Buses, Family, and Music

Wow, my last post was really depressing. While true at the time, that's not exactly my continual state of being. Here's a little update on the rest of life.

My new condo is ideally located in several ways, one of which is the fact that one of the city bus routes goes right down my street. There's an exchange "station" downtown where I can transfer to a different bus that actually has a stop on the HP campus. A few coworkers convinced me to try riding the bus to HP after I moved to the north end, and after a month of riding pretty regularly I have become a big fan of public transportation. Granted it means that I wake up at 6:30am now, but at least that keeps me on a schedule. If only I could train myself to go to bed earlier too!

Mom flew back from China for Thanksgiving and spent just over a week in Boise, enjoying quality time with family members and seeing an amazing number of friends as well. I think she must have hired a social coordinator behind my back! This was her first trip back to the US since they moved to Shanghai in September. Three months is a pretty long time, but I guess so many things in my life have changed in my life during that same time period -- backpacking around Europe for three weeks, settling into my new job at HP, starting into a new relationship, and recently moving to the other end of Boise -- that their absence in Boise hasn't felt as weird as I initially expected. The idea that "my parents are on the other side of the world" is also easier to handle when we can talk free on Skype and email each other as often as we want. However I do look forward to visiting them in Shanghai to gain an understanding of what their life looks like on an everyday basis. At the moment that understanding is mostly one sided.

Thanksgiving weekend was also extremely satisfying in terms of extended family relationships. All the "girls" of the family enjoyed a wonderful mixture of seriousness and hilarity at our traditional Friday get-together, and my lovely cousin Tori and I had a sleepover at my place later that night. The whole weekend was very relationally fulfilling, including quality conversations with aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. I'm so blessed to have a caring, fun-loving, close, wonderful family! Thank you for showing so much interest in my life.

Being a serious musician in a community as small and as large as Boise affords periodic opportunities for interesting gigs. The weekend after Thanksgiving I drove up to Sun Valley to play Handel's Messiah with a combined choir from Sun Valley and Idaho Falls. Each year this particular vocal ensemble hires an orchestra to perform a major work with them, and I think it's my third time to be a privileged member of that orchestra. Usually we stay with host families from Sun Valley, most of whom are singers in the chorus, and each year I am amazed at their large and richly decorated houses, which often include a detached guest house. And some of these families only live in Sun Valley for part of the year. It's a lifestyle of grandeur and volatility that I can't quite fathom. This year we actually stayed at the Sun Valley Lodge resort, in very nice apartments. I felt so spoiled -- it was wonderful to relax and sleep when we weren't playing. Also, I was again blessed to share a stand with Jill, my former teacher and good friend. She always has a twinkle in her eye, even when the chairs are impossibly hard and our backs ache from driving for three hours then trying to support our violins for the rest of the evening.

The really crazy part about that weekend was the fact that in addition to the concerts on Saturday and Sunday, there was also a performance scheduled for Monday night. On an ordinary weekend I would have just taken my snowboard and spend Monday on the slopes at Sun Valley, but a class that I had previously signed up for at work had been moved to start on that same Monday, and I basically had to be there. So I drove home late on Sunday night, went to work, then made the round trip to Sun Valley and back on Monday night for the final concert. We were worried about the roads because it had snowed a lot the night before, so Mike volunteered to join the insanity and drive up with me on Monday. As a result, it turned out to be a pretty fun adventure. On the way home we made our own little caravan along with Dawn to help keep each other safe on the dark, wet roads, and all turned out well. How lovely to not be alone on such a night!

This weekend I'm playing in the pit for the Nutcracker in Boise, which should be fun, but I'm also ready to have a break from music commitments for a few weeks. Maybe the apartment will finally get a thorough cleaning. :) There are still unpacked boxes sitting on shelves, and I haven't hung a single picture yet. Fortunately my kitchen is functional and all my soft cozy blankets are within arm's reach. Life is pretty good after all!