Life As I Know It

    Oy. Four weeks from THIS VERY MINUTE, I shall be on an airplane, US-bound. Well, Philadelphia-bound, at least. Not to pick favorites as far as airlines go (LUFTHANSAISTHEBEST), but oh boy do I wish there'd been a cheap flight with anyone other than US Airways...and to anywhere other than Philadelphia, aka my least favorite airport ever. But hey, that's life.

   Now since I have so little time left (AHHHH), I've, as I may have mentioned towards the end of my last blog, made it a personal mission to do as many cool things and have as much fun as possible before  the coolest year of my life comes to a close. Therefore, this entry will be dedicated to the coolness that is my life. (Yes, I'm trying to make you all jealous. I'll need something to cling to when I go back to the sad life that is an unemployed college grad in the US of A.) And since, you know, I haven't written a "normal" blog in about three months. Life kind of got in the way.

   And since life did that whole getting-in-the-way thing, and because tonight is not a night that is conducive to chronology and transitions and properly formatted entries, prepare yourselves for a bullet-point-blog.

MY FRIENDS
  Though I will readily confess it did indeed take me awhile to find them, I have basically the coolest friends ever. Leigh, who is basically the awesomest friend in the world, has been more than obliging in my quest to be awesome this summer, and we have been tearing up the town like crazy (as much as two people with remarkably restrictive work schedules can, anyway). We meet nearly every day to try new cafes, go to bookstores, check out sales, or go relax in the English Garden. Yesterday we played badminton. Freaking cool. And Sarah, who began as my choir buddy, comes with too and we have group adventures! Like swimming! And Tollwood! And eating Mexican food after choir when all the students have to go study!

  In all seriousness though, these girls have made the last couple months. So, so grateful to have them here.

MY CHOIR


    Though I haven't written about it in ages, my choir has been chugging along! A couple of months ago we had the amazing opportunity to record Palestrina's Canticum Canticorum (Song of Songs) for Naxos with the Bayerischer Rundfunk (main Bavarian classical radio organization). We spent a whole weekend shut up in a teensy but lovely chapel in a woman's hospital (random, yes) in the southern Altstadt, recording about 15 motets and an additional 22 Gregorian antiphons (the alto soloist being yours truly!) with nothing but each other, the terrible breath of the woman next to me, and a bottle of port. It was exhausting but fun and with a far better result than I could have anticipated. The music is gorgeous and the takes we got to hear (pre-mixing) actually didn't sound half bad! The CD should hopefully be ready sometime in September!

Okay, the two ladies on the right are awful. But the rest are great!

   A few weeks later we had an intensive concert weekend, though due to circumstances beyond my control, I could only attend two of the three, but it was good fun nonetheless. The first concert was about an hour or so north of Munich at a cloister. Seriously. With monks and everything! It was a part of their summer music festival series. (Check out the facebook event! https://www.facebook.com/events/186398758150335/) Coolest and simultaneously most disconcerting part: It was a Kreuzgang concert, meaning we sang, basically, in a weird back hallway. Picture a hall tracing a 90 degree angle, fill both sides with people, and put the choir where the two sides meet, and add a bunch of candles, and there you have it! It was pretty cool, and the free dinner at the Cloister's brewery afterwards was a lot of fun too. If I had to be a monk anywhere (not that that's too serious a choice to have to make), Germany would be the place to do it. All you really do is brew beer and drink beer. And pray every now and then, I guess. We had another concert that next Sunday at a church we've sung at before, and it was well-received and also followed by free food! I could get used to that! But alas, all good things must come to an end.

    Yesterday was officially my last day of choir. We sang for the service at a church in the city, then went out for breakfast at Augustiner just across the street. I even, in order to get the full effect of the experience (and take advantage of someone else paying for it!), ate the traditional Weißwürstfrühstück and all that implies: white sausages of mixed pork and beef dipped in sweet mustard, pretzel, and weiss beer. At 10:30 AM. Am I German or what? I also got a gift from my director: a philosophical history book entitled, "Die beiden Amerika: Kolumbus und die Folgen" (The Two Americans: Columbus and the Consequences), which my director was the editor of. Very kind, if probably rather complicated!

