Teaching

Negative Nellies

October is flying by…my busy schedule certainly helps.  Lots of teaching, workouts, and some lovely chamber music rehearsals (finally some real music!).  No orchestra on the horizon…it’s weird how longs it’s been since I’ve played in orchestra.  (It’s also amazing how much the people who actually get to play in orchestra around here complain about it, but that’s another story!)  I “just” teach children now 🙂  Naturally many people assume that means I am not a performer…otherwise surely I would be doing that.  But one of my good friends here said it best the other day…we do what we can to be as happy as possible.  I’d rather be here with Chris than somewhere else, so I do what I can 😉

A few weeks ago someone said to me “oh, you wouldn’t know good playing, you just teach beginners!” (paraphrased, as some time has gone by…).  It still bugs me that some people think those of us who teach beginners wouldn’t know good advanced playing, OR that we don’t know how to teach a beginner so that SOMEDAY that beginner could end up being a wonderful well-rounded musician (perhaps even a nice person, able to maintain relationships!).  The thing is…I prefer teaching older kids/more advanced kids.  I’m hoping in the near future that will be the case more often 🙂  But when I teach beginners, well, I sure make the most of it, because I know (not to sound totally cliched) that they are our future, and they should love violin/music because if NOTHING else, we need to pass on our love of classical music to the younger generations.  So I try to remind myself of how important a teacher is, and try NOT to let the naysayers and negative Nellies (even the ones in my head!) bring me down.  After all, none of us would be where we are today without good teachers in the past.  What I do impacts many people every day.

Teaching

St Louis Ballet School, part 1

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I teach one day a week at the St. Louis Ballet School.  (I teach violin, not ballet!).  It’s a nice place to teach–the people are very friendly and welcoming.  They are expanding soon and I’ll have a new room!

It usually takes me about 45 minutes to 1 hour to get there (in traffic) as it is in West County, out Highway 40. It only takes about 30 minutes to get home after rush hour.

The exit sign!

The school is located in a HUGE strip mall.  Every store you can imagine is in this strip mall.  Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, Best Buy, OfficeMax, etc.

I have been teaching in the Artistic Director’s office for the past year or so.  Starting in a week or two I’ll have a new room.  Here is where I am right now:

I set up here, facing the student

 

Student stands in this area

 

Piano for me to accompany the students!

 

That’s my room now.  I spend only a few hours each week there.  I am excited to see how the new room compares–I think I might lose my piano, as the piano teacher will have a different room (though can probably borrow when I need to, as we teach on different days for now.)  But I know there will be more windows, and it won’t double as an office, so that’s great.  I’ll post again with pictures of the new room when I get there.

Food

Äpfelkuchen

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We were invited to an Oktoberfest Party on Sunday night.  I wanted to bring something  in the Oktoberfest spirit to eat, but couldn’t think of anything other than sauerkraut, sausage, or bratwurst.  Naturally I turned to the “google” for help.  I found a delicious looking “Apple Kuchen” recipe.  Basically it’s a cake with apples on top, but was delicious (and very German)!  The crust turned out a bit hard and stuck to the bottom, but I brought home an empty pan, which is always a good sign.

Not the prettiest dessert ever 🙂

Ingredients

  • 1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
  • 1/4 cup margarine, softened
  • 1/2 cup flaked coconut
  • 4 large Granny Smith apples
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 egg

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×13 inch pan. Peel, core, and cut each apple into 8 wedges. Set aside.
  2. In a medium bowl, combine the cake mix, coconut and margarine until crumbly. Pat mixture lightly into prepared pan, building up the edges slightly to form a crust. Arrange the apple wedges on top.
  3. Mix together the cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle over the apples and the cake mixture. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and sour cream. Drizzle over the top of the cake.
  4. Bake in the preheated oven for 35 minutes, or until the edges of the cake are golden and the apples are tender.
Running

Pumpkin Run 5K

As you know, I ran my first 5K on Saturday.  I chose this one (Pumpkin Brew Run III) primarily because it was close to my home and as a bonus, I didn’t have to get up early!  The race started at 4:00 pm.  I convinced Chris to come along and cheer me on as he had been unable to attend the half-marathon.

We headed over to the starting area around 3:15.  We were supposed to meet at a bar called Amsterdam, which is known for showing all manner of soccer (or “futbol”) games.  Chris knew exactly where it was as he had watched several early morning World Cup games there in the summer.  We parked a few blocks away and walked up.  There were lots of people milling around already.

 

Waiting to start!

 

There was going to be a costume contest, and people were encouraged to wear costumes.  I didn’t think that would be a good idea for me as running is enough of a challenge, but I wanted to be in the proper spirit, so I found that delightful t-shirt at Target.  I saw several other women wearing the same outfit, so I felt like I really belonged 😉

It was a bit warmer than I had hoped for a mid-October race (I really dislike the heat) but it wasn’t terrible–probably just over 70 degrees.  I lined up towards the end of the pack as I did not anticipate being super fast, nor did I plan to run the entire distance.

 

Lining up to start

 

 

I moved a bit closer to Chris (who was waiting on the side)

 

Finally they counted down “3, 2, 1, GO!”  It took a little while to get going, but no worries as I had my timer attached to my shoe.  After about 30 seconds of slow walking, we were off!

