Linh-Li's Birthday

It was Linhli's 4th birthday yesterday.  it is really cool how they treat me like i am one of the family!  the party consisted of Linh-li, her parents, her grandparents, and me.  the random american that crashes all of their family functions.  it was fun though.  it was really funny, her grandparents bought her some legos so all of us were playing with them, except Mark.  he was kinda just in the corner being quite.  then like 30 minutes later out of no where he pulls out this beautiful intricate color coordinated creation that makes everything we were doing look like crap.  i was thinking, 'oh my goodness, that is exactly something my dad would do!'  anyways, they are a really great family i feel really at home here...linh makes sure of that. haha.  she takes care of me.  

more pics of the opera house

First Concert

so we had our first concert this weekend.  it was with the international choir and the vietnam national ballet.  it turned out really nice.  i dont know how, but the level of playing and professionalism was way better! the orchestra did not sound or feel the same at all.  it was a really cool experience getting to know the choir also.  since it is international there were people from all over the world.  the piece we played, 'margnificat,' featured 5 soloists and they came from england, germany, sweden, japan, and vietnam.  we actually made really good friends with Ryoko, the mezzo soprano soloist from japan as well as others in the group.  it was a really amazing experience meeting people from all over and even when we couldent communicate that well we were still united with music.  

a word about the opera house.  it is BEAUTIFUL!  built in 1911 by the french and it is the most sought after venue in all of south east asia.  i recently found out that the vietnamese were the first in history to use pearl inlays in architecture and this was the first opera house to ever have that.   

it was just brought to my attention that people are actually reading this.  so now i feel obligated to talk about the music.  so i am playing with the national orchestra, opera, and ballet of vietnam.  people have been asking so let me clear this up.  no it is not a college, no it is not a high school, for heavens sake no i did not come to vietnam to play with a middle school. hahahaha.  yes, so it is a 'professional' orchestra.  i used quotation marks because the people in this band to make a living playing with this orchestra.  however it is the nationally funded orchestra of a communist country so as you can imagine it is not the best orchestra of all time.  i have heard the principal cellist and the concert master play solo and they are both absolutely amazing musicians and i am sure that most people in the group are individually but they all have a serious counting and watching problem when you put them together.  also there is a weird discipline problem with the whole country.  linh's sister is a piano performance major at the conservatory and she only practices 30 minutes a day.  plus in rehearsals it is not uncommon for someone to be talking on their phone while we are playing or for people to start packing up 20 or 30 minutes early in the middle of rehearsal.  

now if you have made it this far i would like to say a word about the basses.  i am saying this in the nicest way possible because i truly think its not them personally its probably because of the lack of good instruction on the bass, but the players here are not very good.  they have serious counting and intonation problems.  its kinda funny though, i was practicing the dragonetti concerto (which is pretty hard but not to crazy at all) and they were all drooling over it.  but then every single bassist can play the dittersdorf concerto and bottasini's grand duo (not very well but...) and those peices are harder than the dragonetti.  i found out that music is extremely expensive and hard to get (mostly because of the govt) so the only person in the city who has solo bass music is the teacher at the conservatory and he only has 6 pieces.  some of them are easy, some are very hard but its all they have so they all know how to play them.  sad.  

xin chao Vietnam

ok so i have been here a week i guess i can actually type something.  first thing i learned about vietnam is the traffic is terrible.  they have lanes but i really dont know why they bother, cars go wherever they want, usually in a two lane street there are actually 4 or 5 cars cramming in.  the space that the cars are not taking up is used by crazies swerving in and out in their scooters.  there are approximately a million scooters on any given road and they pretty much go where ever they want.  this includes, but is not limited to, in between cars, on the opposite side of the street against traffic, and the side walk.  the first lesson i learned here is that when you are given a walk symbol at an intersection it is in no way guaranteeing you a safe journey to the other side of the street.  traffic aside, the people here are really nice.  everyone is very friendly, i feel a bit like a celebrity sometimes.  when we were in the country we visited a friend of a friend who is a rice farmer in a very small village.  i dont think they have ever seen americans before and they were so nice.  little kids followed us everywhere and every family invited us in to see there homes.  it was kinda weird, they would walk us through like a museum showing us their prized possessions.  they all offered us food and water even though they had very little and we did end up having dinner with one of them.  mckenzie was even proposed to while we were there. oh sorry, introductions:  mckenzie and ellen, this is no one, no one this is mckenzie and ellen (shown in the pic of me and the two girls next to the temple looking building thing).  ok, the last thing i am going to say is about my host family (shown in the pictures i will hopefully be adding to this post)  the mom is lihn (pronounced 'ling') the dad is nghia but he says i cannot pronounce it right so he told me to call him mark, and their daughter lihn-li which literally means 'little lihn.'  they are incredibly nice people.  she is the piano teacher at a childrens school.  she graduated from the conservatory with a degree in piano performance and used to be a concert pianist before having kids (i say kids because she is pregnant if you couldent figure that out).  he is a businesses  man.  him and his brother own a bose speaker/mac computer store here.  he goes to america a lot on business and his favorite thing to do is point out the differences in taste and look from american fruits and vegitables to vietnamese.  i think he mostly does this to look cool to his family.  haha.  lihn-li is really cute but still kinda scared of me i think.  she used to run away when ever i came in, now she hides behind her big stuffed deer doll and sneeks up to me.  when i look at her she stops moving and hides behind the doll, then when i turn around she starts moving toward me slowly.  anyways, im sick of typing and no one is going to read this anyways so

My house and the sweet ride that gets all of the Vietnamese girls