Beauty in the Busyness

Heaven on Earth is a thing.

We took a nice walk to a different side of Mendenhall Glacier this week.

So, you should all know something about me: I suffer from a rare, inescapable disease called Sunday night-itis. Whenever Sunday evening rolls around, a deep sense of mourning falls over me, as the realization that my precious weekend has vanished. My impending case of the Mondays threatens to take hold. It's a rough one that you don't want to be around for.
So you know what the best thing about three-day weekends is?! I can write this blog post without trying to muster up all my positive, fuzzy feelings because I STILL HAVE ONE DAY LEFT!!! Woo hoo!! Can you tell how intense this past week was yet?! Let me walk you through this amazing, busy week.

The afterschool festivities of the week began with the quartet being coached by a local pianist who has a lot of experience with chamber music. It was so great to sit down and play some of our Beethoven quartet for her and receive her input! And she has graciously agreed to give us coachings whenever we need them, which will be a great resource to have. The coaching could not have come at a better time because we had a gig at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center Tuesday night, after a long day of school. But it was an amazing opportunity: we were the musical entertainment for a reception held in honor of the Chair for the National Endowment for the Arts, Jane Chu. I can barely say that sentence out loud in one breath. We talked with her briefly as we were arranging ourselves for a picture, and her warm words were delivered with an equally warm Southern accent that reminded me of extreme heat and delicious pies. Don't ask me why. We were also able to meet some other Juneau musicians, which was just a taste of what would happen the rest of the week!

Wednesday night was paper violin night, which was absolutely precious!!! After giving a mini performance for the new JAMM kids and their parents with some of the veteran JAMM fifth graders, the quartet was tasked with walking around and helping the families as they made paper violins with their children. This night was only for students who are participating in JAMM and will be “playing” a paper violin (which they have to do before they can play a real one). I ended up helping an adorable little girl whose mom had two other little ones (one of whom was an infant) with her and had her hands too full to help her make her violin!! I cut and constructed the violin, and the girl eagerly handed me the pieces of tape that held it all together. We then got to the other station that had brown glue/paint that is used to cover the cardboard violin with paper strips and give it a nice brown color. Would this brown paint be a nice permanent addition to any of my clothing? I think not. So, I tell the girl which table we need to go to, and she immediately runs up to the bowl of the stuff and picks it up. I watch this concoction sway back and forth in her hands as she smiles at me like she has a giant bowl of apple juice. I immediately and dramatically lunge for it, thankfully recovering it before she is able to dump it all over the ground. Or, more importantly, on me. I’d say from then on, the night went pretty smoothly. I walked the baby and other sister around the room as the mom helped her daughter put together the final touches of her instrument and only had to stop the middle daughter from jumping inside her baby sister's stroller twice. Success!!! I honestly loved it, though. Interacting with kids and seeing these little ones make something they could call their own brought me such joy!! And to think that this is just the beginning of their musical journey really exhilarates me.

Thursday was another fun night full of kids because we had open house at Glacier Valley! When I wasn't talking with the students and their parents, I was manning the instrument basket, a brilliant idea Lorrie uses to provide entertainment for the kids and get them interested in music as their parents and older siblings talk with the music teacher. It was fun to sit on the floor with the kids as they explored the different world instruments...until they found all the really loud ones and continued to bang on them.

After the open house, Lorrie invited us over to her place to spend time with three of her El Sistema teacher friends who traveled from a nucleo in New York to observe Lorrie’s work at Glacier Valley all week. We had a great time, eating pizza and drinking wine (even if it did spill all over the place the moment it was placed on the table), sharing stories about our students and swapping ideas about various teaching techniques. It was great to hear about how El Sistema looks in a different part of the country, and the girls were also so fun to hang out with!

