Pam's Blog

I got online at Vida Verde today and caught up a bit. Unlikely that I will haul my computer with me every day so the updates will become less frequent. I’m navigating fine through the city, albeit in a small. Close to the school and host family home neighborhood. I haven’t made it to any of the suggested attractions yet.

I did get to the post office today. It was one of those moments of hilarity for me. I asked Martha where the post office was on the map and successfully navigated myself there. Standing on the corner for about five minutes, I looked down the street left, down the street right, across the street and just couldn’t see it. I looked for a flag, wondered what the words “post office” would be in Spanish, and just when I thought I might give up, I turned around and there it was, behind me. I laughed out loud. Big success … still having my sense of humor!

Martha seems to know just when to switch it up. We work a little bit on verbs, switch to vocabulary all the while working on pronunciation. She agrees that patience is very important. We spent a considerable amount of time on ser/estar, the “to be” verbs today. Although it seems like my vocabulary and pronunciation are improving a little bit, it’s mostly seeing the words in writing that helps. I still don’t have much confidence in my ability to actually hear and understand a sentence from a native speaker or conjugate a verb. Time will tell.

Part of my homework today was to take five or six given words and organize them into a sentence. We’ll see tomorrow, but I think I was able to do that with nine of the ten. That’s a step forward for me. I wasn’t able to do that before I came here. Celebrating those small successes when I can!

A dozen Burning Hills Singer perform country songs at the outdoor Burning Hills Amphitheatre, that seats over 2,800. The facility is stunning, requiring a long drive uphill and an escalator down the side of a hill to the seating area.

The Old West facade and live country band are the backdrop for the 90 minute performance. The singers are led by vocalist and MC, Emily Walter. The cast made several costume changes and, at one point, came out in tap shoe cowboy boots and western fringe that glowed in the dark!

Also included in the evening’s performance was a tribute to Teddy Roosevelt and, at one point, a re-enactment of the charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba, which seemed out of place.

The guest performers for the evening were an acrobatic trio, performing on a trapeze and rope, along with a bit of juggling. At least five live horses were also used throughout the performance, pulling in a stage coach to drop off performers or ride through “town” kicking up dust. At one point the performers rode in on an old pick up truck for the tribute to the working man, a medley of songs about hard working men including farmers.

The evening’s performance ended with a fanfare of streamers and a burst of fireworks that lit up the big night sky.

Thursday I went to the Distinguished Lecture at the Michigan Theater. Each Thursday of the U of M school year the School of Art and Design hosts a distinguished lecturer for the A&D students. These lectures are free and open to the public – sponsored by a number of folks with the main benefactor being Penny Stamps. The lectures are always interesting, sometimes thought provoking and usually inspiring.

January 14’s lecture was about sound. Stephanie Rowden is a local gal who is working in sound, both in installations and on the radio. If you listen to Michigan Radio, our NPR station, she’s part of the “Sounds of the State” project they’ve been running for several months. She’s also got a website with these 20 second clips. (www.soundsofthestate.org) She played lots of clips from many projects she’s worked on. There were two that I thought were quite fun.

One of the “Sounds of the State” was a clip recorded and submitted by a police officer on the west side of the state. While on duty, he recorded the Amtrak passenger train going through is town on the way to Kalamazoo. In his email he stated he was on duty and that the train was going slower that day. He knows because he measured its speed with his radar gun!

She also played a 2:30 minute clip she did with a couple of young girls. They went to a bicycle store and rang the bells on the bikes, talked about the sounds, imitated the sounds, and, at one point caught the attention of the old man running the store. He promptly kicked them out after inquiring about their project. Then the girls recorded their thoughts on him saying “He’s crabby”, “He didn’t get his eight hours of sleep”, “They should fire him”. Stephanie summed up the experience by saying something like “Things usually don’t go as planned. And when they don’t something wonderful happens.”

I hope something wonderful happens with you this week.

In my post last week I forgot to mention the strategy a couple of my friends use. Instead of specific resolutions, they pick a theme for the year. So, for instance, one friend is intent on “Connecting” more this year (in fact, more than one friend). For another, this is the year of “Finesse”.

Just more food for thought in your quest for changing something in your life this year.