lot of Nickeled and Dimed, which I read in May.  It is more recently written, and focuses more on food than the plight of the lower class, though in the end I felt like it had basically the same moral standpoint.  It was easy to read and very interesting, but like I said before, pretty similar to a book I read a few weeks before, so I wasn't as interested in it as I probably would have been otherwise.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Synopsis:  After her marriage ends, a woman travels around the world in search of personal fulfillment and rebirth.

Review: C I can see why this book was so popular a few years ago, because it was super easy to read and very much appealing to the "chick-lit" portion of the population.  I got kind of bored by it because to me the main character / author seemed to be pretty entitled, and I can imagine that some of the people would be offended by how their cultures were depicted from an outsider's perspective.  Good beach reading though!

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

Synopsis:  A boy is sold into indentured servitude in the Indian-controlled lands in the post-Civil War era, and experiences a lot of amazing adventures as he aligns himself more and more with the Native Americans and less with his own racial group.

Review: A Though by the same author as Cold Mountain, one of my favorite books, I can see why this novel didn't garner as many accolades as his first.  However, the story is really interesting once you get past the first three or four chapters, and, amazingly, it's closely based on a true story, which was quite interesting to research a bit after I finished the novel.  At times it moves a bit slowly but I did enjoy it.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Synopsis:  A story of a love quadrangle in World War II Europe (especially in what is now the Czech Republic and Austria)

Review: A I loved this book.  I finally got around to reading it literally one year after a literary friend recommended it very highly.  It, like many other great books, did take a few chapters to get into, but then I loved it.  A quick warning, though: it was very explicit at moments, so some people might not appreciate it.  Also, it uses quite a bit of poetic language - again something that many people dislike.  However, if you have the same literary tastes as I do, read this book!

The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

Synopsis:  Positive thinking can transform the opportunities that present themselves to you

Review: B This book for me was not very interesting, but that's only because I know the author personally and have heard him give lectures on this topic at least four or five times, so I had heard many of the most interesting stories before.  Additionally, I have worked with him, playing principal horn in his orchestra, for over two years, so I am quite familiar with his approach.  I do like what he has to say, and have found it useful in my own life and playing, but for me the book was a bit redundant.  However, I would recommend reading it, even if you're not a musician.  It's more about finding opportunities in everyday life than anything specifically musical, and in fact it is co-authored by Ben Zander's wife, who was/is a psychologist, so she has a less specifically musical analysis of each problem or example.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Review: C To be honest, I really don't remember this book at all, and that's why I have to give it a C.  It made very little impression, neither positive or negative, but from what I do remember, I think it was quite similar to Outliers and Freakonomics, both of which I had read the month before.

25 Things: Read Moby Dick

One of the things on my list of things to do before turning 25 was read Moby Dick.  I felt that this is one of the classics that you always hear about, but actually not that many people have read cover to cover.  As an avid reader and generally trying-to-be-educated person, I decided to add it to my list.

*Warning: spoilers ahead* (not that most people don't know what happens in this book anyways)

Altogether, I mostly enjoyed this book.  The beginning was pretty interesting (though quite racist at moments) but then, like a long journey at sea, settled into a long monotony, with every few chapters something minor occurring, and in between these, long essays on topics such as the meaning of whiteness (since Moby Dick was a white whale), or classification of different types of whales.  Finally, there was a ton of action in about the last three chapters.  So, while I enjoyed the book, I felt like it would have been more interesting if it were shorter.  However, I can imagine that this feeling is a product of my age and generation; in a day of instant access to so much information and entertainment, we have much less patience for a slow-moving story than Melville's original audience may have.

My favorite quote occurs early in the book, when Ishmael, the narrator, is describing the different types of whales, and says that, despite the monumental task of differentiating between whales, he is up to the task: "...I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans..."  I love this quote because it gives such a great image of reading and knowledge.

Anyways, despite the nice moments in this book, I am quite glad to be done reading it, and if I put another book on my list in the future, it will hopefully be one I find less tedious.

Kitty-sitting!

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I have been cat- and house-sitting for a friend for the past week and a half.  I don't quite have my next post prepared yet, so to tide you over for the next day or so till I have that up, here are some cat pictures! Enjoy!

Until next time!

Lauren

Waiting for treats

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Enjoying the sun

What a pretty cat!

Pay attention to me!!!!

25 Things: Cook something on the grill

To fulfill my goal of learning how to grill something, my mom and I made a nice dinner last week of grilled veggies with shrimp.  We made a delicious marinade of olive oil, oregano, and lemon juice, where the ingredients stayed in for about 10-15 minutes.  Then my mom taught me how to turn on the grill.  Once it heated up a bit, we put on the food.  I was assigned the task of checking on it every 2-3 minutes until the shrimp was pink and the zucchini and squash were slightly soft, but still crunchy and delicious.  What a great summer dinner!

What I'm Reading - May 2013 Edition

May 2013 was a month of reading, what with lots of travels (to Boston, New York, and moving back to my parent's place in Virginia for the summer), and my current situation of cat-sitting for some friends and becoming extremely bored at their house since I already finished catching up on both "Game of Thrones" and the new season of "Arrested Development".  So here are the books* I've read since the beginning of May, with a brief synopsis and my review, presented in the order that I completed reading them.