   One of the coolest things about my wonderful choir friends is how much they like singing. It's like being back in high school when everyone wet their pants in excitement every time someone said a certain E. Whitacre's name and we all tried to sing his music together. Except it's not Whitacre, it's Purcell or Dowland, we actually succeed in singing it, and no one wets their pants. That I've noticed. We actually sometimes stay after rehearsals or concerts to sing, and have even wandered through the streets of Munich searching for somewhere out of the way to go and look at the new music someone had brought along. It's been an incredibly long time since I've sang with people just for the fun of singing, without the stress of preparing for a concert, worrying about proper technique, in an attempt to get a role, but just because it's nice out, we have pretty music, and it's fun to sing with one another! After my last rehearsal, before we went out for drinks, we gathered to sing a bit and my personal surprise was them singing to me Dowland's "Now, O Now, I Needs Must Part" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezh1dxnwMWQ&feature=related). It was so sweet and beautiful and while I am so sad to leave this choir behind, it was probably the best decision I made as far as keeping me sane in Germany! Thank you, random Greek guy at bar, for introducing me to Sarah back in September!

MY KIDDIES


    As kindergarten-related activities are starting to wrap up, we've been treated to some fun kiddie stuff lately. Last Friday, Cliona's dance class gave a performance (in the very loosest sense of the word) for parents and siblings (and au pairs) to go watch, and it was hilarious. Cliona, of course, laughed like a drunken farmer the entire time, and it was the funniest thing. Though not dancing so much as playing movement-related games while wearing a pink tutu, she loves it and it is so much fun for the kids.

   Kilian has had all kinds of football tournaments lately, none of which I've been to (at 7:30 on a Sunday morning? No thank you!), so I made up for it by taking him to football last week. I haven't watched him play since last October or so, so it was fun to see how much he's improved! While, okay, even at six I can tell you he will never be any sort of talented footballer, he at least runs and sometimes even kicks the ball. It's adorable.

   We have also been doing a lot of baking lately. Okay, by "a lot," I mean twice. But that's plenty, trust me. The surge has come because I have American goodies I need to use up! We celebrated the 4th of July by making Funfetti cupcakes and decorating them American style. (C'mon, what can be more American than Funfetti?) They also helped me make real American chocolate chip cookies last week, with imported chocolate chips! (Imported by my mother, that is.) They were great until Cliona decided to lick pure raw egg off the counter. Oops.

  

Hard at work

Finished products

     I love the ways kids' minds work. Okay, to be honest I have no idea if that's kids, plural, or just mine. But Kilian is freaking awesome. His mom came home from work one day a couple months ago and said to him, "Hey Kilian, there's a circus set up in the park! Do you want to go see?" His answer? An instant, terrified, "But I haven't practiced!!!" I just love, so much, that his mind translated that as him being a circus star performer.

   Despite not being able to read yet, he really is such a smarty pants. He just got a new world map to hang on his wall, in preparation for school starting in September, and we've been having a lot of fun looking at it and studying it (most frequently when he's trying to put off going to bed). Naturally, Lake Titicaca has garnered probably a lot more interest than it necessarily deserves (brief pause while I go listen to Ernst Koch's Geographical Fugue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b59Tpi_tDYo&feature=related), but we've talked about a lot of other stuff too. We talk about different continents, and how scary is must have been for Columbus to sail out into nothing, and how the first people came from Africa and spread out through Europe and Asia and then much later went over the Bering Strait into the Americas (based on his question of though the Europeans didn't know America was there, did the Americans know Europe was there?). We've also talked a lot about the weirdness that in America, most people are lots and lots of different ethnicities, as opposed to Germany where most people are strictly German, or half German and half other-European. And he gets all this stuff! If he were a grown-up we would totally be best friends and have epic conversations all the time. Okay, we do anyway. And indeed, when I put him to bed that night, he gave me a hug and said, "I'm glad you came here instead of someone else." Me too, man.

And Cliona's Quote-of-the-Week, just for kicks: "Ich mag keine dicke, fette Kiwi, weil ich so traurig bin." (I like no fat kiwi, because I am so sad.) Umm, what?

PLACES

KulturStrand. Possibly my current favorite place in Munich. (For non Deutschophiles, the name means "Culture Beach.") There's an island in the middle of the Isar (the large river that flows through Munich) where the Deutsches Museum sits. Across from the museum, surrounding a fountain, they cart in 104.4 tons of sand and make a beach there! There are beach chairs, umbrellas, a huge sand-filled canvas worm type of thing to sit on or lean against, a DJ, and, of course, a bar, with delicious summery cocktails that Germany does so well (for some weird reason). I've been there twice so far, once with Sarah and Leigh during the day, then once last week with my host mom and a couple of her friends--we rode our bikes the 13 km into town after work and hung out drinking cocktails. All the fun of sitting on the beach with your toes in the sand--plus, you can DRINK! (I realize I sound like an alcoholic. I'm not. I promise.)

