Tuesday 2nd of August

Today was Charles' third day of classes and Christina's second.  As usual we went to the cafe over the road for breakfast before going to classes.

This morning Chrissy had a lecture about the history of the marimba and xylophone, plus a lot about how they are made and how they differ.  Turns out there's no difference between a marimba and xylophone, except that the xylophone sounds an octave higher than written.

At lunch time, we ate pizza and then Charles and I went to have a play.  Bob Becker was hanging out in the xylophone room playing all by himself!  Charles asked if we could play for him and we played our duo version of Triplets.  He thought it was pretty good!  He suggested that we perform it at the "Vibes Hang" session tomorrow night.  Yay!

After lunch, the group split into two to rehearse people's individual solos with the marimba band accompaniment.  Here's a photo of me playing!

I think I did pretty well.  Some people were not very well prepared or had no idea what the marimba band would sound like.  I'm lucky that Gary makes us play so many rags.

Charles' Day:  First we talked about technique and grip for a while, which was pretty boring.  The tune of the day was C Jam Blues so everyone has to learn it by tomorrow.  After lunch there was a boring malletkat session (Charles already knows everything about malletkat!) so he practiced instead with some new friends.  In the afternoon, a violin player came in to talk about how she plays jazz with a vibraphone player.

For an early dinner, Charles and Christina and their new friend Carolyn went to a place called "Home Grown".  It had really nice food!  We had a really nice time talking.  Then we all went to the vibes evening session where the violin lady played tunes with all of the students.  Charles played "In Your Quiet Place" and it was really lovely.  We both went to practice after that session, and stayed in until about 10pm, when we got too tired.

That's it for today!!

Today was the first day of the Xylophone workshop! Chrissy said that everybody had to play a rag they had chosen so that the teacher (Bob Becker) could see them play. It was scary! They also did exercises in improvisation and technique which all sound very interesting.

In Charles' vibraphone workshop the teacher had a bass player visit in the evening and everybody got to play a standard in a little trio with somebody else playing drums. Charles played Blue Bossa, which is a bit boring, but he doesn't know many songs from memory so his options were limited!

Chrissy went out to have dinner with the other Xylophone kids (literally they are all underage except for her) at some Buffalo Wild Wings place which looked like an RSL club and had televisions and pokies and only served giant spicy chicken things.  Before ordering, the kids started talking about "kegs" and "getting stoned", so she half-faked jet-lag related illness and went to join Charles in the vibes jam.

We had a late dinner at the burrito place in town since it's Monday, you get to spin a wheel and win something when you buy a burrito. Charles won getting his burrito for free so that was good!

Photos of today - Sunday 31st July.

Last night's GIANT PIZZA.  This picture doesn't do justice to how large it really was.  I could only eat one slice and I was very VERY hungry!

Candid photo of the vibes workshop I took while waiting to be shown to a practice room.  The guy in the middle is Harvey Price, and Charles is sitting on the left.  There were a lot of people with vibraphones!

I chose an antique Deagan xylophone to practice on.  It's cute!

The view from the window of my practice room.  That building is where the vibes workshop is, the xylophone stuff is separate.  People were playing with their dogs on that grass!

Us in the mirror!

More about today soon!

America! 30th July - New York to Newark, DE.

Today I woke up very tired but Charles was totally okay.  We went to a Starbucks for breakfast and used their free wifi.  YES.

We wanted to go to Kinokuniya bookshop, even though there's one in Sydney.  They are a Japanese shop and have lots of nice Japanese magazines.  On our way there we came across the New York Public Library - from Ghostbusters!  We were really excited and went inside to look.  It was a lovely old building with marble floors and wooden ceilings.  We had fun.  We are such nerds.

At Kinokuniya we bought a magazine each and then went upstairs to a cafe.  They had Japanese foods up there that we really liked!  I drank a giant iced coffee.  We got really dehydrated walking around in the sun all day.

We went back to the hotel to collect our bags and got a cab to the big station.  There were one billion people there and it was pretty loud and awful.  We didn't know what track our train was leaving from until they announced it, and then there was a huge bunfight to get to the train.  Literally hundreds of people trying to get down a tiny escalator with huge bags  - crazy.  Luckily we found a seat together.
I fell asleep on the train which was dumb of me, but when I wasn't asleep the scenery was really beautiful.  Green and leafy and lots of quaint houses.

At Newark we were chucked out of the train.  The man organising our workshops, Harvey, picked us up along with another guy from Switzerland.  Harvey was really nice and friendly.  We first went to the School of Music to meet some people (not everyone was there yet), and then he gave us our room keys and took us to the dorms.  The dorm room is really strange.  It's got lino floor, two very tall beds, two tiny desks, and a sink.  It's kind of militaristic.  The bathroom adjoins our room and the guy next door's room.  So I hope he doesn't walk in on me in the shower (there's no lock weird weird weird).

We walked back to the School (Harvey said it would be an 8 minute walk and it took like 20) and all went out to dinner down the road.  We went to an Italian place.  Charles and I decided to share a small pizza.  When it came, it was 14" wide.  And thick too!  It was so huge.  I could only manage one piece and Charles only one and a half.  We brought it home in a box and will have it for breakfast (I'm not really looking forward to that).

And that's it!  Photos to follow!

America! July 28th, 29th.

Charles and I are in America now!  I am here to attend the Bob Becker Ragtime Xylophone workshop and Charles is here to attend the Jazz Vibes course.  Anyway!

We stayed at the Formule 1 in Sydney the day before the flight on the 28th.  The flight was 14 hours to LA, and then another 5 hours to New York.  We left at 10am on the Thursday and arrived at 5:30pm on the Thursday!  It was hard convincing ourselves that only 8 hours had passed instead of 22.

We took a taxi to our hotel in New York - the 30 30 hotel in midtown, Manhattan.  After a brief rest we took a walk and then had a late dinner at a restaurant outside our hotel.

Sleep was not had that night!  Jetlag attack!

On Friday the 29th, we got up at about 10:30 (accidentally slept in) and went for a walk down to a shop I wanted to visit called Tokyo Rebel.  They import Japanese fashions and it's really nice.  The walk was very hot and humid, it was cloudy but one thousand degrees.  We went to a park on the way and saw squirrels!  I'd never seen squirrels before!

At the shop I tried on a beautiful Victorian Maiden dress that I really wanted, but I wasn't prepared to spend that much money.  Instead I bought a little tote bag by Baby, The Stars Shine Bright.  It's really cute.

Me and my bag (looking pretty tired):
 

After that we went to a really nice cafe and had lunch.  What we ate:
BBQ'd asparagus with cheese and pepper and lemon - very nice!

Giant burger and giant amount of lovely chips!


After lunch we meandered back to our hotel where we had a little rest.  I was feeling really bad with jetlag.  Charles was tired but seemed to be feeling okay.

At 6 we took several trains out to Brooklyn to meet Charles' cousin Melissa.  Subway trains are air-conditioned, but the stations are NOT.  They are very hot and stuffy.  It's disgusting.  At Brooklyn Melissa showed us the beautiful view of the river and Manhattan.  Then it started raining.  We popped back to her house to get something and then went out to walk to a restaurant.  It was raining SO HARD that their front steps had turned into a lake.  I just took my shoes off and waded through because there was no way round.  We went to a restaurant called Rice whose specialty was rice.  I had dumplings though.  It was lovely to talk to an Australian.

Around 9 Charles and I went back to our hotel totally exhausted.  Despite our tiredness we still couldn't sleep!  Worst ever!