When tours end and breaks begin.

From April 29th-June 12th we had a "summer break" of sorts. This blog isn't really about my life outside of Barrage, but there are a few notable things I'd like to mention.

I had three goals over the break:
1) Run a 5K race--Everyone in Barrage is pretty into fitness, so I'd picked up running as a physical activity I was beginning to enjoy. I had never run a 5K formally, so thought it would be a good personal goal to run one over the break!
2) Give a solo recital--Over the past year I had learned a bunch of solo music on the road in my spare time to keep improving on violin. What better way to learn than to give a recital for my friends back home?
3) Hang out with friends--This one is pretty much a given over any break.

I'm proud to say that I successfully accomplished all three goals!

Here are a few pictures from the first two:

Putting up drawings from local elementary school children based on the pieces I performed.

A shot of the set-up created by myself and some friends on my high school's stage.

With Rob Nichols, my high school orchestra teacher, who so generously provided the use of the high school auditorium for my recital!

With Molly, one of my best friends from ASU, before the Phoenix Zoo 5K.

And after!

Spring 2009: I get by with a little help from my friends.

One of the coolest things about traveling with Barrage is the continual opportunity to meet up with friends who are now living outside Arizona, or even to reconnect with friends I haven't seen in years. I've been incredibly fortunate to meet up with quite a few this past spring. As is the tradition with this blog, I post the pictures of these reunions. Here goes!

With Christel McDowell, a good friend of mine from my days at ASU, somewhere in Minnesota! I only wish my friend Jay, her fiance, would have been able to make it, too! Oh well...there's always the next time I'm in town.

Grabbing pancakes after the show in West Chester, PA with one of my best friends from high school, Joanna Sung (sitting to my left), and two of her friends from Philly. I'm so glad I have friends from high school (which seems so long ago!) with whom I'm still in touch!

When we were in Rockford, Illinois, I received a facebook friend request--out of the blue--from my friend Seth Lagerhausen, whom I had not seen in probably 8 years or so...? When I was in the school musical in 7th grade, Seth was a 9th grader and we became friends at the time because we were both the same brand of unusually-short junior high student. For multiple years, I had searched for Seth on facebook and had, unfortunately, kept spelling his last name wrong (adding an extra 'u'). Here's the where the story gets crazy. Seth friended me while I was in Rockford (where he currently lives and goes to school), two days before the show, which he had been planning on attending anyway without even knowing I was in the group! Ridiculous--and we're still the same height after all these years!

In Cheyenne, WY, my friend Matt, who went to school in Northern Colorado at the time, came with his friend Kat. I was really nervous for Matt to see the show because he was my first musician/performer friend to come see it!

The Barns in Wolftrap, VA...literally, the hall is a barn.
One of my favorite venues from this past spring.

My friends Matt and Alan from ASU came to the show in Wolftrap. And because they had both previously seen the show earlier in the year in Maryland, they win the award for "First Friends to See Me in Barrage Twice!"

Also in Wolftrap, my family friend Jessie Underwood, who my parents consider to be the "daughter they never had," came with her friend Joey.

It was awesome getting to see Jessie because she and Joey took me on a nighttime driving tour of Washington, DC! [As a sidenote, DC is one of my favorite cities in the US.] And as proof, I took a picture in front of the Capitol!

After we finished up a tour in Florida in May, I had the lucky opportunity to visit my friend Ryan Caparella in Miami. Ryan came to our final show in Stuart, FL, and then I rode back to his house with him where I crashed on an incredibly comfortable air mattress for two nights before flying home to AZ. Here I am with Ryan, his awesome roommate Helen, and their house cat, Sam, in front of his house on the final day. [We didn't have a good surface on which to place the camera, so it's precariously teetering on Helen's sideview mirror.] Ryan, also a violinist, was one of my two roommates for six weeks at the Killington Music Festival in Vermont during the summer of 2007. It was great being able to hang out with him for two full days, and I hope to get the opportunity to enjoy his incredibly culinary talents soon again!

I'm so glad that I get the opportunity to see and hang out with all these people I'd rarely (or never) see if I was in Arizona full-time--it's truly one of my favorite parts of this job.

Here's to seeing more friends this summer and fall!

A set of unrelated topics: birthdays and "it's a small world"

Right after Central America, I had the lucky opportunity to celebrate my 22nd birthday in Woodstock, Vermont. Because I had visited the town 2 years prior while away at the Killington Music Festival in Killington, VT, it was exciting to have my birthday in a place I knew and loved. It's definitely one of the neatest places I've ever visited.

My mom called the venue prior to my arrival and had even coordinated the delivery of birthday cookies from the local farmers' market! And she got the woman at the hotel to hang a birthday banner in my room! Gotta love moms.

Looking up the river out behind the theatre in Woodstock.

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Next topic: "It's a small world."

Any musicians who read this post will probably understand the following: the music world is really, really, really small. That is, it seems as though everyone knows everyone else. Case in point: I had at least one friend in common with all 3 American violinists in Barrage prior to joining.

