i'd like to propose a toast...: catch up day!

hi everyone who still reads this! sorry for the delay in blog posts. this week has been very busy. here's an overview:

i played at a house concert this past friday with three singers. i got the music on wednesday (...), so it was fast learning for me! they sounded fine. we arrived in lanaouille, a town close to perigueux around 7 pm and were given champagne, wine, and a three course meal. coffee and conversation in french and english (and franglish) ensued. we didn't sing until 10, but left with a big bottle of champagne from the host, who happened to be the mayor of the city.

beautiful gardens!

yum

real sheep!! how lovely.

yesterday (saturday) was our first real concert. it was at a "castle", which happened to be just a chateau. it was very nice with a meal provided. the hosts were dutch, so french was the second language of many people there. there were 22 singers each performing an aria during the concert. it was so long. ugh. also, the program here doesn't believe in real pianos, so the pianists had to play on an ELECTRIC keyboard. it was pretty horrific, but everyone said it sounded fine. i guess that is all that matters, right?

the "castle". it's not as big as it looks.
but, it's from the 16th century, so it's pretty neat.

all of this land is owned by one person...
last week they "built a lake on the golf course" in his backyard...

our concert venue. in a barn. notice the keyboard -__-

gorgeous grounds!

wow

just a casual pool in the middle of the rolling hills of france.

we've staged act 1 of the opera, which is about 45 minutes of music... this took about a week. there are FOUR casts . . . . . . . so i'm playing for about 3 hours of staging every day. maybe 10 pages of music a day. it gets very repetitive, but i try to make it fun with casual snarky remarks. i can't help myself.

i also play for lessons or coach every morning from 10h to 13h. the singers are getting much better even in just one week. it is pretty great. after long days, i come home to eat with the rest of the faculty and we have wine and dish about what happened during the day. i'm meeting and living with some amazing people from around the world! it's pretty exciting.

de-stressing

today is bastille day aka independence day for france. we sang the french national anthem this morning at some park and it was lovely.

lovely park!

another pianist, maggie, et moi.
our sashes were on backwards - one french guy said :
"well... it's close enough"

liberty or something. statue blahblah.

the house of the mayor... looks nice.

i tried some new foods this week! shrimp in the shell last night and today at lunch i had an AMAZING salad with foie gras (duck liver!!!!!) along with some other part of duck (magré and some other word that means throat). it was DELICIOUS. i'm serious. i was verrryyy skeptical at first, but then it turned out to be amaaaazing. foie gras is banned in the US because people overfeed the ducks to make their livers taste better or something. i'm not quite sure.

i really can't tell you how good this was.

trying to figure out what i'm about to eat.

ok. long post. i have more pictures. i'll put them here. feel free to ask questions! i don't know if i will respond. i will also try to be more diligent about keeping this up. i am having an amazing time.

bonne fête national et vive la france!!