French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano

Synopsis:  This is a diet book, written by a woman who was raised in France, based on her own observations about the French lifestyle.

Review:  F  I felt like this should be renamed the pretentious-yet-common-sense diet book.  Every suggestion she presents is so immediately evident, yet presented in an extremely superior and smug tone of voice, that it was infuriating.  First of all,not all French women are skinny, and most of the concepts that she presented are certainly not exclusive to even Europeans as a whole - for example, her suggestion that you should take the stairs instead of the elevator if you want to lose weight.  Duh.  And her sense of superiority simply because she is French made me crazy.  I only finished reading the whole book because I was working stage crew for an extremely long concert and this was the only reading material that I'd brought.  I only read this book in the first place, by the way, because someone in my dorm was throwing it away and I figured, since it's a free book, why not? I wish I hadn't bothered.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Synopsis: This book tries to explain the differences between people who are successful and those who are less so, based on such seemingly arbitrary and/or lucky criterion such as when and where they were born, or happening to go to a certain high school over another.

Review:  A I really enjoyed this book.  However, it kind of made me feel bad about things, because of a few points that he made.  First, Malcolm Gladwell pointed out that some people succeed just based on when they were born, using the example of Bill Gates, who was born at just the right time to take advantage of the boom in the informational technology field.  This makes me feel a bit hopeless about being a classical musician in the 21st century, when the peak of my field was in the late 18th and 19th centuries.  The other point he makes regards the theory of 10,000 hours, which says that you only have a hope of becoming the top of your field in any field after 10,000 hours of practice.  Yet, there are also so many people who do put in the mandatory time and effort, and still never make it.  If I make a very conservative estimate, I reached the point of 10,000 hours spent on classical music somewhere around when I turned 23 (counting since I started playing cello at the age of 4 1/2), but I don't think I'm any closer to conventional success in my field than thousands of my peers, seeing as I don't have a job.  On another note, I really appreciated Malcolm Gladwell's writing style, which made this book so interesting despite its material's potential for dryness.  I finished it in just a few hours.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Synopsis:  A young white girl returns home from college with different views on race than the rest of her friends in a small Mississippi town.

Review: A  I'd been wanting to read this book since I saw the movie a couple years ago, but I never got around to it until this month.  I literally couldn't put this book down, and was reading it as I walked down the streets of New Haven, no joke.  Even though I knew what was going to happen because of seeing the film version, I was glued to the page! I know this book and the movie got a lot of criticism for some of its treatment of racial issues, but I don't feel qualified to speak to that.  I would, however, highly recommend this book based on its merit as a novel, and I found the movie definitely enjoyable as well.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Synopsis:  The subtitle pretty much explains what this book is about, but more or less, Levitt analyzes data such as demographic data collected state by state to explain, in one example, why some teachers cheat on standardized testing and how to catch them, or in another example, whether the name you give your child will affect their opportunities later in life.

Review:  B  Perhaps because I was already statistically-analysis-ed out from reading Outliers so recently, but I found this book to be almost the same in many ways.  Sure, these authors weren't exclusively looking at indicators of success, but the writing style and content was so similar that I almost felt I was reading the same book over again.  However, they did find some interesting conclusions.  I hadn't realized how indicative my name is of my ethnicity, for example, until I saw it right at the top of the chart of most popular baby names for white girls in my birth year.  I also found it very interesting to see the average number of years of education of the mother for each popular baby name.  The average mother of a baby named Jesus had only something like 8 1/2 years of schooling (which means they must either have been in the seventh grade at the time of the child's birth, or have dropped out of school at a young age), while the mother of baby Finn's have nearly 15 years of education, on average (meaning a full K-12 experience plus a couple years of college).  My name wasn't listed with an average number of years of education, but I wonder what it would have been.  I found all of this quite interesting, but I definitely wouldn't recommend reading this book at the same time as Outliers to avoid the statistical burn-out I experienced.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Synopsis: This is a memoir written by one of the most famous female comedians alive today.

Review: C  I'm sorry to give this book such a mediocre review, since I fully expected to love it going in, based on how I feel about Tina Fey and her work on "30 Rock" and "Saturday Night Live".  I was pretty disappointed, though.  Despite a lot of interesting and amusing stories, much of the book to me came across as trying too hard to be funny.  But I admit humor is a hard genre to transcribe, and I've heard that this book works better as an audio book, which I almost wish I'd gone with.  Maybe I would have found the humor less forced that way.

How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

Synopsis: This feminist manifesto follows the life of the author through her discovery of her own sexuality and life choices both as an adolescent and into adulthood, and also introduces thoughts regarding today's feminism.

Review: A+ At first I thought this book would be a bit much for me, since in some of the early chapters she is quite explicit in her description of her sexual behaviors, but I grew to really appreciate her positive and empowering message, and by the end vowing to buy this book for a number of young women that I know.  A few things really popped out at me: her definition of a feminist, and her brutally honest description of having an abortion.  This is a book I think all women should read at least once and have in their libraries, but you should probably know that I already considered myself a feminist before reading this, so maybe not everyone would agree with my evaluation of this book.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Synopsis: An upper middle-class journalist/writer goes "undercover" working a variety of minimum wage jobs and living only on the money she earns there, in order to explore the living conditions of people at the poverty level.  Her jobs include working as a waitress, cleaning houses, and working at Wal-Mart.