This spring I had a moment where this happened very unexpectedly. At the theatre in Easton, Pennsylvania, there's a "Star" Dressing room covered with autographs of hundreds of people who have performed there (two of the names that stick out to me are Tony Danza and Yo-Yo Ma).

And then I noticed up in a tiny corner the "3 Redneck Tenors" collection of autographs. And though it's not discernible in this tiny picture, the name Lydia Veilleux is written in the top right.

Here's where the "small world" moment occurred--I did a Barrage gig with Lydia Veilleux nearly three years ago, and this autograph (to my best judgment) was prior to when I met her.

Prior to the Barrage gig in September 2006 (L to R: Lydia, Arlyn Valencia, me,
and Lynae & Denis Dufrense, two original members of Barrage)

Crazy! It's ridiculous how much smaller the music world seems to become every day.

Pura Vida!: It's no wonder why Costa Rica's economy is based on tourism.

When we arrived in San Jose, we really had no concept of where we were actually located in relation to the city. The next morning we come to find out at breakfast that our hotel is in the heart of downtown, on the main drag.

Charlie and I made a friend.

Markets in San Jose are just a little bit different than your average American grocery store.

We started our time there by filming a television spot at a local dance studio. If I remember correctly, this is the second TV spot I've done for Barrage (the first was last fall in South Carolina). If you're not used to performing for a wall with a couple people (reporters) and a camera man standing in front of it, it's a strange experience...and then the camera man moves in on you while you're playing and you have to continue pretending that there's an audience against the wall.

After that we took a tour of the National Theatre, where we'd be performing the following night. It's a pretty incredible facility--my pictures can't really do it justice.




But now, the pictures of things about which I'm most frequently asked: a canopy tour and whitewater rafting.

They conveniently forgot to tell us the canopy tour starts with 1-2 mile extreme-incline hike up the side of a mountain...

Sarah's ready to go.

Descending from a platform.

Here's the valley in which we rafted.

This valley purportedly grows some of the best coffee beans in Costa Rica. I bought said beans, and they were incredible.

Learning the ropes beforehand with Luis.

After a particularly treacherous set of waves, we'd throw our paddles into the air and yell "Pura vida!" It's difficult to translate the full meaning, but it's basically a celebratory phrase regarding how wonderful life is.

If the TV show "24" covered this day of my life, Kiefer Sutherland would probably be out of a job.

To get from San Salvador to San José, we took a coach bus. Easy enough...in theory.

We arrived at the bus depot at like 3 in the morning...I think? Regardless, it was dark, after midnight, and the streets were deserted. Our bus departed and we slept. We got to the El Salvadorian-Nicaraguan border a little bit before noon, if I recall correctly.

This is where things started to get very strange.

We had to engage in what our sound guy Dave referred to as an “exercise resplendent in its mediocrity.” All of the passengers had to vacate the bus, take off all of their luggage, and place their luggage in a large pile. The Nicaraguan border officials, all of whom were carrying heavy artillery, then did the following: shouted things in Spanish, made us stand around without a clue as to what was going on, made us think our luggage was all going to be opened and searched (and this is definitely an ordeal as we have so much technical equipment with us), made us give them their passports—and then before we knew it, all was fine and we were allowed to reload our baggage and continue on our way.

If I had only known then that the day’s strange happenings were only beginning…

We drove through Nicaragua, and arrived at the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border. They checked our passports, we got off the bus, sat around for about an hour, got back on the bus, crossed the border, and engaged in another one of these “exercises.” This time it was more serious, though. They had all sorts of questions for us, and our translator was getting flustered as he was trying to translate for us, so we really had no idea what was going on. These border officials had heavy artillery as well, and were much more intimidating than at the previous border. They actually did search a few pieces of our luggage, and then before we knew it, we were all back on the bus traveling through the remote countryside of Costa Rica, en route to San José.

It’s around 9 p.m., and we’re about 3 hours outside of the city, enjoying Whitney Houston’s classic “The Bodyguard,” which is playing on the TVs in the bus. At a very climactic moment toward the end of the movie, almost as if on cue, there’s a ridiculously loud noise and the bus shakes and screeches to a halt. The power is lost, and we learn that we have just driven over a tree trunk that had fallen in the middle of the highway.

But this is, by definition, an “emergency.” So the stewardess tells us we’re not allowed to leave the bus or open the windows. [As a sidenote, I believe the toilet on the bus was also backed up and/or not functioning properly.] We opened the escape doors on the roof for ventilation, and there was much shouting and arguing with the woman—she wouldn’t let anyone off the bus because of “snakes and animals” in the jungle. Fair enough, I suppose.

The bus starts back up, we drive about 10 more minutes into the nearest town and stop at a small roadside restaurant, where we wait for 3 hours for the new bus which is being driven to us from San José.

Here’s how we pass the time:

Delicious, refreshing beverages.

