VISI, day 23

The final day of the fun ... 

I went for a short shopping excursion this morning, to find two more gifts as well as a baggage scale.  My time is very short tomorrow morning, and I do not want to spend unnecessary time repacking bags ...  My shopping was successful, and I returned home to pack.  The morning was very, very rainy, and so my hopes of going to the beach one last time were dashed ... 

... except that when I got home, the sun came out.  I rethought my schedule, and decided I had time to go to the beach.  Off I went - so quickly that I forgot my sunscreen.  Oops.  Upon arriving at the beach (the third one I chose, and the nicest), I went and walked in the water a bit.  I didn't really want to go swimming, and then try to get the seaweed out of my hair, so I just walked.  It was rather cold, and the sky had clouded over again.  I went back, leaned against a log, and read for half an hour; at that point, the sun came out, and I just lay in the sun for another half hour.  I then bussed back, did a little bit of packing, and hurried off to the music building to run through staging ... 

... only to find that they were an hour behind!  I decided to go have a shower, which I had meant to do earlier, but when I returned an hour later, I only just got there in time to rehearse my song.  Luckily it went quite well and no one seemed particularly annoyed that I hadn't shown up in time.  Oops again ... 

I stayed in my gown to make dinner, and then eat it, and then do my hair and makeup.  It's a bit of a hassle to get into, so I didn't want to have to do so again ...   The gala was wonderful.  Rather long - three and a half hours - but every minute was packed with interesting interpretation and excellent acting.  The first act was the first half of our art songs; the second act was a short staged production by several of the students in a parallel program to my own; and the third act was the second half of the art songs.  Almost all of the songs were staged (only three or four were performed in recital fashion), and they were all brilliantly conceived.  Some were hilarious, some were heartbreaking, some were somewhat disturbing ... and all were so very artistic.  :)  We had drunk men, cocktail lounge singers, marionette masters, blind women, amorous pining from both sexes, and then little moments like reminiscing about one's grandmother ... yes, that was me.

Now, after the gala, everyone else has gone off to party, and I, alas, am not old enough ... besides, I still need to finish packing.  So here I am.  Packing.  ... blogging.

VISI, day 22

Yesterday was not terribly eventful.   I thought about going shopping in the morning, but decided the schedule would be too rushed, so I stayed home and packed a bit.

Concert of French and Quebecois song at one; quite good.  Coaching at two; not bad either.  Lost my pencil, commented on it, used one of the pianist's pencils, not a problem.  A loss of a pencil is not important.

Went home, packed more, made supper.  The concert yesterday evening was a presentation of art song theatre: a performance of Songs from Spoon River, where long-dead residents of a small town talk about their lives; and a performance of That Way Goes the Game, a hilarious romp through Shakespeare where a graduate student comes to understand women by having to deal with Katherine, Lady Macbeth and Ophelia over the course of a night.  Both performances were very well done, and That Way Goes the Game was absolutely gut-busting, using Shakespearean langauge alongside modern English in ways that were really very funny.  (For instance, after Lady Macbeth pours out her soul in a re-enactment of the night of Duncan's murder, and is being comforted in her grief and guilt by Ophelia, the graduate student announces, "That is some messed-up shit."  Ba ha ha ha ha ... )

After the concert, I scurried back to the dorms, and spent an hour listening to Portal 2 quotes before falling asleep.  Yes, this was a silly idea, but it caught my brain ...  

VISI, day 18

Also a fairly uneventful day.  Woke up feeling absolutely lousy, so I texted my pianist saying I would be late to the first coaching.  Had a shower, felt marginally better, headed over.  The coaching was quite good actually.  

I brought my dress and some lunch along, so I ate quickly then changed and brushed my teeth, as I was singing in a concert at one o'clock.  I sang Die Mainacht and Les chemins de l'amour.  It went quite well, I thought: not a perfect performance by any means, but I managed to stay in the moment, focused, got over mistakes and went on, and was overall happy with my performance.  Yay!

I had one more coaching at four, so I went home and ... watched more My Little Pony.  A good pick-me-up after a somewhat-depressing missive received from a good friend. 

My second coaching was a staging session, so it was alright.  I like to work with this sort of thing.  

After that coaching I headed back to dorm, made some food and had a chat with my mother, which was good.  Tomorrow looks vaguely complicated but I'm sure it'll all get figured out.

Oh!  Bird story!  While I'm thinking about it!  So this is Friday morning, and I'm asleep, and I'm dreaming, and suddenly I think I hear one of the cats making a strange sort of coo/meow noise.  It sounds a bit like a bird, but I associate it with a cat, since I've grown up with cats.  Except then I start to wake up, and the sound's not going away, and I remember that I'm in Vancouver, and there is no cat in my room.

oh my gosh.  It's a bird.  It has to be a bird.  There is no screen on the window of my room, and I have been keeping it open.  It's a bird.  There is a bird in my room.

It's not flapping around.  I open my eyes, and look around a bit.  I don't see it.  I sit up.  Still don't see it.  Look at the window.  Oh, the curtain is flapping a bit, maybe it's just standing on the ledge.  Maybe if I twitch the curtain it'll fly out the window.  I slide forward in bed a bit, toward the window, and suddenly there's this great flapping and a coo, and I scream out of surprise as the bird flies up from where it was standing beside my bed (on the floor) to my desk.

We both stop.  I take a look at it.  It's a decently big bird - maybe two and a half times the size of a robin?  Not the size of a seagull, though.  A medium-sized bird.  It's a steely, muted greyish-blue, and looks like it has some speckles on its tail.  But I don't have my glasses on, so it's a bit hard to tell.  

I'm nervous - if it gets mad at me, it's a lot faster than I am, and I don't have anything to defend myself in easy reach (I suppose a pillow might have worked).  I can't really get to the door.  The curtain is still closed.  I have no idea (duh) what this bird is thinking.  Maybe it just doesn't know how to get out.  I inch over, reach and grab the curtain, then pull it open.  I wait.  It flies to the ledge, then hops out the window.  I lean over, carefully, and wait for it to hop a bit along the ledge before pulling the window mostly shut.

Luckily, I did not wake anyone, and luckily, the bird did not decide to be mad at me.  

So that is the bird story!