sarah nguyen

On Friday night my parents and I went downtown to see The Magic Flute, performed by Opera San Jose. I’ve watched it a long time ago on DVD or maybe even VHS. The singing was in German, and spoken conversations in English. This was a bit jarring, but the performance was very good nonetheless. Subtitles in English (as well ad advertisements) appeared in a screen above the stage, which is pretty standard nowadays. This is probably the best opera for kids, and those who don’t usually go out to see concerts/operas.

Afterwards we tried following the words along with a CD of The Magic Flute performed by another group, and found that even with words in hand, it’s extremely difficult to follow the female singers. No problem at all following the men, but this probably proves my parents’ assertion that I will not understand everything sung in German by this time next year. I’ll still try to find another opportunity to watch it live next year, though.

On a related note, my sister and I attended a piano concert at the San Francisco Davies Symphony Hall starring András Schiff on April 13. He is currently going through the entire collection of Beethoven piano sonatas in a series of concerts. Our night included Sonata No. 12, No. 13, No. 14 (Moonlight), No. 15 (Pastoral), and a Bach piece for the encore.

I’m extremely lucky to have such opportunities, but I definitely don’t appreciate them enough. My usual pattern is to be extremely reluctant about going (it’s expensive, takes time, and so on), and enjoying it in the end anyway. Both of these performances were great experiences and if possible I’ll be attending more operas and concerts in Germany. These are a few of the things I want to see live in the future, in no particular order:

• Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
• Symphony No. 9 (Dvořák)
• Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
• Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise brillante (Chopin)
• Liebesträume (Liszt)

If you’re so inclined, you can click the links, scroll down, and listen to the pieces. The file qualities aren’t very good, but I’d say the performances are.

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Yesterday I received another package from ASSE, which was super exciting because it’s been more than a month since I got the acceptance letter. It’s filled with basic guides to being an exchange student (culture, school, your host family, and “It’s all up to you!”), a handy Celsius<->Fahrenheit guide, and some fun info about Germany and a rather dry overview of their history.

Also, to confuse my parents, they start the packet with the words, “Congratulations on your final acceptance as an ASSE exchange student…” Aha! You weren’t finally accepted before! You were only a finalist then! No one actually said that in my house, but I swear I could hear it from CBYX-er’s homes nationwide. I’m sure they’ll congratulate us again in the future, but no will will complain. We also get an official ASSE folder to hold all these information letters in one place, and I suppose it’s as nice as folders come.

Today marks the beginning of the end. There are only eight more weeks of school; one is full of STAR testing (to measure my school’s performance), and one is just graduation practice and having fun, so there are really only two more weeks of school. It’s frightening.

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After one week and three days, Anna, our student for next year finally emailed us. It turns out she was on a class trip to England and she didn’t have internet access there. Those Europeans have it good over there - we only get class trips to Southern California or Yosemite. The Washington D.C. and New York trips cost almost $2,000 each for us NorCal kids (not that I went to either).

So in her e-mail, Anna mentioned the lovely SJ weather she will be enjoying, asked if I have any questions about Germany, and requested photos of her new home and so on which we will of course oblige her with. For now though, I sent off a gigantic e-mail about introducing myself and Lynbrook. First on the agenda is making sure she gets good classes for next year. I’m not quite sure how much privacy I should give Anna on this blog, so if any of you readers know blog etiquette or have an opinion on that, insight would be greatly appreciated!

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