From The Other Side

When I finished my first student teaching placement (in Owatonna, MN) my cooperating teacher (who was a total wizard, by the way) gave me flowers. The card in the flowers said "Welcome to the other side of the desk!". How beautiful to be going through the same experiences but from the other side - I loved that she pointed that out to me.

Today.

Today is Tuesday.
Not any normal Tuesday.
We had large group contest at Seoul International School. As a director, you bring your group to the host school at the scheduled time, perform for a group of judges, and receive written and recorded comments, participate in a "clinic" with one of the judges, receive a rating, and then go home.
This happens to be exactly one week after my middle school concert (my first concert at APIS), and three days after recordings for our equivalent to All-State were due.

We prepared our pieces.
We recorded and critiqued ourselves.
We discussed the moods of the pieces.
We scrubbed some measures.
I transcribed some parts to strengthen our minuscule viola section.
We watched you tubes to understand the subjects of our pieces.
We used many a metronome markings.
We worked. And worked. And worked.
For nearly months (one quarter of the school year) - we worked on our pieces.

Today was the day.
We took three buses of kids to another school, practiced, listened, warmed up, performed, and worked on stuff with a judge. I was with my 23 high school orchestra students from 845-3:35 and loved almost every minute of it. (The minutes I did NOT love where those when I couldn't find one of my first violins. That was fun.) Our performance was admittedly not the best we've ever played - but it'll never be 100% at the exact moment when you want it to be. They did their best and they listened to what I and the judges had to say. As a musician and as a teacher I struggle to define success. I'm a pretty Type-A person who tends to procrastinate and be a little too lenient. How that works - I'm not really sure. So going into this, I set some goals. My goals were pretty basic - I wanted to place at the same level as a school and I just really didn't want to get a bronze. (The awards given were bronze, silver, gold, and platinum).  I wanted band, orchestra, and chorus to be equally strong - which is rumored to not have consistently happened at my school in years past.

My school rocked.
My kids rocked.
We met my goals. We placed well, and so did the other ensembles from my school.

As soon as the performance was over, I felt as though I could sleep for the next week straight. The buildup and pressure I'd put on that performance had finally released and it took everything I had not to fall asleep. We returned to school and finished the school day. I had invited Meg, Meg, Becky, and Jen (all the single ladies) over for dinner, but my apartment was a mess. I hurried home and downed a Coke and got busy. Cooked up a meal, cleaned my apartment, and got ready. We had some delicious foods and great conversation. Near the end of the night Becky and Jenn pointed out to me that I've only been here for 3 months. I checked my count downs - 18 days to T.Gives, 50 to Christmas, and negative 100 days to "Fly To Korea!". I made that third countdown probably February 2nd of 2013 and it's been running ever since. I didn't really think about it from July to October… but it caught my eye on my dashboard in October and I realized it stopped counting down and was keeping track of how many days SINCE I'd moved to Korea!

I can't believe it's only been 100 days since I moved here. It seems like forever ago and yet like no time at all. I use twitter as an emotional outlet, and today I was re-reading some of  my tweets since I've moved to Korea. It's unbelievable what I've encountered and done in 100 days. Realizing the short amount of time I've been here makes me even more proud of what my students accomplished today.

So here I am, on the other side.
I remember the day my countdown to Korea went from triple to double digits (I believe I tweeted about it, truthfully).
and I've just now made the jump from 99 to 100 with my orchestra placing well at large group, recordings submitted, middle school concert completed, and christmas music ready to begin!
Can't believe this is my life - it's only been 3 months, but I think I could get used to this!
:)