The Summer Tollwood Festival is the summer equivalent of Frühlingsfest and Winter Tollwood, which in turn are all baby versions of Oktoberfest. But dude, they are fun! Unlike the other three, Summer Tollwood takes place up at Olympiapark, the huge complex built for the 1972 Olympics in Munich, containing a swim hall, a stadium, a lake, and facilities that originally hosted the boxing, hockey, gymnastics, and volleyball events during the Olympics. The park as a whole is really cool, and we've been there several times, which will be later addressed. Or earlier. I told you, I'm not super into the chronological thing today. Anyway, I took on the festival a couple times during the three weeks it was here, once with Leigh and once with Leigh, Daniel, and Sarah. It's a much smaller festival than its compatriots, with a much more laid-back vibe. It's kind of like a US market night, except with random beer tents and no laws against walking around drinking. There's also a music festival as part of it, with people performing like Lou Reed and Lady Antebellum. We had a great time both times just walking around, looking at the souvenir things to buy and enjoying the atmosphere.

Olympiapark is super cool. I'd, embarrassingly, never been there until about a month ago, when Sarah, Leigh and I went there to swim. Though those Olympics were forty years ago, it's still pretty cool to swim in that enormous pool (and see for myself how freaking high those high dives really are). And I sort of feel like the spirit of the Olympics transcends geographic borders so maybe I sort of have swam with Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte...? Anyway, we had a great time swimming around and jumping off the (smallest) diving board, then spending some time out in the sun gossiping and being girly and it was just so much fun. Did I mention I have wonderful friends!
   Leigh, Paulo, and I also continue fairly regularly to go up there to play tennis, which has been fun to get back into, especially since we're all enough of a level that we can play together pretty well. Though I do drive people crazy with my slices. Muahaha!
   And finally, Leigh and I went one night to the Kino am Olympiasee. Munich has a wonderful tradition of open-air movie theaters (something I wonder why on earth California doesn't do more of; the weather is so iffy here it seems risky and they do it regardless!), and literally every night there are movies at several different locations to choose from. So we took our beach towels, blankets, and lots of snacks up to Olympiapark and bought 6 euro apiece picnic seats. It was way too much fun. There's an enormous inflatable movie screen that gets set up around 9:15 or 9:30 (once it gets dark enough) and you get to sit there and watch the movie. It's something entirely different than a movie theater experience to get to sit outside sprawled out on a blanket with birds and bugs and air flying around you. It's wonderful. And our excellent selection of refreshments did not hurt one bit.

    I've been lucky enough to go to a couple of great concerts lately with my friend Paulo, who has a very useful talent of being able to get tickets to pretty much anything. We saw a wonderful Rachmaninov/Walton program back at the beginning of July at the Gasteig, home of the Munich Philharmonic, then attended a Sunday morning performance of Bruckner's Mass No. 3 in the Herkulessaal at the Residence Palace, and finally one of the best concerts I've ever been to, the closing concert of the Munich Philharmonic with Shostokovich's Symphonies 11 and 15, with Valery Gergiev conducting. We lucked into orchestra seats, a mere nine rows back. It was incredible. Shostakovich symphonies are loud and fun and in-your-face, and it was such a cool experience. And followed by Indian food--even better!

Leigh and I at Herkulessaal

   I went a couple weeks ago to a ToyTown event (ok, not a place, but whatever). It'd been ages since I'd gone, but a new friend was trying out a new students/interns meet-up and asked if I'd come along. It ended up being really fun--a nice Canadian bar with the most delicious house-made hard lemonade ever  and about ten people actually having conversations instead of just the speed-dating type of chatter that tends to haunt ToyTown events, at least the ones I've been to. Most of the evening was spent listening to a New Yorker elaborate on the downside of American healthcare (but in an intelligent way, at least! I'll give you that, Dillon.) and the two of us attempting to explain the oddities of America as a country to some Brits and Danes. It was a lot of fun.

   Leigh had some friends in town a couple of weeks ago and we took them down to Starnberger See, a lake south of Munich. I'd actually never been there before, and though the day was less than ideal, weather-wise, it was beautiful and peaceful and I need to go back there to swim before I leave!

