A busy week
OK, here is the deal.I am in Spain. Yes, yes... I know. "In Spain again??" you cry outraged. Yes, when I was here last time I had to get my residency renewed, unfortunately they told me to come back this week to finish up the process. So, with little option but to come back.... here I am. On the negative side of things, I was going to go see my good friend Charles and his wife Jen in Florida for Thanksgiving. Alas, now I cannot. Maybe I will see them in the spring, my plane tickets will still be good. Another bad thing is that I have to go back to the states ON Thanksgiving Day, because it was the only way we could find a ticket that was cheap enough. So I dont get a thanksgiving at all.
This week has been a good one. No other way to look at it. It was packed with goodness and also a lot of work. In fact, I write this as I take a break from writing my Classical Lit paper on the Aeneid. I suppose that the fun really started on Wednesday when some of my friends, mostly international students, invited me to go out for dinner with them. I acquiesced, though I had quite a few projects coming up. After all, sometimes you just need to relax. We went to a very nice pub in Salem (yes, the witch hunt village). The service took a long time, but their beer tap kept everyone satisfied. I forgot my ID which though at first seemed like a curse turned out to be a blessing when we ended up staying there for 3-4 hours and my friends kept on ordering brew after brew. My forgetfulness gave me an excuse to not get smashed like they did, as well as saving me a good amount of money. My friends were smashed by the end of the night, but I still had a very good time.
Thursday was Jamnesty. Jamnesty was a benefit concert put on by the school charter of Amnesty International. I have some very good friends that are involved with Amnesty so I was excited to go. Not only that, but several good bands were playing that night. All the groups were from Gordon, but there were several good ones. One of them was RayNco, a group headed up by Ray, an Indonesian student, whose music reminds me of a more reggae band charged Ben Harper. They invited me to play the trumpet with them for a couple of songs. Of course, we didnt practice the music at all beforehand, but that was ok. I am used to just improvising anyway. I did fine on the first song, but completely bombed the second song. I am not used to playing Reggae. Fortunately, I had a chance to redeem myself with the final song, which I think I did. I wasnt happy with my performance that night, but it is to be expected. When you are playing with a band, and you dont have a mic, you are forced to blow with all your might to make yourself heard which kills any possibility of having a nice tonal quality to your playing. Besides that, I have lost all my range and technical speed so I had to keep my playing very simple. BUT it was fun.
Another good band was one called the David Ellis Trio, even though they have 7 members and I have no clue who David Ellis is... They remind me of my old band in Madrid, Funkurogallo, a (as the name implies) Funk band. These guys were really good, and very very danceable. They invited me up to play a bit for their last song, but their trumpet player was better than me. It was fun.
OK, I am tired of writing; here are the pictures that I promised from when we got our first snow a week ago (incidentally, it is all gone now). Click on them to see a larger version.
This week has been a good one. No other way to look at it. It was packed with goodness and also a lot of work. In fact, I write this as I take a break from writing my Classical Lit paper on the Aeneid. I suppose that the fun really started on Wednesday when some of my friends, mostly international students, invited me to go out for dinner with them. I acquiesced, though I had quite a few projects coming up. After all, sometimes you just need to relax. We went to a very nice pub in Salem (yes, the witch hunt village). The service took a long time, but their beer tap kept everyone satisfied. I forgot my ID which though at first seemed like a curse turned out to be a blessing when we ended up staying there for 3-4 hours and my friends kept on ordering brew after brew. My forgetfulness gave me an excuse to not get smashed like they did, as well as saving me a good amount of money. My friends were smashed by the end of the night, but I still had a very good time.
Thursday was Jamnesty. Jamnesty was a benefit concert put on by the school charter of Amnesty International. I have some very good friends that are involved with Amnesty so I was excited to go. Not only that, but several good bands were playing that night. All the groups were from Gordon, but there were several good ones. One of them was RayNco, a group headed up by Ray, an Indonesian student, whose music reminds me of a more reggae band charged Ben Harper. They invited me to play the trumpet with them for a couple of songs. Of course, we didnt practice the music at all beforehand, but that was ok. I am used to just improvising anyway. I did fine on the first song, but completely bombed the second song. I am not used to playing Reggae. Fortunately, I had a chance to redeem myself with the final song, which I think I did. I wasnt happy with my performance that night, but it is to be expected. When you are playing with a band, and you dont have a mic, you are forced to blow with all your might to make yourself heard which kills any possibility of having a nice tonal quality to your playing. Besides that, I have lost all my range and technical speed so I had to keep my playing very simple. BUT it was fun.
Another good band was one called the David Ellis Trio, even though they have 7 members and I have no clue who David Ellis is... They remind me of my old band in Madrid, Funkurogallo, a (as the name implies) Funk band. These guys were really good, and very very danceable. They invited me up to play a bit for their last song, but their trumpet player was better than me. It was fun.
OK, I am tired of writing; here are the pictures that I promised from when we got our first snow a week ago (incidentally, it is all gone now). Click on them to see a larger version.
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