Day 23, 30 Jan: UEA Choir and Pianos

Norfolk Terrace, Day 23. 23:59. UEA Choir and Pianos

           

Morning running has gotta be more frequent in my life—I get back and I feel refreshed and ready for the day…at 11. I got a bit of reading done today, while having to wear boots and three layers in doors just to keep warm as the Norwich winter steeps into a week of fluctuating 1 to 3 degrees Celsius. There might be snow. Laura, my flatmate (not to be confused with Lithuanian Laura, pronounced LAO-raw), said that if there is even the slightest snow, she’s heading home for the week/weekend. Meanwhile I’m mulling over what it would be like if I will find myself reading Jane Austen and looking out my window thinking, Oh, hey there, there’s snow building outside my window. Better go back under the covers.

            In the evening, Anna and I went to the UEA Choir rehearsal and the director auditioned both of us during the break. The audition was really a simple range test: he asked me to sing basically major scales while he played harmonies on piano. I had said I was a bass and he found that I was a really high bass. Well, it turns out Bill, the director for the UC Men’s Chorale back in UC Berkeley, was right. My voice is maturing into the baritone register, squeezed in between the higher tenors and the lower basses. So basically I’m now in the UEA Choir. It’s free for students too, but not for the overwhelming majority of the choir, the community members. It’s kinda cool having the mix. We’re singing Mozart’s Requiem this semester, so it’ll be fun to have a bit of that famous repertoire under my belt, if I choose to remember it for future auditions back home or just as general knowledge. Then after rehearsal, Michael, another international, typed in the pass code to the practice room area and my happiness increased tenfold; I finally was reunited with a piano! I wish I had brought more scores with me, though. For that matter, instructional books for guitar would’ve been good to bring too. I did not imagine that I’d end up with the fortune of having access to pianos and guitars (through the generosity of Dan) while studying abroad. Oh the wonders of fate.

            All right, I’m going to call it a [really late] night. [Right after I finished, good ole flatmate Stephen bugged me about missing days of blogs. Well, ha! Just finished!]