That's Leigh walking. She went swimming. She is brave.

   Okay, you obviously have heard me talk about the English Gardens, but I have to share this just so other people can feel the pain that's been heavy on my heart (and inner eye) this week. Leigh and I had an idyllic morning on a hot Thursday last week lounging and dunking in the river, eating sandwiches, and reading German gossip magazines, when we were treated to quite a sight. Remember how you're allowed to be naked in the English Gardens? Well, this is nothing new, and you see naked people pretty much every time you're there. But only rarely do they choose to set up their towel a mere THREE FEET FROM YOUR HEAD AND LIE THERE WITH THEIR GENITALS STARING YOU NOT-SO-SUBTLY IN THE FACE! The "they" there, if you were wondering, was one particularly determined middle-aged German fellow, who...erm, displayed his personal parts more blatantly than I would have thought possible. It was definitely not crowded. There was no excuse. And now, I am for the rest of my life entirely satisfied to see no more elderly German testicles. I'm sorry. I had to say it.

   I feel like that's an appropriate note to end on! You've done well, readers. Hang in there for 28 more days and we'll be home free! Then I can tell you about my life in person.

   And ten extra-credit points to the people who noticed there weren't actually any bullet points in this entry.

Kilian's surprise for me the other day. All by himself! Yes, I know the spelling is far from perfect, but still the sweetest thing ever <3

Adventures in April: A Recap

    Well, it's April 27, and as tomorrow morning I shall be gallivanting off into adventure (sounds a lot more exciting than it is, I promise you), I shall gainfully attempt to give you a final April blog before going. Ready, GO!

    That being said, now I need to figure out what I actually need to say! Pause whilst I run back to my penultimate entry:

    Geschafft (achieved!). The last two weeks have been, as is fairly customary in my life, fairly hum-drum and typisch, punctuated by brief spurts of incredible excitement!

    I won't keep you hanging. Remember that girl I talked so much about two blogs ago? Yes, of course you do, devoted blog readers! (Her name's Andrea and she's a friend from California, a Fulbrighter in Vienna, and generally just an awesome person. Yes, I know you already knew that. Don't worry.) Anyway, just two weeks after we had excellent Viennese adventures, the tables were turned and she came to visit me! Though sadly 'twas for a mere 25 hours and 48 minutes (like almost exactly), it was a great time and a much-needed (and very welcome!) pick-me-up from the doldrums my mood's been spending a lot of time in lately.

   So last Friday she got a rideshare from Vienna and arrived at the bus stop just outside my house at about 6 o'clock in the evening, and we set off to do what little sightseeing we could that evening! Which wasn't much, I'll be honest; our sights (and tastebuds) were much more oriented toward the promise of Indian food for dinner rather than some old churches.

   I'll interject briefly to say that unlike a lot of American tourist attractions (Vegas, NYC, and LA, to name a few), European tourist-y cities, as beautiful as they are, only really live up to (and often exceed) their potential when the conditions are good. A tip for all you future travelers: save your European trips for the summer, don't waste your time sightseeing in the rain, and once the sun sets, you're better off absorbing culture in a pub than outside trying to explore. Pretty much every city I've been to lacks a lot of charm in the rain/cold/dark.

     So instead of attempting to shove much Munich culture down Andrea's throat, we headed for my favorite Indian (and favorite in general, too) restaurant and settled down to a couple hours of pigging out. This place is freaking delicious. Not terribly cheap, but definitely worth the money, in my opinion! Once sated on chicken tikka masala, bombay potatoes, and garlic naan, we headed out (into the pouring rain, ughh) to meet Leigh at the nearby Hofbräuhaus. Leigh and Andrea have been fated to meet several times before, but tragic (not really) circumstances always intervened, so it was nice to finally have it happen!

     The Hofbräuhaus is, let's be honest, one of the great tourist traps in Munich, but it's also a hell of a lot of fun, and has excellent beer, food, and is always a comfortable 75 degrees inside (and occasionally warmer), very welcome when it's drizzly and COLD outside. We settled in for a comfortable evening of probably too much beer and chatting, only occasionally interrupted by the rather pathetic flirtation attempts of the Italians sitting next to us.

    At a fairly reasonable hour, we braved the U-Bahn home (my host family kindly consented to let Andrea crash with me for the night) and slept in far too late the next day (Saturdays rock).

