flowers and charangos and frogs, oh my!

Today has been a very pleasant day in Sydney. Our cool weather continues, but the sun shines all day. Our little fan, Hoppy, has been retired for the season and we actually need jackets in the morning when catching the ferries.

This week is 'special projects week' at the Con. Theoretically, this week is devoted entirely to chamber music. All classes are cancelled except for orchestra rehearsals and chamber coachings. We are all to apply ourselves diligently to our chamber groups. Yeah, right! Mike and I, not knowing anyone at the Con yet, were assigned to play a Beethoven Trio Concertante with a very crazy, although amusing, pianist. (The piece is pretty bad--he wrote it when he was about 16. You know all those szfortandi he liked to throw in in his later years? The trio is peppered with them, often with more than one per measure!!) Anyway, our crazy pianist, Alexey, summed up special projects week very well. "Every day, the students go to the Con and then to the pub, to the Con and to the pub. By the end of the week, they're just at the pub!" Apparently the end of the week came early this year, because the school is a ghost town. Fall break is in two weeks, so I think this is just a break to get ready for break!

Here's a picture of my new favorite flowers, frangipani:



(See La, they're white and yellow!! They also come in pink, but I don't like those as much.) The streets back to the ferry wharf are lined with them, so whenever we see perfect specimens we bring them home.

On another natural side note, I have discovered that we have frogs everywhere here! When we first got here I saw a TV special about the native frogs of Oz, and how in the male mating croak, only the second part is what the female pays attention to. So all the males try to croak OVER the second half of all the other males. The resulting sound is very similar to crickets until you listen very carefully. They're very soothing :-)

Mike is sitting behind me dinking on his charango. (A small Bolivian instrument related to the guitar...I surprised him with one for Christmas.) His dinking improves every day, but apparently E Major is very difficult. (Says he!) It appears to be a bit like the piccolo of the guitar world--just WHERE do your fingers go?!



~Ruth Ann