Review: B  I feel bad saying I enjoyed this book, since I don't think the word "enjoy" has any place in this somewhat sobering subject matter.  It was very amazing the obstacles the author encountered when doing what many people would consider unskilled labor.  As a highly educated woman (she has a Ph.D.), she got rejected from many places of work she applied to, such as grocery stores and chain fast-food restaurants.  I'm already quite liberal, but this gave me a different perspective on minimum wage workers, since one so rarely sees reporting that isn't from an outsider's perspective.  The unfortunate thing about this book is that it was written almost fifteen years ago and I imagine many of the situations she references would be quite different today.  I would be quite interested to see if anyone else has conducted a similar experiment more recently, and which of the difficulties they experienced were the same or different, and in what ways.

Check back tomorrow for another update to the blog, and next month for another issue of What I'm Reading.

Until next time!

Lauren

*During this month, I also finished reading Moby Dick (finally!), but since that is one of the things on my list of 25 things to do before I turn 25, its review will come in a separate blog entry.

25 Things: Get my Master's Degree

I received my Master's degree from Yale on May 21, 2013.  It was a quite exciting day! Here is a photo of me in my cap and gown, about to process into the university-wide ceremony.  I have a pink hood and tassel because that is the color affiliated with music, and the inside of the hood is bright blue (as you can see where it's hanging off my shoulder a bit) because that's the color of Yale. Yay!

April update

I'm sorry it has been so long since I last wrote!! Since coming back from Spring Break, I've been super busy.  First, I've been working a lot to try to get my finances in order for the summer, when I won't be earning any money at all, and secondly, I have been making an audition recording for a prestigious position in an orchestra, so all my free time has been focused on working on that.  I do have a few tidbits to share, though!

 My faithful trusty suitcase, that I have had for four years, with which I traveled all over the world (all over the US, Canada, China, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Colombia twice, Spain, Ecuador, Brazil eight times, Peru, Germany, and Switzerland), finally irreparably broke right at the end of my travels back from Brazil.  I'm thanking my lucky stars that it broke at the end of the trip rather than at the beginning, but I am so sad that it finally succumbed to old age.










My roommates in Brazil taught me how to make pineapple juice from the skin of the pineapple, so I decided to give it a try at home.  It was a lot of work, but it was awesomely fresh and delicious!!











My good friend here at Yale introduced me to a food stand where I can buy Colombian style arepas! It was delicious and reminded me of the arepas I ate on the street with friends in Manizales, the first time I visited Colombia.  Aww, memories!

I've also decided what I'm doing this summer and next year! This summer I'll be attending the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, here in Connecticut.  I'm very excited.  I already submitted my repertoire request form, and I asked to play a lot of unusual pieces, so I'm hoping at least one or two of my requests are granted!

Next year, I'll be starting work towards my DMA at the University of Georgia! I'm very excited to start a new life in a new state where I won't know anyone at all, but that means I need to buy a car between now and August.  I have no idea how to go about doing this! Help!!!

As I mentioned above, I've been working really hard on a recording.  The orchestra is super specific about how they want things set up - they designate a specific microphone to use, and it has to be eight feet off the ground, six feet away from the player, and pointed directly at the instrument.  I was able to borrow an appropriate microphone from Yale, but they didn't have any proper mic stands available, so here is my improvised recording set-up!

 One of my fitas finally broke off!  Fitas de Bomfim are one of the most famous symbols of Salvador, the city I frequently visit in Brazil.  You make a wish when you put it on, and when it breaks, the wish will have come true.  I don't usually believe in superstitious things like that, but it's true - the wish when I made when I tied on this fita has come true in the meantime.  This one I wore for about a year and a half before it broke.  I'm still wearing another one that I put on one year before this pink one, and it doesn't even look close to coming off.  It's a bit awkward - I actually don't want that wish to come true anymore, but I also don't want to cut it off or something, in case superstitions are true, and it would bring bad luck on me! I know it's silly, but better safe than sorry, right??

Finally, for a bit of blog maintainance stuff, I need to amend some of my 25 things that I wanted to do before I turn 25.  First of all, through elimination and reintroduction into my diet, I have learned that I am lactose intolerant.  The day I made this discovery, I was crushed.  But it's now a fact of my life.  So instead of doing a month of a gluten-free diet, which would be nearly impossible right now when I'm working on changing my diet already, I will do a month of lactose free eating.  That means no milk, cheese, or other dairy products, though since eggs seem to be ok with my digestive system, they're allowed.  Cheese is the hardest thing.  I absolutely adore cheese and used to eat it nearly with every meal.  I've only done a few days at a time without cheese so far so I need to really dedicate myself to this for a whole month! But not till I finish this blue cheese I've got in my fridge....

The other goal that I need to amend is having my summer camp.  Unfortunately, I had to cancel it due to insufficient student enrollment.  But! I still want to do 25 things that I've never done before! So I am adding do yoga to the list.  I think I am probably the only 20-something woman in America who has literally never tried yoga, so this is the time to do it! This is especially ironic since my dad has been doing yoga at least five days per week since I was in middle school or before!

Anyways, that's about all the updates I have today.  I have been falling behind once again in my essays for my Portuguese class, as well as in my schedule of the 25 things to do before my birthday in November, so hopefully I'll have some updates on that for you guys soon!

Until next time!

