Under the wire

 I just re-read my last post (from the beginning of April!) and noticed that I promised another update before six-months had gone by.  I guess I am still two months away from that deadline, but at the rate I'm going and with the way the days are flying by, I am sure that if I don't post now it will easily be Christmas before you hear from me... so here goes!

My mom's visit way back in April was perfect and so much fun.  She had already seen Semana Santa here in Andalucía many years ago, but it really is quite a spectacle and she loved it just as much this time around as her first experience about 9 years ago.  This year, there was the added bonus of Emily and I both taking part in processions on different days.  She dressed as a pennitent on Friday and I played in the band for Thursday's celebrations.  We both enjoyed ourselves immensely and it was so fortunate that my mom was here to be with Emily for the 6 + hours I was playing.

We didn't do a lot of sightseeing with Ga, it was mostly a play-at-home visit, but it was wonderful and far too short (as always).  I was working for part of her time here, which meant that Emily had her grandma's uninterrupted attention for hours at a time--just the way she likes it.  Ga and I were hard pressed to find time for mother-daughter bonding and found ourselves staying up into the wee hours after Emily's bed time just to have a moment to ourselves. ;)

As far as the band goes, our Semana Santa performance blew the whole town away and roused a great deal of interest in the band.  Since then, we have had several new members join and enrollment in the municipal music school quadripled with students (young and old) learning an instrument in hopes of joining the band soon.  Among those new students is my Emily.  She has taken up clarinet and although she practices very little, she does enjoy it and is steadily improving.

We recently had a summer concert of pasodobles which was another huge success and now we're taking a month break before rolling full steam ahead into autumn and winter.  Emily has no choice but to attend all out practices, but in fact, she loves going.  She could hum our complete concert repertory and was bursting at the seams with pride at our concert.  She's taken to wrting music for her stuffed animals and directs a mini band with gusto!  I love it.  It makes my heart happy to see how music is becoming so important for her.

This was a little concert she and her classmates had at the end of the year.

Other news is that our summer intensive classes are in full swing at the academy.  We've got a pretty cush schedule at the moment: 9:00-13:00 form Monday through Thursday.  Maintaining three-day weekends has been wonderful.  And only working four hours a day is also a dream come true.  There is a lot of work that goes on at home and before and after hours.  We've got 31 students which meand 31 exams a week to be corrected along with other daily exercises.  However, I usually take my corrections with me to the city pool after lunch and it is quite pleasant to grade in the shade and take a dip whenever I get overheated.  No complaints here.

The biggest news of late is that Maggie surprised us a few weeks ago by announcing that she could come visit in August if the dates worked for us!  I have a week holiday in August and so she's coming on the 8th and staying through the 15th.  I hadn't made any plans for my week of vacation because we're going away for a weekend at the end of the month to celebrate Angelines's 50th birthday so we're saving money for that.  Nevertheless, a sister visit calls for some amount of extra spending so we have arranged for Maggie to fly in and out of Madrid (my new favorite itenerary) and I will join her there when she arrives for two nights before coming back to La Roda together!  I am exceptionally excited about this particular plan because I am going ALONE to Madrid!  I love my daughter, but...  I do feel a little guilty for taking this solo time to galavant around the Spanish capital with my twinnie while mamá stays home alone in the heat with Em, but...  C'est la vie, non?  

And speaking of/in French, I am looking forward to practicing with Maggie, too.  We are planning to speak frañolish (francais/español/english) everywhere we go. :)  Duolingo is still ravenously eating up my free time, but just this past week I was first in the Diamond Division (the highest division in the app)...so it's paying off.  I am also pleased that I understand my Belgian friends' posts on Instagram and can even reply in French.  

Well, that's a pretty abreviated version of the last four months, but you get the idea.  Thanks for continuing to check here and not completely giving up on me. ;)

Salut!

New Look...

Maybe it's the changes I made to the blog that have been keeeping me away...  I open the page and after so many years with the same design, it just doesn't look right now!  I'll have to mess around with it some more. Of course that's not really why I've been absent, but the new format surprises me every time I log on!

...Okay, so I tried to sit down and post over a month ago.  The above was my beginning... 

It's harder to actually sit down and write something after so much time.  Not for lack of things to share, but some how I've lost my momentum and the inertia of not writing just pulls me away time and time again.

Recently, though I do have two very good excuses for being so absent from my blog: 1. Emily and I downloaded Duolingo to learn French and I must say I now fully understand my dad's obsession with the app!  2. I've just recently rejoined the city band, which is trying to make a come back after several years with very low membership.  

Where French is concerned, I'm having lots of fun.  I have always wanted to learn German actually, but since Emily will be taking French in school starting next year, I thought we might as well get a jump start.  And I think that beginning all over again with a new language will help me to be a more understanding and perhaps better language teacher myself.  Emily and I take turns doing the exercises, but of course I go ahead without her when she's at school.  I have to watch my obsession because several nights I've been up late trying to score my way to the top of the division.  It's a pretty fun app and I think it's pretty good for learning too since it listens to your pronunciation in speaking exercises.  I have even written a few WhatsApp texts to my fracophone friends in Belgium. ;)

The band is something that's been a long time coming.  I have been saying for at least a year (maybe more) that I'd like to join again, but always making the excuse of no time or Emily...  So it wasn't completely on a whim that I decided to join when I was cornered at a birthday party by several members whose good-naturedly teased me about holding out on them.  After three whole practice sessions we had a concert! (Can you believe it?!)  It was a very special event because it had been organized to honor the ex-director of the band who had just retired.  He had been here in La Roda as head of the city band for more than thirty years and was the director who welcomed me into the "fold" when I was a newbee in La Roda.  It was an emotional concert, and one that I think I pulled off pretty well considering that it's been over 10 years since I've picked up my trombone!

Now the band has been hired last minute to play on Thursday in the Semana Santa procession here in town.  There hasn't been a "Holy Week" in Spain since 2019 so this is a big deal; but the pandemic has wreaked havoc on the bands.  Many bands have low membership, or they just aren't in shape to performe in the processions.  The band that this particular brotherhood had hired cancelled on them about two weeks ago... just about a month away from the date.  Finding a replacement band at the last minute was going to be nearly impossible.  However, we offered to step in after having joined forces with a neighboring town to be able to cover all the voices in the marches.  Now we are practicing our lips off for the next week and a half!  The good news is, I can tell I'm getting better.  Even my standmate has comented more than once that I'm starting to sound really good.  My chops were pretty shot after that first 1.5 practice a few weeks ago, but I'm getting there. ;)

Other news is that my parents came here at New Years and my mom is coming on Wednesday!  She'll be here all of Easter week and also for my birthday. :)  I am so happy that our visting schedule is beginning to look a little more like pre-pandemic normality. 

Okay, I'm going to say bonne nuit et à bientôt.  I am sure it won't be another six months before you hear from me again.