Jeff’s Blog

Yesterday, the band, orchestra, choir and chaperons all got back from Austria. We left last Thursday for DIA, and after one 10-hour flight and another 45-minute one, followed by a long bus ride, we arrived at the Prinz Eugen Hotel in Vienna. We took a bus tour of the city, ate dinner at a nice restaurant and then went to see the Vienna Mozart Orchestra in concert. Unfortunately, everyone was so tired from being up almost 30 hours straight that no one could stay awake during the concert.

After sleeping well that night, we got up the next morning and spent some time on the streets of Vienna, via the subway. The public transportation system in Austria is pretty much perfect. You buy a ticket, and once you validate it it’s good for two hours. During this time period, you can ride any of the city’s public transportation (busses, street cars, subways) in any direction as much as you like!

When our time there ran out, we went to a senior center (which was really nice, and funded by the state) to play a concert for the residents. We played well, and were even invited to stay for coffee and cake! That night, we ate at a restaurant similar to Gordon Biersch in America. We had a sort of hamburger with no bun on a plate, and then went to the amusement park to ride a huge ferris wheel and ride a few of the rides. We went on bumper cars.

The next morning, we went on another tour of Vienna, this time focusing on famous classical music composers of the city. The most notable, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, appeared everywhere in both Vienna and Salzburg. As part of the tour, we went into the Mozarthouse Vienna. This was the building where Mozart actually lived, worked and taught private lessons. From there, it was off to the castle of Empress Maria Theresia where we had a tour of the amazing building. The choir sang a few songs outside of the palace, but it was too rainy for the band or orchestra. Because of the extra time this allowed, we went to an Easter market that was set up in the courtyard. Dinner that night was in traditional Austrian style with a buffet of various delicious meats. We stopped on the way back to the hotel at a beautiful overlook of Vienna, which looked amazing at night.

The next morning was Easter Monday. We attended a Catholic mass at the Melk Abbey, a truly magnificent church. Choir and orchestra played some music along with the massive pipe organ. After the service, we toured the massive building complex and then boarded the buses again. After driving on the Autobahn for a while, we stopped at a rest stop and my friends and I ate Winerschnitzel. It is an amazingly delicious food. We then got back on the road for another few hours and finally arrived in Salzburg.

We checked in to our hotel, which was considerably more… cozy than the one in the huge city of Vienna. That night we went to Sport-Oase Salzburg, which was a very American-feeling bowling alley and mini-golf place. We had spaghetti and ice cream for dinner, and then bowled a few games. We got back to the Turnerwirt Hotel and slept.

The next day, we had a walking tour of the old town of Salzburg. It was a lot different than Vienna. We saw the huge Hohensalzburg Fortress from the 11th century, and then went to a local mall to shop. It was a lot like an American mall, though, except with much better food. We then had wings and ribs at the Fürsberg Restaurant.

The last day of our trip consisted of visiting a salt mine that had been in operation from 500 BC to 1982 AD. It was a lot more interesting than it sounds, though, especially with what I’ve learned in my world history class at school. Later that day, we went to a music school for 11-14 year olds and gave a concert, then had time to socialize with the students. This basically ended up with us sitting there eating food awkwardly and being made fun of in German by the students. Luckily, we went to the Mozart Dinner Concert that night and had a several-course candlelight dinner with live Mozart music in a restaurant that had been serving since 800 AD.

The next morning, our trip home began at 3:20am (Austria Time) and lasted until about 3:30pm (Denver Time, which is 10:30pm Austria Time). We had two bus rides and one very, very long plane ride.

Overall, the trip was spectacular. It was great time with friends, and we got to see a lot of very cool things while we were there. Seeing the way of life in Europe was one of the coolest cultural experiences. I’d like to go back to Europe someday and see a different part, like France or Spain.

Finally, first semester along with final exams are over! I had to study like heck for math, LA, and AP World History, but I did pretty well on all of my tests (except AP World History, that hasn’t been graded yet…). It was a very stressful week, despite the modified schedule that allowed for a lot of help time before and after testing and a longer lunch. Neither of my band classes had a real final (Wind Ensemble consisted of watching Amadeus and Jazz Band was literally doing nothing for the whole period) but my other finals took almost the full two hours they allowed us.

Anyway, it’s really nice to have them out of the way before winter break, which was not the case last year. It’s nice to get all of the stress behind me, too, especially since I did pretty well.