Lauren

Salvador, March 2013

So here is my long-awaited update on what I did during my time in Salvador, Brazil, over spring break.  I arrived there after an epic long journey on Friday morning, and stayed for about two weeks, until the second Thursday after that.

Salvador, Brazil

All the previous times that I visited the program, I just stayed with my then-boyfriend, but this time, since we're not dating anymore, I stayed with two female friends from the orchestra, L and G.  One is the principal cellist, and the other is the principal violist.  I had a really great time living with them! They are really sweet girls, and made me feel so welcome and at home.  They invited me to do a lot of things and helped me to have a great time.  I really hope next time I go back I can stay with them again, since I enjoyed it so much!

Whenever I go to help out with NEOJIBA, I do similar things, but my days never follow an exact set schedule.  The mornings are the most variable part of my day.  Sometimes I go to another nucleo (branch of the program), outside the center of the city, to help out and teach there.  Other times, I teach private lessons to the horn players in the TCA nucleo, as space permits.  And finally, sometimes I just stay home and practice, or do other chores that are necessary.  After lunch, I usually either teach a sectional for the horn players of the second-level orchestra, give some private lessons, or attend the full rehearsal of the second orchestra, where I often play with the horn section and give advice from within the group.  In the evenings, I work with the horn section of the top orchestra.  Usually, I perform with the top orchestra while I am there, but this time, because of the concert schedule, I couldn't.  Instead, I played with them in some of the rehearsals to offer advice, gave private lessons by pulling students out of the full rehearsal, or observed the rehearsals and offered comments.  My workday ends at 8pm, so usually afterwards I would go out to dinner with friends, or do other kinds of social activities.

Teatro Castro Alves

Because of the aforementioned breakup, some things were obviously quite different this time.  However, things were not weird as I had expected.  Between Y and I, everything was exactly the same, except minus the dating part, which was just as I had hoped.  It was really great to see him again and hang out after so much time without really talking.  Also, being single this time made many orchestra members seem more comfortable inviting me to do things with them, which I really appreciated.  Also, since I was living with people with whom I really couldn't speak English, it made me practice my Portuguese even more than normal.  Though when I arrived I had forgotten a lot since my previous trip, I soon remembered all that I had forgotten and learned even more vocabulary.  I also finally got to the point where I was able to start self-correcting some of my more difficult grammatical errors in Portuguese.

In my limited free time, I did some fun things.  On my first full day there, I went to a concert of the Orquestra Sinfonica da Bahia, which was quite interesting as it contrasted poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade with music written on themes from his poetry.  I wasn't very familiar with his poetry before, but I really enjoyed the readings they presented at the concert, so I think I will do my final project for my Portuguese poetry class about him.

Açaí na tigela

I also ate a lot of açaí.  Açaí, pronounced uh-sai-EE, is a very trendy fruit in the US right now, but we don't eat it the way they do in Brazil.  There, açaí is usually served na tigela, or in a bowl, as opposed to the fusion drinks that are all the rage here. The fruit is frozen and then blended to make a kind of thick milkshake texture, and is usually served with bananas and granola.  You can also go to specialty shops where you can order it infused with other fruit flavors.  I tried a lot of different flavors but I think my favorite was com abacaxí, with pineapple.

Praia Porto da Barra

And of course, any trip to Salvador would be incomplete without visiting one of their world-famous beaches! I only had really two free days, and one of them was rainy, so we just went to a city beach, called Porto da Barra.  This beach lies right on the boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and the Baía de Todos os Santos (Bay of all the Saints), and you can swim on either side.  We chose to swim on the bay side, since there were fewer rocks there and the waves were calmer.  The water was super refreshing in the 100-degree heat, but when I was on land I stayed in the shade of the umbrella.  With my gringo skin, I can easily get burned in under ten minutes in the harsh Brazilian sun.

Additionally, I learned how to cook some new Brazilian foods, so look for the recipes up here sometime soon!


Until next time!

Lauren

Temporary Haitus

I'm currently in Brazil, as I have mentioned before, and it's proving quite difficult to blog from here. I'll be back probably around the 22nd or so, when I return to the US.

Until then!

Lauren

25 Things before 25: Run a 5K

Running a 5 kilometer race was one of the things on my list of 25 things that I was a bit scared of.  I know for a lot of people 3.1 miles is no big deal, but for me that's the furthest I have ever run in my entire life.  I went into it just aiming to a) finish, b) not walk, or walk absolutely as little as possible and c) get under 33 minutes if possible.  I had been training at an 11:33 pace, so I figured I could probably push myself and just squeak in under 33 minutes.




When I woke up in the morning, I looked outside, only to find a dusting of snow.  Upon checking the race website, however, it wasn't cancelled, so I resigned myself to having to run after all.  I registered and got my number and my free t-shirt.  Unfortunately, I don't own any proper cold weather running clothes so I had to put my shirt over my jacket, which soon became stifling once I started running.













Off we all went.  I had to keep pushing myself not to start walking, and I actually accomplished all three of my goals!  I finished with a time of 32:45, which is a pace of 10:33 miles!  After I finished I felt really awful, which I guess means I truly did the best I could have done.  Here I am after I recovered enough to not look like I was dying anymore.

