My apologies...

To the teachers that I have had whom I've really enjoyed without showing it. It's really easy, when sitting and listening to an interesting lecture or point of debate, to nevertheless maintain a blank face - that's simply its resting state. It's really easy, when listening to an interesting lecture or point of debate, to nevertheless put my head down in a piece of paper and doodle to my heart's content (I just like to be using my hands!). But you should know that I was engaged and interested, even when I was doing those things.

I started teaching the brass section of the orchestra in Plan 3000 at the end of last week. Thursday was my first time doing it - sectional rehearsal was from 5:00 pm to 7:30. I wasn't really sure where to start, so after hearing them play through a piece once, I just went back to where I started - intonation and technique. This involved a lot of down time for the kids - sometimes we would do exercises without even playing the instruments, or exercises focusing on the trombones and not the french horns, or the other way around. When I was talking to them, or when they were sitting with their hands idle, all I could see was blank faces looking back at me. I could see they were all paying attention - they were very respectful. Yet I didn't think they were enjoying it, or even finding what I was saying engaging (or grammatically correct, for that matter). I know that teaching technique and intonation isn't the most fun thing in the world, but it's really important as a basis for playing something, especially something as difficult as the 1812 Overture (one of their current pieces). All I could think about as I was introducing these concepts was, "I am so boring. I gotta find a way to make this more interesting."

They surprised me though - at the end of the sectional, when they were all packing up, they all gave me big grins. As I said thank you to them, they all responded very gratefully. As we all walked out together, they kept coming up to me and asking me about myself, expressing their discontent that I was only staying for 2.5 weeks. You confuse me. Are you just being polite, or did I actually do better than the level of "hmm... I would compare you to Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but I think that would be offensive to him"?

Then I remembered being a student in that type of situation. No matter how engaged I felt inside, I would often look up at my teacher with the same blank stare - even if I was happy to be where I was, it still took a lot of energy to smile, and I was lazy (still am). So for that, I apologize.

To sum up, teaching's been pretty good so far I love the kids and am learning a lot from them and the various interviews I've started doing!

I played trombone today!

Oh Trombone, my old friend. It had been awhile for us. But the stars aligned today as we made sweet, sweet sounds together. I was excited from the start, but you just sat there casually, brass glistening in the sunlight. I knew you were playing hard to get, but I was ready for your games from the start. It wasn't long before I had you in my arms again, and oh how magical it was.

It was my first day visiting the orchestra I'm working with today. I was supposed to start on Monday, but they got stuck in a rainstorm on their way back from Santiago, Chile, so I had to wait. But I'm pretty excited! All of the kids are extremely nice, and the director is an amazing man. More to come as I do more work with them.

Other than that, I haven't been doing much this week. Just getting settled into Santa Cruz life. I wish I had more to say but not much has happened. Short post this time around!

Oh wait - last night I went to see David Guetta live for 15 dollars. It was awesome! A huge dance party in the soccer stadium, with some awesome music. Not only great songs, but since he's a dj, he did a lot of sweet improv over top of them. Fireworks, LCD lights behind the stage - it was all pretty fantastic. Jealous? This seems to be a theme. You might want to look into that.

Only 3 weeks left and then I'm finished! Hard to believe.

My Independent Study Project

So for SIT programs, every student spends the last month of the semester doing an independent project of their choice that relates to what they have been studying throughout the semester. As of this past week, I have figured out what I'm going to be doing for mine! Here's a little info on what I'm going to be doing.

I'm going back to Santa Cruz (for more information on the city, see "Coa", a post on the blog of Matt Taylor. What? Did he just reference himself? Yes, he did.), where I will spend 3 weeks working with a youth orchestra in an area of the city called Plan 3000. This orchestra is meant to be an outlet for high school kids after school so that they are not on the streets, where they can easily find trouble and possibly find a reason to drop out of school. I will be playing trombone with them, helping teach trombone if they need it, doing whatever other things they need me to do for them and making a video about the orchestra. My video is the way I'm going to present my project - usually, students write 25-page papers in Spanish, but we have the option to make short documentaries, which I thought would be cool.

The reason that Plan 3000 could use this type of outlet for its students - Plan 3000 is one of, if not the, most under-developed and poor areas in Bolivia (one of the 8 poorest countries in the world). Basically, 25 years ago, 3000 families were displaced by a huge flood in Bolivia. The government moved them to an area outside of Santa Cruz which, at the time, was just a jungle, with no roads or way of reaching the outside world for resources and help. After placing them there, the government left them completely on their own - 3000 families who had lost everything in the flood were left to fend for themselves.

Somehow, they managed to build a small city out of what they had, which is now a part of Santa Cruz (with 300,000 inhabitants). However, with a population made up of migrants, they don't possess a lot of money, and still lack running water for the most part.

I leave to start my project on Friday, so I'm getting pretty excited!