I'm done

Well, as of today, I am done with my sophomore year of college.  I had four finals, including one on my birthday and one at 7:30 am this morning, but none of them were too bad.  I guess this means that it's time to start packing for the trip home.  Of course, there is the issue that I still need to use many of the things I would be packing…

Chorus

I'm sorry that I never got around to finishing my posts about my travels.  At this point, it hardly seems worth it to bother, especially because I still have schoolwork to do.  Here is an abbreviated (and picture-free) summary of what happened:

• I met up with my dad in the Netherlands to visit some relatives, and got to see some amazing art at the Rijksmuseum.
• After that my dad explored Dresden and visited Prague, we went to Vienna.  I really liked Vienna.  Also, I went to former houses of Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, and Mozart.
• The next weekend, I went to Cologne to see Christina, a former exchange student my family hosted, as well as some family friends.
• During that weekend, I succeeded in reaching 10,000 pictures since I arrived in Germany.
• I also met up with Anita (a friend from high school) while she was visiting Berlin.
• My group went to see a ballet at the big opera house in Dresden.  It was kind of weird (although that was largely due to the modern style and the lack of clarity of what was happening/if there was supposed to be a plot).
• I also obtained last minute tickets to see Swan Lake.  It was really good.

Okay, so now on to the main purpose of my post: the fact that I just had a chorus concert.  When I was preparing for this semester, I knew that I wouldn't be able to bring my cello, but that I still wanted to do some music.  I found that there was a university chorus, and decided to try to join it.  After some level of pushing off emails, and minor miscommunications, I started going to rehearsals.  There was some minor disappointment when I was informed that I would be singing baritone rather than lower bass, but I have since acknowledged that my low range is not what it used to be.

It has been nice to be in chorus.  One of my main reasons for wanting to join was to have a reason to interact regularly with college-aged Germans.  I guess I've been moderately successful with that, although I have been somewhat limited by my lack of an outgoing personality.

Last evening, we had our concert.  It was without a doubt the longest choral concert I have participated in, at almost 2 hours (although the first ~20-30 minutes were occupied by the women's chorus and the small chorus).  This was made even more interesting by the 95-degree weather (which is less than pleasant when wearing a suit).  Luckily, no one fainted.  The two pieces the main chorus sang were a weird new piece (which, despite mostly being in German, used the opening from A Tale of Two Cities for the lyrics of the third part) and Requiem by Duruflé.  Naturally, I preferred the Duruflé (along with pretty much everyone else).

After the concert, there was a party celebrating the chorus's 75th anniversary.  There were a lot of people who had been in the chorus 30 or 40 years ago.  Highlights included serenading a tram being driven by someone's friend, sight singing a lot of German folk songs, and joining with the older group when they started singing a song I did in Senior Districts (Zigeunerleben by Schumann).  One lowlight was discovering that, by not being here last semester, I had missed the chance to sing Water Night by Eric Whitacre.