In retrospect, it wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be, but I don't know how soon I'll do another one.  I really felt bad after, like I was going to vomit and/or faint, and I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow.  Anyways, it certainly was a challenge to myself to really work hard and not give up.  And I do feel really good that I achieved my goals in this segment of my bucket-list!

I was ranked 1233rd overall, out of 1838 participants, and I was 78th in my division (females ages 20-24).


Until next time!

Lauren

Saturday in New York

I spent the whole day yesterday in New York.

I went there on the train with a friend from Yale, M, who happened to be going in at the same time.  We had planned on meeting at the station at 7:30 but I accidentally set my alarm for 6pm instead of 6am.  I threw together an interview-appropriate outfit and rushed to grab a cab to the train station.

After a quite pleasant ride on the commuter rail and then the subway, we arrived in Lincoln Center.  M picked up his opera ticket, and I went to my lesson.  I'm currently figuring out what I'm doing next year, so I needed to meet with a long-term substitute musician in the New York Philharmonic, who teaches at one of the schools I'm looking at.  It was an amazing lesson.  I really learned a lot from just a short meeting with him!

Then I rushed across the plaza to the Metropolitan Opera, where I had a ticket to see Wagner's epic religiously allegorical opera Parsifal.

I don't often get a chance to go to the opera because of the expense of the tickets, but a professor who I get along with very well couldn't make it yesterday, so he had an extra ticket that he passed along to me.  I was way up in the highest row, but the sound was still amazing.  Sometimes it was a bit hard to see what was happening, but I think that's mostly because of the simplistic costume design for this production, in which most of the singers were wearing identical things, so it became pretty difficult to tell them apart.

Despite the length of this opera, I really enjoyed it! The show started at noon, and we only got out of there just before 6pm.  There were two intermissions.  The first act was good, but a bit long at two hours.  I started getting a bit uncomfortable when we still had about 20-30 minutes left.  The second act went by really fast - it was so enthralling that I didn't even notice how long it was! By the third act, however, I was getting ready for it to be over, and I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Wagner's music, you MUST give the overture to this opera a try.  It is some of the most beautiful music ever composed, and it isn't as aggressively chromatic as some of his other music.  You can really hear the religiosity of this gorgeous music.

If you're interested in a more in-depth exploration of this opera, there is at least one full production available on YouTube, here:

After the opera, M and I reunited to go out to dinner with D, a friend of mine from high school and undergrad who goes to Juilliard now.  We had some delicious Chinese food and reminisced about all the crazy things we did back in the day.

I got back to New Haven pretty late at night, and then I had an exciting day today as well, which you will be hearing about in a separate post soon.

Until next time!

Lauren

Beans!

Today I spent most of the afternoon making Brazilian-style beans, so I thought I would share the recipe.  This is my interpretation of the way my friend taught me how to make it.  There are endless different variations on this theme, but this is a version that I make "everyday" kind of beans.  I like to use Roman beans rather than pinto beans, because they don't disintegrate into the mixture quite so much, but pinto beans will work fine too.  The broth is optional.  It give a slightly richer feel to the beans.  I always cook the full pound of beans, since it takes so long to prepare, and then I freeze the leftovers to reheat later.  It will keep for months in the freezer, or about a week or two in the refrigerator.

Note: many people are familiar with the Brazilian dish feijoada.  That is more of a special occasion dish, made with many more different types of meats.  This dish here is for everyday meals and only uses sausage.  It can also be cooked without sausages for a vegetarian version.

Cooking time: 4 hours + 4-8 hours of soaking          Active cooking time: 1 hour          Serves 10-15 people

1 pound dry pinto or roman beans
1 package chicken or vegetable broth (optional)
2 large chorizo sausages
1 head of garlic
1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper
1 tomato
2-3 bay leaves
salt, pepper, and cilantro to taste

1. 8-12 hours before you would like to serve your beans, sort through them and remove any that are shriveled or hard, or any tiny stones that may be accidentally included in the package.  Soak the beans in a very large bowl of water.  I usually do this step the night before, so when I wake up in the morning, I can start preparing the beans for a large lunch.

2. About four hours before you want to eat (or the next morning), remove the beans from the water.  Throw away any floating beans, as they will be bad.

3. Measure the volume of the beans in a liquid measuring cup, and then place them in a very large soup pot.  Add the broth to the pot, then add water, to come to a total volume of five times the volume of the beans.  For example, if you have one cup of beans, you should add five cups of liquid.  The more broth you use, the richer the beans will taste, but you should use a maximum of one package of broth, to not make it too thick.  If I cook one pound of beans, I usually have to add about 20 cups of liquid.

4. Turn the heat on high.  Stir in about 2 teaspoons each of salt and pepper, and add the bay leaves.  At this point, you can go do something else while you wait, but make sure to reduce the heat if the pot starts to boil over.

5.  After about an hour of cooking, cut the sausages up into rounds of about 1/8 inch thickness.  Add them to the beans and stir.

6.  After the beans have been cooking for a total of two hours, put about one cup of the bean liquid into a blender.  It's ok if some beans get in there too, but avoid putting meat in the blender.  Add the garlic, onion, cilantro, bell pepper, and tomato.  Blend until very smooth and return to pot.

7. Cook another hour or so until a bean is easily smashed between your tongue and the roof of your mouth.  People prefer different amounts of liquid.  I usually cook a bit longer to remove more of the liquid from the beans.  Serve over rice with farofa (fried mandioc flour - available at Brazilian grocery stores).

