which consists in:
¤making little girls want to learn to play the harp
¤people asking you for an autogram (or however you write it in english...)
¤people recognizing you at intermarché, and telling you how well you had played at the concert...
¤and asking you for your cd.
so: get your parents to bring the harp to france, over the alps, in a doblo, because she won't fit anywhere else.
practice harp every day. no joke. this is important, as i found out recently.
practice even more, until your fingers get all blistered.
say yes, you will play at a concert with your host parents' choir. say yes, you will play five songs, yes, one really hard one you don't really know yet but will in two weeks' time.
practice even though your fingers are all blistered.
don't give up.
and then it pays off.
oh, and don't forget to actually play that concert.
geez, i have to start wearing make-up to the supermarket...
since i'm playing at a concert ce soir, the lady i'm going to accompany on the harp came over this morning to practice a bit, so it would be a big surprise at the church (where we're playing the concert). at first, the choir where my host parents sing (not only them, there are also other people...) will sing some songs, then the "chef" (that's what they call her... and they're damn right!) will sing "Ave Maria" (i think by bach?) and i will accompany her on the harp. after that, i will play some urleiwande stueckln, such as glenlivet (trad. scottish/kim robertson), habanera gris (by alfredo rolando ortiz or whatever his name is, he played at the edinburgh international harp festival this year) and haendel's passacallia. i'm going to play more, of course, these are just the best ones. so, when we were practicing the ave maria, an italian and his german girl friend who had been visiting my host dad's shop came into my room. the italian asked us to please play it again and everything (he understood the latin blabla and he really liked it) and i saw him (discretly?) wiping his eye. (actually, he has two) so they just might be coming to the concert today...
oh, and after me, another choir is going to sing, and after that, there's going to be a lot of food to eat, and i'm going to bake a gugelhupf for that now.
why did they tell me i was bizarre when i was taking a walk? why did they stop me in the first place, anyway? just because i was walking at seven in the morning? (and because i was a girl all alone, perhaps?) still, i think it was rather them that was weird and not me.
oh, and the protestant (or not protestant, i don't know, something churchy) weekend thingy was really cool. i mean, not strict at all. coed rooms (i mean, with boys and girls in the same room!) and they actually gave us "magic potion" which was orange juice and rum. and, a really nice boy i met taught me an italian card game all night. (the only thing was, his girl friend was sitting in the bed over us all the time...)