    Fortunately for us, the tourism gods smiled upon our day, and the sun was out and shining, while not warmly, per se, at least comfortably. We packed Andrea's stuff, printed out her train tickets, and headed out to see the city.

   Though I'm sure it would eventually get old, it's a lot of fun playing tour guide! I also realized that I've had a sad lack of visitors here in Munich (ahem, that's to all of you! I'll show you around too! Seriously!), and the last time I really got to play tour guide and point out all the main, fun attractions was back in September! When, let's face it, I was still more of a tourist than anything as well. Since we only had about 6 hours before Andrea's train took off, we stuck to the main things (the nice thing about Munich is that most things of great interest are contained with about a two square kilometer area, so one can be a very efficient tourist when one so desires. Not that I recommend only visiting Munich for six hours at a time, but it is doable!). We started off with panini and coffees (the weather (and the temperature inside) was kind enough to permit iced drinks!) at San Francisco Coffee Company, took a look around Odeonsplatz, site of the 1933 Beer Hall Putsch, then headed into the Hofgarten and on through the Englischer Gartens.

   As I said, the weather obliged. It was gorgeous out, and the gardens were, while definitely not full, offering a decent amount of sunbathers and sporters. We stopped to see the surfers, headed out into the main gardens, meandered down the Isar, admired the Monopteros, and bought ice cream cones from a conveniently placed little balloon-festooned cart (I couldn't resist that rhyme, sorry).

Some photos (which, yes, are all on my facebook as well. Sorry for the repetition.):

Temple to Diana, Hofgarten

Sunbathers on the Isar

NOM ICE CREAM

Monopteros 

    After pausing to admire the oom-pa band at the Chinesischer Turm, we hopped quickly on a bus and an U-Bahn to get down to Marienplatz. We dutifully popped into a couple of churchs (the cathedral and St. Michael's, to be exact), sneakily side-tripped into an H&M, and wended our way back to the beer garden at the Viktualienmarkt. If you need a refresher course, the Viktualienmarkt is Munich's open-air market, dating back to very early 1800s, and a wonderful place to go to find exotic cheeses, oils, spices, fresh fruits and vegetables, and so on (though I'll give you the fairly obvious caveat that the prime location adds a euro or two to the average price). The beer garden there, if I recall correctly, is the only state-run beer garden in the city, so it has the advantage of serving beer from all of the breweries (which sounds not that exciting, but in Munich, every restaurant/beer garden is linked to just one brewery, so all the beer available there will only be, for example, varieties of Augustiner beer). It's also huge, and excellently located! Tables with tablecloths indicate the restaurant section, but cloth-less tables are for picnickers, and you buy your beer and bring whatever food you have along! We'd purchased some strawberries from a street vendor and had those along with our beer (remember: in Germany, beer goes with everything. I'll also, just to enforce the point that beer is always acceptable, tell you that this beer garden opens at 9 AM.).

     Though I don't spend a whole lot of time in beer gardens (the seasons and weather is to blame, not any personal prejudice), the atmosphere there is really special. The thing Americans hear (and dread) about Germany is that when there's not a table available, it's not only acceptable, it's expected to ask to sit at someone else's table. This happens in restaurants, cafes, and everywhere, really. At a beer garden, especially a popular one on a beautiful day, if you don't have the nerve to ask someone to scoot a little bit, you're going to be drinking standing up. We found a corner of a table across from a middle-aged German couple and settled down with our goodies. The fun part about sitting with strangers + alcohol? You can hardly help but make friends with the people around you. We had an excellent time conversing with the couple across from us, visitors from Karlsruhe, and our conversation ranged from how Munich is gemütlicher (an untranslatable word running along the lines of comfortable, home-like, kinder to the spirit) than Vienna, how the politics in the US scared us, to the things one learns in a beer garden! (And this was all in German. Score us!) When they left, their place was taken by a trio of young French and Spanish businessmen, who wanted to hear all about what it was really like being singers. It was definitely a fun experience. 

    Alas, all good things come to an end, and we finished our beers, bid farewell to our new friends, and headed off to the main train station to deposit Andrea on her train back to Vienna. I rounded off the evening by reading at Hugendubel's and then heading home.

    The week since has been fairly unexciting, but there's one important part. On Monday, the temperature was about 55 degrees. On Tuesday, it poured the entire day and stayed in the 40s. On Wednesday, we broke 60 degrees. But oh, Thursday and today have been GLORIOUS. It's currently a beautiful 74 degrees and I got a sunburn sitting out with my cappuccino. Oh spring, how I love thee! 