Music I Love #3

Today, for a change of pace, I would like to share with you one of my favorite non-classical music groups, The White Stripes.  I dream of seeing a live concert of theirs, but unfortunately it seems that they probably won't ever tour again.

This was the first of their music videos that I ever saw, and it's so amazing! I read somewhere that they had to make more than 30 identical drum sets to create these effects.  My two favorite parts are at 2:52 and 3:09.  Imagine how much work that would have been to make!  Enjoy this video.

Until next time!

Lauren

This past week

Mainly this week was the same as the past few weeks - busy and full of auditions - so this will be a pretty brief post.  We finally went back to school after a bit of the snow melted, and just one day after returning to playing, I had an audition in New York.  Tomorrow I go to New York for another audition, and then on Monday, to Baltimore.  Only four more auditions to go!

Today was a very exciting day, though.  After teaching a lesson, in which my student (an undergraduate here who isn't majoring in music) showed huge improvement since the previous lesson, I met up with a former student for coffee.  S was my first horn student ever, who I taught when I was in high school.  Now he's about to graduate high school himself, and it looks like he'll be coming to Yale next year! It was really nice to see him, and to see what progress he has made in the past six years!  After that, I had my first lesson with A, my two-year-old student.  She is super cute.  We're learning basic musical concepts - like clapping to a beat, loud and soft, and high and low notes.  We sing lots of songs and dance around the room.  It's lots of fun!

Well, I'm sorry for the short post, but I better go.  I have to get up super early for my 11am audition, and I still haven't packed for my weekend away or anything.

Until next time!

Lauren

Music I Love #2

Today's tune is a quintet from Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute.  This is one of my favorite songs from an all-together incredible opera.  It is known as the "padlock quintet" because the quintet opens with the character, Papageno, singing despite the padlock that has been magically placed over his mouth.  The version I have put below is performed by the Metropolitan Opera in 2006, with James Levine conducting.  They sing in English, so you should be able to understand it pretty well.

My favorite part of this begins at 3:25.  It sounds like the infinitely famous canon by Pachabel (listen below - I'm sure you will recognize it, even though this version, ahem, takes some liberties), but with the influence of Mozart's genius.  Enjoy!

My life since Jan 26

I have been quite busy in the past few weeks, but now that I have been holed up in my dorm room thanks to Snowstorm Nemo, I am ready to update you on what I have been doing.

"criptocardiograma" by August de Campos,
just in time for Valentine's Day!

As usual, my Portuguese class has been kicking my butt.  I know I'm only taking two real classes but my the homework for this course really takes forever.  However, one fascinating poet I have discovered through this course is Augusto de Campos.  It may seem a bit gimicky but I find it so fun, especially after reading so much dry boring poetry!  My favorite of his works is the "criptocardiograma".  You can appreciate the poem even if you don't speak Portuguese - the end result is kind of trans-lingual.  To read the poem, first you have to decode the symbols using the letters in the word bank on the left of the flash player.  Once you solve the puzzle, you will understand what I mean about not needing to speak Portuguese in order to understand.  Once you finish that, you can explore all the other interesting works of this contemporary Brazilian poet.

Of course, I also have been working on my auditions.  I had on audition since I last wrote about my daily life in Washington, DC.  It was nice to get home once again this semester and see friends and family living in that area.  It started to feel for a while like I was in NoVA more than I was here in Connecticut!  Because of the huge snowstorm, though, I had to cancel my trip home this weekend.  I was supposed to audition for the Marine Band in DC, but I had to cancel my audition since I couldn't find a way to get there.  The trains and buses were shut down, and my friend who could have driven us couldn't dig his car out.  So that means I'm just looking ahead to three more auditions in the next week, and then I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, with only two more auditions after that!

I made it to the top of a 15-foot pile of snow
in the aftermath of the storm!

Despite the snow, I have spent a lot of time outside in the past few days.  On the day after the record snowfall of 34 inches (more than half my height!!!) I went outside with my friend S to go exploring.  We walked all over the city of New Haven, got coffee at the only venue open (Dunkin' Donuts, of course), and then walked to an amazing sledding hill another friend let me know about.  There we met up with a whole group of people from the School of Music and a fantastic time was had by all.  School has now been cancelled since Friday afternoon, though my Friday morning classes were cancelled by the teacher as well, and they've already cancelled through Tuesday! I'm getting pretty stir-crazy here at home, which brings me to my next topic...

I signed up for a 5K! Running a 5K is one of my 25 goals to accomplish before my 25th birthday in November.  The one I signed up for is on March 3, and takes place on the Yale campus, so I don't have to worry about how to get there without a car.  So I am beginning my training.  I already run somewhat regularly (outdoors when the weather permits, and inside the rest of the time), so I'm not doing the ever-popular Couch-to-5K plan.  I instead made my own training plan for myself, which basically involves running a few miles 3-4 days per week (I get to choose whether I want to run again on the fourth day or do some other kind of physical activity).  I guess the training plan is more about being consistent rather than an actual distance to run.  Anyways, I made it into a sticker chart that is currently hanging on the side of my fridge, and I've been following it so far (all four days since it started snowing and I got bored...).

