Pizza, Cake, and Eyedrops

It's about time for an update! I'm going to take advantage of the fact that my computer seems to be behaving itself right now. Let me go back in time almost 2 weeks, when our quintet was still preparing for our chamber music concert. As I mentioned previously, each chamber group in the orchestra had to prepare one "serious" piece of music and one piece to perform for a children's concert. We performed our serious piece, the Francaix quintet, on the 12th. Overall it went pretty well, and to celebrate, we had a party at Chris' house afterwards. It was supposed to be just the quintet, but some other people in the orchestra heard about it and ended up crashing it. Still fun, though. Here are some pics of our quintet.

On the 14th, we were supposed to play for a group of kids in Mazatlán. We chose "Across the Seregeti," a fun, kid-friendly piece, and prepared a little presentation. Oh, and remember the amazing pizza that Antionio's mom makes? Well, his parents live in Mazatlán, and invited us to their house for lunch afterwards! So we dragged our butts out of bed and left for Mazatlán at the crack of dawn so that we could perform for the kiddies and of course, eat pizza. On the way there, we joked that we would rather skip the performance and go straight for the pizza, and I guess the pizza gods must have heard our wishes, because the performance never happened. We got to the hall and set up, and after waiting an hour for the kids to arrive, we got a call saying that there had been a mixup and the kids weren't coming. It wasn't a total waste of a day though, since we had an amazing lunch and played some of the Francaix for Antonio's parents in their apartment.

So the 19th was my birthday, and I wasn't expecting it to be anything special since I don't know a lot of people here, but all in all it was a really good day. I got to talk to a lot of my family in India (Skype is amazing!) and had sushi and cake with the bassoon players, Anthony and Noemi. The bad part about the day was that I woke up that morning and couldn't really open my right eye. Not a good feeling. I couldn't put my contacts in and my glasses had recently broke, so I taped the frames together so that I could see. Let me tell you, it was pretty stylish. Anyway, the conductor ended up driving me to the eye doctor, and it turns out that my corneas are inflamed. The doctor gave me some eyedrops and said I can't wear my contacts for a few weeks, so I get to walk around with taped glasses for a while. Cool.

Anyway, I need to go pack because I am going to LA/DC for an audition tomorrow. More details later....

grrrr...

Ugh. So now that my internet is finally back up, my computer is having problems. I have never had a single problem with my computer in the 2 years I have had it, and it starts acting up when I'm in Mexico and can't get it fixed. Since it is my only form of communication (both phone and email), and the only way I can listen to music and watch DVDs, this sucks. If I have abruptly ended a conversation with you or haven't emailed you back, it's not that I don't love you. It's just that my computer might not love you as much as I do. But, I will be in LA next week, so I will try my best to get it fixed. Patience, my friends. More updates to come soon...

Guadalajara

Yay! My internet is working again! I guess I should celebrate by writing in my blog. A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. I guess the most exciting would be our trip to Guadalajara. The orchestra was invited to play a concert there, so we all flew down for a couple of days. It was my first time ever to Guadalajara, so it was fun to explore the city. It is a very different city from Culiacán. It is much bigger, and generally a much cooler place. There are actually things to do and see. The concert was fine, nothing terribly exciting, except that Guadalajara is about 4000 ft higher than Culiacán, which made my reeds unhappy. Oh, and believe it or not, I had Mexican food for the first time since I have been here at a restaurant called La Chata. Roberto, one of the trumpet players, took us there. The food was so amazing!
In other news, I have a new roomie! Slava moved into a place of his own, and Andrea moved in shortly after our Guadalajara trip. We have been trying to get our apartment in shape the last few days, and even bought a washing machine by ourselves. Between the two of us, we somehow managed to get a cab to Wal-Mart and back, and talk to the people there so that they would deliver it to us! I was very proud, even though the cab driver made fun of our accents the whole way home. Anyway, our washer is here. Now we just have to figure out how to hook it up, since the directions are in Spanish.
Here are some pictures of our trip to Guadalajara. There are some pictures of the beautiful architecture in the city, as well as the hall that we played in.