    I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's jump back to Monday. April 20th marked the beginning of a joyous Munich tradition (in my opinion, at least): Frühlingsfest! This festival of spring runs for two and a half weeks in late April and early May, and is a miniature version of Oktoberfest (also on the Theresienwiese). There are beer tents, carnival rides, incredibly unhealthy and delicious food offerings (cotton candy, crepes, roasted nuts...), and people in dirndls and lederhosen soaking up the ambience. I almost wish I could have gone to Frühlingsfest before taking on Oktoberfest; it's much smaller and less intimidating. 

    So Monday night, I met with Leigh and Daniel and we set out to enjoy the sights of Frühlingsfest. An hour or so passed in the Hippodrom tent, with quite a few Maßes (Bayrisch for a liter of beer; the only size beer comes in at festivals) and half a roasted chicken to split between us, listening to the band play old German favorites like Sweet Caroline, Bad Romance, and YMCA. Seriously. There were also, of course, several thousand rounds of Ein Prostchen (a beerhall standard for everyone to cheers; check out this video if you've never heard it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV20cgYY5iU ). Then we headed out into the night, had some crepes, and even went on a terrifyingly spinny ride that probably wasn't the greatest idea after all that beer. It was an excellent night.

Beer + pretzels + lederhosen = love. Germany is so simple. 

Hippodrom Festzelt

I may have to go back and buy one of these

Post-spinning ride 

     Wednesday night was another adventure into the depths of Bavarian culture. If you're a football fan at all (that's football by the rest of the world's standards, not America's), you probably are aware the championship is swiftly approaching, and Wednesday night the Bavarian team, FC Bayern, played their final match against Real Madrid to see who will head to the championships. So like good Münchners, headed out to a beer garden to watch the televised match, liters of beer in hand. Though I will be the first to admit my knowledge of soccer is pretty slim, I can follow what's going on. And it's pretty fun being plunked into the domain of one of the greatest football teams! I trust you know the results right now, but I'll tell you that FC Bayern won on eleven-meter kicks and will go on to play Chelsea in the Champions-League final in three weeks. Huzzah!!

Terrible dark picture just post the final kicks.

   In kiddie news: all is well. I'm currently waiting for Anne to bring Kilian and his best friend Ben over so I can watch them while she goes to dancing with Cliona. Cliona has nearly mastered riding her bike WITHOUT training wheels (at 3 1/2! I'm sold on Laufrads, man. 3 and a freaking half.). My host dad took a short day yesterday after a trip to the dentist so we helped him put together Kilian's grown-up bed and spent a good hour at the part watching Cliona practice. What a champ! There have been a lot more food squabbles lately; my host mom has decided that we're spoiling the kids by giving them various hot meals for dinner (you may recall the Germans believe in only one "hot" meal a day, and theirs is lunch), so now all they're permitted is toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich or bread and cheese. Makes prep easier for me, but when the kids won't eat it...well, it's a little frustrating. I'd be sick of it too, so I really can't blame them. Kilian and I had a fight last night while I was babysitting; we were playing checkers before bed, and when he realized I'd trapped both of his remaining pieces, he started crying about how I always win, et cetera et cetera, so I put the game away (sore losers are ANNOYING, even if they're six), which prompted several "I HATE YOUs". Always fun to hear. Luckily I've basically learned the secret to dealing with kids is actually talking to them, so we got it worked out and him put to bed in relative harmony. (No new photos, sorry.)

    Two weeks ago I got the chance to have dinner with Leigh's cousins and their kids, who were here visiting! It was a lot of fun, and way too nice to be with a normal family (not that my host family isn't great, but as sell-out as it is to say, I miss American families). They're also blog readers of mine, so a shout-out to the Dunns! It was wonderful to meet you, and I hope you have a great stay in Deutschland! 

    Shout-out number two: Chapman is presenting their opera this weekend, and I'm so sad I can't be there! Congratulations, all of you! Go see it, everyone else!

    As I mentioned waaaaay up at the top of this entry, tomorrow I take off for a long weekend (Tuesday is Germany's labor day, so four day weekend, here I come!) of choir rehearsal at a hotel/resort place a couple of hours outside of Munich. Don't know many details yet, but hopefully will be a successful weekend! I'll keep you posted. 

    Now it's upstairs to greet the kiddies. See you all in May!