50 KINDERS.

Friday was another long day full of cute kids and a lot of socializing. During the school week, we visited a few other schools in the area, including a Floyd Dryden Middle School and Thunder Mountain High School, but we spent the entire day on Friday at Glacier Valley because it was the first day of orchestra! So all the kids who signed up for JAMM came together with their grade level and had orchestra class. I spent that time taking students who were second graders and older out of the room to audition for cello with the other JAMM cello teacher, Meghan. We had over 25 students audition for cello, even though we currently have just 6 extra cellos for them to use! We are hoping to order a few more, but it was hard to choose who would get to start learning a new instrument they’re really excited about and who wouldn’t.
But my day was made by a little interaction I had during the last class of the day...and which class was that? KINDERGARTEN. So remember that cute little boy who stood outside our classroom door, repeatedly asking what we were doing, last week? Well, we had another lovely conversation on Friday. The kindergarteners are done with school an hour earlier than their regular time at the moment because they are still adjusting to being in school, so later in the Fall, they will have that extra hour of class. But because of that, for now, the two kinder music classes are combined so that they all still have the class. This means that we have 50 kindergarteners in the room for 45 minutes. WHOA. So I spent the class period in the back, trying to help keep the kids engaged and sitting as still as their little bodies could handle. That was sort of hard when the cute girl next to me kept trying to hold my hand and then the aforementioned boy (who was in front of me) wouldn’t stop trying to invite me over to his house! He literally turned around in the middle of class, completely disregarding Lorrie teaching in the front, and asked loudly and excitedly, “Do you want to come to my house this weekend??”. I told him that I couldn’t and asked him to turn around and pointed to Lorrie, but he continued to ask me until he added his big selling point: “We can have a PILLOW FIGHT!”. It was SO ADORABLE. It took a lot of self control for me to end that conversation because it was so stinking cute and I wanted to keep it going to see what he would say. But he finally gave up on his efforts and proceeded to try to grab the hand of the girl next to him. She didn’t really seem to mind. She actually told me later in the class that she was going to his house this weekend. Ouch- he had already moved on! It was the highlight of my day.

To follow the trend, Friday evening had another event! The quartet had a meet-and-greet at a beautiful hotel downtown, and a lot of people from the Symphony and others stopped by to get to know us. Everyone was so welcoming and very interested in hearing how our experiences have been so far. It feels so wonderful to be so cared for! And to sort of be this spectacle that so many people are excited about. It makes me excited!!

One of the amazing sights during our whale-watching performance!

And then Saturday showed up and tied the busy week into a pretty bow and boarded a catamaran with us. The Juneau Symphony wildlife cruise, an event I had been waiting to play for for months, finally happened! And it was as glorious as I had hoped. The quartet dressed up and played music together for an hour as soon as the boat was out in a whale-watching area and the engines were turned off. It was so great to perform while being surrounded by gorgeous parts of nature and WHALES. I saw so many of them!!! It was hard to continue playing as people gasped in amazement as whales came up out of the water, lifting their fins and tails in the air. At one point, I couldn’t resist and looked over to see a giant tail gently slide back into the water, and I exclaimed, “Oh my gosh!!!” in amazement, which then caused my other quartet members to be confused and mess up for a second. My bad! But it was so beautiful and fun. I really enjoyed it!

Our walk past Herbert Glacier.

Today was another beautiful day that was supposed to be rainy and wasn’t at all. Those are the best days! After church, I joined the girls from New York and Heidi and another friend on a beautiful walk to a beach that overlooks Herbert Glacier. There was so much laughter (I honestly love spending time with people who find my jokes to actually be funny...so I’m going to miss those girls a lot! :P) and beauty and good conversation. I chased a giant flock of seagulls on the beach, running into the tide to do it (no regrets!) and saw plenty of dead fish and a (living) porcupine along the way. It was glorious!
And the best part? I still have a whole other day!!!!! We are going to spend the morning lesson planning because this week, each quartet member is going to teach a couple classes as part of our degree progress requirement, which is both exciting and terrifying. But I have so loved being in the classroom, so I think it will be great to take the plunge and test out my still-very-much-developing teaching skills.

So, here’s to a week that had a lot more sunlight than its expected rain, a week full of 12-hour days and a lot of repeating these phrases in pretty much this order each time: “My name is Ruth. I’m the cellist. I’m in the new music MAT program. Do you know who Lorrie Heagy is? Do you know what JAMM is? I’m from Chicago. Well, I grew up in Georgia. And I’ve lived in 5 states. Well, I guess 6 now. Umm...I’m the cellist.”