School and such

Here's a picture of my roommates on one of the rare occasions we were all home at the same time, of course we planned this dinner or it would have never happened. From the left, Linda, Margie, and Maria. Maria also has a love for dance movies like I do and we had planned to go see one but sadly it wasn't playing around here, clearly not everyone appreciates dance movies like we do.

Anyway, school is going well, I'm feeling back in the swing of things now. It's great to be in grad school where everyone in your class is motivated to be there and is excited about what they're doing, so much more stimulating than undergrad!

There are 10 other first year MA folklorists, and everyone is pretty diverse in their interests so that's great cause we'll always have things to talk about. Don't think I've really blogged about my classmates, but they're all good people, so I'm looking forward to working with them over the next couple of years. We had a faculty/student meet and greet a few weeks ago and it was great fun, free food and wine, talking with my classmates and profs, awesome.

I'm taking 3 classes and one workshop thing that takes place over 2 weekends, this weekend is the first one. Its on financial management for arts non-profits. Will probably be a bit tedious but useful. It's tied to my cultural administration class which is labor intensive but interesting, we had the director of the Eugene symphony and their board president speak in class today, good stuff. I'm also taking the foundation class for 1st year folklorists, which is a bit schizo as we only meet once a week for 3 hours which is not enough time to discuss everything, so its a bit of a whirlwind. My favorite class is called folklore and sexuality, its so interesting, I love it! I had my first folklorist moment earlier today when I interviewed someone for a paper I'm writing in that class, I felt so official!

Anyway, Halloween is coming up, I'll post some pictures of that. I'm going as Melon Panna-chan, my fave Japanese cartoon character. Shes so awesome, no one if going to know what I am but I don't care. I missed Halloween last year (stupid Vietnam!) so this year I'm ready!

Gamelan!!

I went to a gamelan practice last night and it was so awesome! This picture isn't from last nights rehearsal but from when I was in Indonesia. The gamelan is the traditional Indonesian orchestra, with a lot of percussive instruments in varying octaves, it has a bit of a trace-like sound, I really like it. Very brassy, but in a good way. So one of my professors told me to contact another professor in ethnomusicology, who gave me the contact info of Qehn, an American guy here in Eugene who loves Indonesian culture and does gamalan and wayang (the shadow puppets I love). This was the first time I've ever tried to play any of the instruments, and I was just thrown into it but it was a lot of fun. The sheet music looks nothing like western sheet music, but is fairly easy to follow. I was playing a serah (no idea if that's spelled right) which kind of looks like a xylophone, it has 7 aluminum keys, different in tone to western instruments. I'm sure theres a technical term for this, but I don't know it and I'm sure no one really cares anyway. The group was a very diverse mix of people, I'm very curious as to how they all came together- some older women, a woman about my age, and 3 guys that look like they're around 20 or so. I plan on going back next week, soon I will be a master gamelan member!