Just a few final tidbits before I go:

-I started reading Moby Dick (another one of my 25 things to do before my 25th birthday).  It's really good so far, though I was really shocked by how racist the narrator is! I'm about 40% done now, so I'll probably have a summary for you in a few weeks.

-I found out that I was awarded a Presidential Fellowship from the University of Georgia!  That means I will receive a generous stipend to do my doctorate there.  I'm still not 100% sure I'll go - I want to wait to hear from everywhere before I make up my mind - but things are looking good for me to end up there.

-As most of you know, I often travel to Brazil to work for a youth orchestra program there.  I'm happy to announce I'll be returning there for a week and a half during my spring break this March!  With the orchestra, I will also be traveling to Oman to play some concerts with the orchestra there during the last four days of the break. I couldn't be more excited!

Until next time!

Lauren

25 Things before 25: Eat sushi

Course 1, Plate 1/2

I went with some friends to accomplish this one of my 25 things.  We went to Sushi Palace, in Hamden, CT, and there were seven of us there.  We ordered pretty much one of everything on the entire menu, so we would get to try a lot of variety.  We had about ten different types of rolls, fifteen types of sushi, and some sashimi.  Additionally, we got sake and a million different types of appetizers.  Highly recommended restaurant, and highly recommended cuisine!

Course 1, Plate 2

Surprisingly to me, you couldn't taste the fish at all inside the rolls.  They were absolutely delicious, and I can't believe all this time I was missing out on such rich flavor and scrumptious texture! However, I really really disliked the sushi itself (sushi is the raw fish alone, without rice or any accompaniment).  While the flavor was great, the texture was very bad to a point where I kept gagging.  I tried about five different types of fish and I just couldn't get over it, so I had to give up on that part of it.

I'm really glad I tried this! The sushi rolls were delicious and now I won't feel like a picky little kid when I go out to eat with my friends.

Until next time!

Lauren

Thoughts on Fourteen Seasons of Law and Order: SVU

So I'm one of those people who goes on TV binges.  Since I really discovered the availability of all things on the internet when I first got my own personal computer upon leaving for college, I have had certain shows that I watch every episode of in an extremely short time span.  Examples of past binge shows include: Lost (the first one), Bones, Castle, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and, of course, Arrested Development.

My most recent true love in TV show form was Law and Order: SVU.  I'm not sure why I love this so much, but I have a major girl-crush on Olivia Benson, who is super bad-ass.  I had been watching SVU on Hulu as each episode came out for the past year or so, but recently I became much more into it.  I started my obsession with season 7, and then I kind of expanded from there, finishing with season 1 a few days ago.  It took me a number of months to get through, but here I am now, with a void where Law and Order: SVU used to be.  So in honor of my months of watching and their years of filming, here are some superlatives for my most recent favorite show:

Best Episode: "911" (Season 7, Episode 3)  This episode is amazing.  I was spellbound the entire time.  In it, Olivia is about to leave the office for a night out, when a 911 call arrives from a little girl who has been imprisoned, but doesn't know where she is or who her captor is.  The entire episode takes place in the SVU squad room as the team tries to find the girl.  Absolutely incredible.

Best Season: Season 8.  I feel like in this season, the SVU writers really hit their stride.  My favorite is in this season, and Benson and Stabler are working really well together.  And the writing is just so amazing.  I was on the edge of my seat (or my bed, as the case may be) for every episode!

Favorite character:  Casey Novak.  Even though Olivia Benson is quite awesome, Casey is even better. She is so strong-willed and doesn't care about anything except justice. I was crushed when she left the show.  She was there from seasons 5-9 and 12-13.  Interestingly, the same actress (Diane Neal) also makes a cameo earlier in the series ("Ridicule", Season 3 Episode 10).  Since at this point I was watching the seasons in backwards chronological order, it was great to see her again! I wish she would come back in season 14 or 15 to being as present as she was in the earlier seasons.

Most similar looking after 14 years: Captain Cragen (Dann Florek) Just look at the man! It could have been a few years between filming these two screenshots, but fourteen?!? (Sorry for the blurriness - I wanted to make sure I was getting picture from the correct seasons so I had to take screenshots instead of Google Imaging it. Also, let me just note that in the process of watching these hundreds of episodes, I learned that video quality has greatly improved since 1999.)

Until next time!

Lauren

25 Things before 25: Donate blood

I decided to donate blood last Monday.  I had been looking for a place and time to do it, but living in New Haven without a car, I had to wait on the fates to present a blood drive close to where I live.  The particular blood drive that I happened to participate in was at the Yale gym, and was some kind of contest with Harvard.  You can't even understand how many bizarre things Yale manages to make into a contest with Harvard until you experience it!

Anyways, I showed up at the gym at my appointed time slot.  First, I was asked a number of questions orally.  Apparently, it was somewhat of a problem that I have traveled to Brazil in the past year.  They had to look up Salvador in the computer about 5 different times to make sure that it was acceptable for me to donate blood.  This was frustrating, not because they had to do it - I want to make sure not to transfer some terrible illness to whatever sick person is receiving my blood - but because they wouldn't trust me when I told them they had already looked it up a number of times.  And apparently it's not very obvious that the city of Salvador begins with an S. o.0

Image from here

Next, I had to fill in a scantron form, with information like my social security number and some tidbits of my medical history on it.  After they collected it, I was sent to a nurse, who took my height, weight, and blood pressure.  They also did a finger prick to check for iron levels.  Apparently I have very high levels of iron in my blood... yay?