This week at school is finals week… that means lots of stress, studying, and review sessions in the morning and afternoon. This is what my schedule looks like:

Tuesday: Chemistry and Language Arts
Wednesday: Wind Ensemble and Jazz Band
Thursday: AP World History and Math
Friday: Spanish

It’s split up into two easy days and two hard days, which really isn’t too pleasing. The first final is from 9:05-11:20am, and the second one is 12:10-2:25pm after a 45-minute lunch. We also get tutor times before and after the tests.

The only hard finals for me this year are Chemistry, Language Arts, AP World History, and especially Math.

Tonight was the second of the two holiday concerts. Long story short, it was better in everything except full orchestra (the Messiah), which was so much worse. It was disappointing and embarrassing to even be on the stage. Oh well, at least it’s over now.

Tonight was the first Holiday Concert out of two; the next one is tomorrow. Tonight we had to get there at 6:30pm, at which point we waited an hour and a half to get to set up the stage to play. First up was Jazz 3. I played Sing, Sing, Sing on piano with the band, and the other pianist played The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
along with a vocalist. Then, I moved over to my bass clarinet for our concert band (”Wind Ensemble”) performance. We played A Festive Christmas and A Christmas Entrada, both of which went very well. Then I moved to my third instrument, regular clarinet, for what should have been the best performance of the night. Unfortunately, the choir and orchestra didn’t do their part, and the Hallelujah Chorus was, in fact, a disaster. It might be better tomorrow evening, but I’m not counting on it.

Yesterday at 10:00am, myself and part of the band, choir, and orchestra left for the annual Estes Park Music Camp. When we got there, there was a fairly lame talent show in which people who thought they were funny got up over and over again, thinking they were entertaining. Some friends and I left to get food, and came back in time to get our room key and get into our rooms.

We then had our first rehearsal out of four, followed by dinner and another rehearsal. Then we had our evening free time, in which we played Apples to Apples in our room. We went to bed around midnight, and got up at six, thanks to one of the people in our room who woke us all up.

Then we had breakfast, a few more rehearsals and some more free time, and got home around 5:15pm today.

We found out our schedules for 2007-2008 a few days ago. Here’s mine:

I have just completed my three classroom days of driver’s ed. The program I took also offers the permit test right after the last session of the class, so I took that today, and I got 100%! I’ll go to the DMV building on Monday to get my permit. The class, however, was extremely boring. We got two morning breaks, two afternoon breaks, and lunch. In between breaks, we watched about 10 movies a day and read out of a printed learning manual for the remainder of the time. Overall, though, it was definitely worth it, and the other two parts of this driver’s ed program will be/were a lot better.

The first “phase” was skills. We learned how to avoid accidents and crashes, and what to do in various situations. We were behind the wheel from the start, and we got to push the car to the limits to see how it felt. Now that I can get my permit, I can take “phase 3,” the actual driving course where they take us around and teach us how to drive on roads and in traffic. That’s going to be a lot more interesting than sitting in a classroom and learning technicalities of traffic laws.

Today our school hosted a huge band competition for all of the major bands in the area. The band I’m in played in the morning, so I got there fairly early, especially for a day off school. We played our two songs and did a pretty good job, even though we ended up with an overall rating of 2, with 1 being the best on a scale of 1-4.

I pretty much did nothing until 3:00pm when the school I was in charge of arrived. I had to show them everywhere they needed to go, meaning the room to drop off their cases and things, the warm-up room, the stage, and finally, the sight-reading room.

On October 11th, about two weeks ago, we had regionals for marching band. We qualified for quarterfinals, which was no surprise.

Last Friday, though, we were quite a bit more excited about making it to semifinals. Then, yesterday at 5:45 in the morning, we left for the competition. We were the first band to perform. It was early and somewhat cold, but we still managed to get 7th place, qualifying us for finals! For the first time in our school’s history, we made it into finals.

During the day, we were anxiously waiting for the announcement, periodically buying food. We ate taco salad for lunch and got warm in the bus waiting for the finals competition. When it was time to go warm up, we got into uniform and were freezing for the next hour. My fingers were aching horribly, even with the fingerless gloves somewhat covering them. I personally improved in the second performance, but the band lost a point overall. However, we moved up a place, so once again, we made school history with 6th place in state finals!