This was in response to my prompt: "Show me how you feel right now." Apparently, Charlie wasn't on the same bus as the rest of us.

This game is called "shake your head violently back and forth while I take a picture."

Hidayat is really, really good at this game.

Optical illusions are fun, too!

BUT THEN IT GETS WORSE! Our new, smaller bus, which also didn’t have a bathroom, arrives around midnight. The restaurant had closed by now and some of us needed to use the bathroom. We check with our stewardess about using the bathroom really quickly on the broken bus, and she tells us, “If you go use the bathroom, we’ll leave without you. You’ve had 3 hours to use the bathroom already.”

WHAT?! Absurd. So, I just decided to "hold it" (is that too much information?), and I think the others that wanted to go just went really quickly on the side of the road.

We finally arrived in San José around 4 a.m...which means the trip took us 24 hours.

I do not miss that bus.

El Salvador: What it is to be human--Or--If everyone were like Sulma the world would be a better place.

After leaving Mexico, we flew to San Salvador and took a ride along the coast to a small, secluded weekend resort. The resort, owned by our promoter’s family, is primarily for locals. Most of El Salvador does not live on the coast, but rather inland, so the families save up their money to go to the resorts on the beach for the weekend (many of the beaches are owned by resorts, so it’s not like they’ve got public access…or at least, we weren’t aware of any near us).

Our luggage stuffed into the back of a very large Euro-van.

We stayed in little bungalows, about a 3 minute walk from the coast, and basically spent two full days just hanging out on the beach. And since it was during the week, we only saw maybe a total of 5 other guests while we were there. It was probably the most relaxing two days of my life. Freshly cooked food from that region is absolutely incredible. And the fruit is out of this world.

A look up the main road with the bungalows.

This is where we hung out all day.

Here's where we ate breakfast.

Enjoying a freshly opened coconut. A waiter hacked it off a tree with a machete, whacked off the top of the coconut, dropped a straw in it, and just gave it to me.
For free.

Sarah attempts to wear a sarong from the Gap.

This stay also turned out to provide one of those “the human experience is the coolest thing ever” moments. Let me explain.

When you speak one language fluently (i.e. English), and are in a foreign country where you can speak that country’s language conversationally (i.e. Spanish), you find reasons and excuses to speak English to anyone who can speak English, because it’s easier. However, when you’re at a resort which is only visited by locals and not foreigners, no one speaks English. So, communication with the waiters was either conducted through Jason or myself, or by pointing at menus in Spanish (and it’s really hard to know what you’re ordering if you can’t read the language!).

We became friends with the wait staff while we were there because we would—literally—show up for breakfast and then just stay on the beach until way after sunset. My favorite waitress was a young woman, probably 25 or 26, named Sulma. My “the human experience is the coolest thing ever” moment came whenever I would interact with her. She would, by default, just come to me to deal with everyone else: she spoke not one word of English, so through my limited Spanish proficiency and my gestures, we would hopefully arrive at an understanding regarding whatever was being discussed. But trying to communicate with another human being in a foreign language can be one of the most hilarious things ever, so our interactions usually involved fits of laughter. I’d ask her to repeat something and slow down; she’d repeat it, start slowly, and then by the end regain her previous tempo. Or I’d unknowingly make up a word or say something that just didn’t make sense to her, and she’d repeat it with a quizzical look on her face and start laughing. She even settled a debate between Sarah and me as to whether or not the word caliente, which means “hot” in Spanish, can be used to describe temperature as well as an attractive girl (as Sulma explained, a girl can be caliente when she is dancing, but one wouldn’t just look at a girl and call her caliente like we do with our slang).

But, the best part is she was patient with me and my Spanish, which is why the whole thing was so wonderful. When we’d talk, I could tell she was truly trying to understand what I was trying to say. She’d help me through my words if I was stumbling or would make simple corrections to my grammatical errors. I didn’t feel scared or nervous or frustrated or embarrassed when I was speaking with her, like I occasionally did with other Spanish speakers. Why? Because, pardon my seemingly cheesy philosophical conclusion, even though we verbally communicate differently, we both speak the language of what it is to be human; we weren’t interacting as native to foreigner, but rather as human to human.

I don’t want to get overly political or offend anyone’s sensibilities, but in my experience this is something Americans tend to get wrong. Just because some people can’t speak English as quickly as you’d like doesn’t mean you should dismiss them. In foreign countries, if you’re an English speaker and you attempt to speak the local language, people will frequently go out of their way to help you. Living in Arizona, I see the inverse of this happen frequently: Spanish-speaking immigrants attempt to communicate in English and are dismissed because someone doesn’t have the patience to deal with the situation.

So, I charge the readers of this blog with a challenge.

The next time you interact with someone who is having difficulty with your language because it’s not his first language, take a moment, consider what it must be like to be in his position, and have the patience to help him, because we all possess the ability to communicate in the language of what it is to be human.

He’ll be glad you did, and you will be too.