After completing another survey, this one on the computer, I was led to a table, where I had to lie down.  They cleaned the area with iodine three times, and then inserted the tube into the vein.  Apparently I have quite lethargic blood because while my blood bag was filling up, about 3 other people came and went at the bed next to mine.

However, my bag was finally filled up, and they detached the tube.  I then had to press a bandage against my inner elbow and hold my arm vertically over my head until the bleeding stopped.  I was quite dizzy at this point, so they made me lie on the bed for a further 5 minutes and drink some juice.  Then they led me over to the "recovery room", which was a table loaded up with snacks and juices.  I was instructed to drink more juice, and eat some yummy cookies and fruit snacks.  I was more than happy to comply!  Plus they also gave me a t-shirt that said something about Yale vs. Harvard blood drive on it.

Image from here

Unfortunately, I didn't realize how long the whole process takes.  I left about an hour and a half for me to do this between two rehearsals, but it took that entire time.  I didn't have much of a chance to recover with the fruit snacks since I was going to be late for octet rehearsal.  But it actually wasn't that much of a big deal, since I ended up being dizzy for nearly the whole rehearsal, and almost unable to play.

I probably will donate blood again, but I will do a few things differently.  First, I will over-hydrate before going in, to the point where I have to use the bathroom three times before they even stick me on the bed.  I will eat an enormous lunch or breakfast before going, and leave at least two free hours, so I'm not rushed when I should be relaxing in order to feel better.  Finally, I will eat another big meal immediately afterwards, since this time I didn't stop feeling better until about 4 hours later, when I finally had a chance to eat dinner.  It was definitely an interesting experience, though!

PS. One of the reasons I wanted to do this was to find out my blood type.  If I were ever in an accident, it would be important to know what blood type I have.  They said that I can find out by email in a few weeks, so I'm looking forward to learning that soon!

Update (3/24/13): I finally received my letter from the Red Cross.  I have O+ blood.

Until next time!

Lauren

Music I Love #1

So, in my blog resolutions, I promised more posts, and about one per week about music.  Talk about fail - I haven't even done one yet! So here is the first one.

This is the Serenade by Richard Strauss.  It's written for an ensemble of thirteen instruments (two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, and contrabassoon or string bass), and is usually performed without conductor.  This is one of my favorite pieces of music, and I've been fortunate enough to play it a couple times already.  The first time, it was my first time playing anything with other serious musicians, even though we were all in high school at the time, and thus it was unforgettable.  The second time, I played it at the Youth Orchestra of the Americas in one of their chamber concerts.  It was really fun to play together with musicians I had only played with previously in orchestral settings.  And finally, one of my chamber ensembles is hoping to add a few people and perform this, maybe later this semester or next year sometime.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! Listen for my favorite part at 8:00.  How I love the way those melodies overlap...

Until next time!

Lauren

What I've been doing in the past two weeks

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been super busy in the past few weeks, which is why I haven't had a chance to write anything.  Here's what I was doing:

Shortly after my last post from northern Virginia, I took an all-day train back to New Haven.

The next day, I had to get up bright and early to take the commuter rail train to New York for an audition for a summer festival.  I took the excuse to visit for a while with one of my best friends, D, who I don't get to see very often.

Then, classes started that Monday.  This semester I'm super busy.  First, I'm working seven hours per week at two different public elementary schools, which doesn't sound like that much, but it's all super early in the morning - I have to leave my house before 7:30 or I'm late for work.  I also work as a TA for one of the School of Music classes, so that's another three hours per week. Then there's my classes, which together amount to five hours.  I'm taking two real classes this semester: instrumental arranging and Portuguese poetry.  The arranging class will be quite a bit of work, but should be fun - I really like making arrangements! I'm not that interested in poetry, but I love Portuguese, so I relish any opportunity to practice it.  Finally, I have a ton of rehearsals.  In addition to orchestra, which rehearses about eight hours per week, this semester I am in two chamber groups, so I have another six hours for that.  I hate to complain about this because I signed up for it myself, and I love all the activities I'm taking part in, but it still is a lot of work.

Then the auditions started again for real last weekend.  On Saturday, I had another audition in New York City.  Because a bunch of other Yale students were auditioning for it as well, I had company on the train ride down.  Afterwards, I was lucky enough to meet up with D again.  We enjoyed some delicious miniature beverages, but soon I had to be on my way.  I had to get back down to DC that night, because of the impending Inauguration Day traffic.  I got to relax and spend a lot of quality time with my parents on Sunday and Monday in preparation for my first doctoral audition on Tuesday, at the University of Maryland.  It was so nice to be at home with just my parents.  I can't even remember the last time I was home and neither of my sisters was!

My audition on Tuesday went pretty well, but I'm notoriously bad about judging my own playing, so really who knows.  On Thursday I had University of Georgia, and then on Thursday night I flew back to New York and took the train to New Haven.  I got back to my dorm room literally as the clock struck 4am.  I also had a concert on Friday night, yet somehow managed not to die of a caffiene overdose!

Now I have a few weeks off of auditions, though I still have all my normal school work to take care of.  My next audition isn't untill February 2.  But don't worry, I'll write again before then!

Until next time!

Lauren