It was pretty cool running through my (basically) neighborhood with so many people.  The police had blocked off Arsenal to traffic as we crossed into Tower Grove Park.  The first mile was pretty easy, especially as it was primarily downhill.  Of course, that meant later parts of the race would be uphill, and I knew the course would be fairly hilly from running there other times.  I did stop to walk a few times, and there was one water set up between miles 1 and 2.  Finally I was coming back across Arsenal and heading towards the finish line!  My leg was a bit sore/hurty (right leg towards hip has been bothering me), but I pushed ahead, knowing Chris would be waiting for a picture 😉  I managed to somewhat sprint towards the finish line, and thought I saw something around 37 minutes.

 

 

The home stretch!

 

 

Glad to be done!

 

Afterwards all I wanted was water and to stretch.  Originally I had thought I might want to hang out with Chris at Amsterdam as I could get free pumpkin beer and there was going to be costume judging and live music, but I was completely worn out.  We just walked to the car and went home instead, like old people 😉

My official time was 36:15 chip time (36:48 clock time) which means the time from when I crossed the start line to finish line.  I averaged 11:40 per mile.  I was in 331st place out of 438, and 27th out of 45 in my age group (30-34 women).  Not too shabby for my first time, I don’t think!  I may try another race in two weeks…

Food, Teaching

Flashback Friday!

I had a blog before this one, and I was just rereading it (yeah, slow night!).  I would like to repost most of an entry from Saturday, November 1, 2008 because it is a really great entry!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Life in St. Louis

For those of you following my blog…haha! I know no one is. But anyway, at the beginning of September, my boyfriend and I moved to St. Louis for him to play with the SLSO this year. What have I been doing? Well, a few gigs, a few students, and really that’s about it. At first all the free time was really refreshing (I was used to working every day for about ten to twelve hours) but by now I’ve gotten a wee bit bored. So what I like to do is break up my day into thirty minute blocks, and plan activities around that. Okay, not really. But I’ve had more time to practice, sleep, cook, and work out. I also get a lot of business done.

One of the things I did recently was make some delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Only I used butterscotch chips. I’m going to give you the recipe here, because these cookies are truly awesome.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies:
INGREDIENTS

* 1/2 cup shortening
* 1 1/2 cups white sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 cup canned pumpkin
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
* 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then stir in the pumpkin and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon; gradually mix into the creamed mixture. Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until light brown. Cool on wire racks.

Notes from me: I did not include the walnuts, I’m not a big walnut fan. The dough turned out really wet, and the cookies do not spread, so you can put them really close together. Lastly, they took more than 15 minutes in my oven, so be sure to check. Even when I took them out I wasn’t really sure they were done because they were pretty light, but they passed the taste test.

I have been teaching a violin class at a nearby school–there are five kids in the class, and it’s beginning violin. I’m not very good at discipline–I tend to let the kids distract me with random questions too much. By random questions I mean questions like, how are bows made? I hate to not answer stuff like that, because I love when kids are curious, but it tends to derail the class. We’ve had about five classes so far. I am trying to be more in charge. I will have to lay down the law a bit more, and insist that we stay on track. On a bright note, the kids are doing well–each week they have met my expectations. I suppose I need to raise my expectations of them!

I also have three private students so far. They are fun–one adult, one high school student, and one 4 year old, all male (a big change for me). The four year old is so fun! At the end of the first lesson, I showed him the stickers, to pick one. He looked through a bit, and then said, “Where are the batman stickers?”. As if, naturally I had batman stickers, and he just couldn’t find them. Unfortunately I did not! Since I was so used to mainly girl students, I had a lot of hearts and stars, but no BATMAN. Since then I have purchased batman stickers.

The other funny story about my four year old. We’ll say his name is Daniel. The second or third lesson, I called him Daniel, and he looked at me, and said “That’s not my name, my name is Andrew.” I was HORRIFIED, worried that I had called him the wrong name, and I looked at his mother to apologize. She rolled her eyes, and said, “yeah, for some reason he has decided he would rather be called Andrew. Just ignore it.” It was hilarious!

Note from Hannah today (not from the past):  I plan to make those cookies again this month, I remember how delicious they were!

Running, Weddings

Easy Friday

Today has been a great day so far!  I woke up early, had a work out with my trainer Mike (which was pretty tough), hit the store, picked up my race packet for tomorrow’s race, and played a wedding.  Now it’s laundry and perhaps an episode of Mad Men (am one week behind).

The wedding was outside at Sunset Country Club in Sunset Hills.  It was a nice day, though a bit sunny.  We aren’t able to play in direct sunlight (can ruin the varnish, and definitely puts the instruments out of tune easily) and sometimes it’s tough to convince people of this.  We had to play from under an awning a little ways away from the wedding site, and it was still quite bright due to the angle of the sun.  That said, it was a gorgeous day–could have used some cloud cover personally but was great for the bride and groom!  The crowd was really friendly and seemed like a great bunch of people.

(still using the retro camera!)

 

You can tell how sunny it was! Beautiful scenery though, and the pictures don't do it justice.

 

Me in the car beforehand

 

I’m nervous and excited for tomorrow’s race.  It’s very different from the half marathon, of course (only 5K , approximately 3.1 miles) and on a much smaller scale, but I am hoping to have a good time and run most of it.  I already got the t-shirt though, technically wouldn’t even have to go.  (I will of course!  and Chris is coming to cheer me on as well).

The race loot:  includes small sample of Wheaties.  I should probably eat those beforehand so I can finish strong!

T shirt, wheaties FUEL, race number, and shoe tag for timing.

 

Lots of sponsors, including my gym (Club Fitness)

I’ll let you know how it goes!  Have a wonderful Friday night 🙂

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.