Camp Grenada

I must take a poll: What is the best part of this video?

1. The way awkward ambient noise

2. The unnecessary spelling corrections

3. The fact that the singer sounds to be a 45 year old man. Why is he at camp?

4. The sheer awesomeness of this song / memories of singing it all the time in elementary school music class

education, music + process

1 1/2 years ago in Dave’s curiosity class, my term curiosity project was to learn all that I could about education systems over the course of ten weeks. Since then, and especially now that I have joined the education field, I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about education models.

I won’t go into detail now (or else this will turn into a novel), but in my brainstorming (and by drinking the Ken Robinson kool aid), I realized that my orchestra + choir classes were the what taught me the most relevant and long-term content.

In Deb’s class, I made a book explaining how music has guided my education, using a piece by Tchaik. that my orchestra played back in 2005 – I don’t think I’ve ever played my orchestra music for anyone, but alas, the time has come (=

At first I was hoping to get a video up here, as I know we are a hugely visual culture and perhaps more of you would be apt to watch the song in its entirely if there was some sort of visual (= However, I was reminded of Mr. Nelson always telling us to “keep our eyes above the stand” AKA, stop trying to listen to the music with our eyes.

So…now it is that time for me to pass along this knowledge and encourage the same. Some of the best performances we had were when we turned the lights off and had to rely on just two senses to create music: touch and hearing.

Our generation is over stimulated – it’s so easy to multi-task and do 15 million things at once, but with this opportunity also comes the consequence of losing sight of the details that perhaps seem minute, but in all actuality are major components of the whole.

With that said…I encourage you to put everything else aside for 9 minutes and 31 seconds and enjoy some Tchaikovsky.

Here’s the recording of my orchestra at the 2005 Vienna International Youth + Musical Festival playing the 4th movement of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C:

Heart in Oregon (and Texas!)

When I was in Portland last summer for Portland Ad. Federation‘s COLAB internship-crazy-awesomeness, I started noticing these Oregon-shaped stickers with a green heart within. For the next few months, I took a picture each time I came across one of these stickers and subsequently wrote a post or two about my discoveries.

Fast forward through the details, and I wind up connecting with the founder/brains behind this movement, Chris Bucci – we exchange a few emails as my curiosity and love for this idea grows…Chris sends me a few stickers, which makes my love for this movement even greater. (=

So as I think we all know at this point, I am in Austin. One of the first things I noticed about Texans is hands down their love and pride of being Texan. I was lucky to meet a handful of wonderful Texans with overwhelming Texas pride, and who were willing and excited to include/share that with me (which I thought was incredibly gracious on their end, and made me feel good about settling here)

Anyway, Chris and I connected again – me telling him how much I am impressed with the Texas/Southern hospitality, BUT at the same time, saying how much more pride I have for where I am from now that I am no longer there.  So…a few more conversations happen, a handful more stickers come (of Texas AND Oregon now!) and a project between Chris and me evolves!

We’ll see how this project goes, but as you can tell from the Heart in Oregon website, storytelling is HUGE. I love hearing people’s stories and I love that each and every one of us has such a unique and tailored…anthology, really. Also pretty enthused to combine this with a similar project Ashly and I have been brainstorming…

Last night I interviewed my first person – a now friend who I actually (this sounds sketch) met courtesy of Craigslist (NOT missed connections, although I wish! haha) I bought some furniture from him, we became friends, I found his story interesting and voilà!

Not sure the format or how these storytelling pieces will manifest, but regardless, I am extremely excited to see what’s to come! (and equally excited for my new slew of Oregon/Texas heart stickers!)

One Of Life’s Lessons – You Can’t Take It With You.

I saw this a few years back, but thank you Zappos for tweeting this link – comes at a good time for me…and many of my peers, as we are right in the eye of deciding which of life’s paths to explore:

And yes, I agree, life is very much like a piece of music. The beginning and end are certainly important and telling points of the whole but the truth is, it’s the various components within (both a song and life) that are frequently overlooked, but quite often carry the most significance.

This past week at API we had our 2010 peer mentors in our Austin office from across the country for training. During the last part of the training, each peer mentor stood up and talked a bit about his/her experience abroad. Talk about inspiring.

A theme I quickly picked out from all the stories (and that brought back sentiments from living in Mexico) was learning the value of taking time to enjoy life and appreciate relationships, and that filling life with work and school is not how it necessarily should or needs to be.

Our peer mentor from Florence I think perhaps summarized it best -> There is always going to be more work or more school, but at some point, I learned there is more to life than work and school. When all is said and done, you can’t take it with you and it’s the relationships and experiences you that are going to be the most meaningful and memorable.

Appreciating the Under-Appreciated

I’ve been putting a bit of thought into the saying my dad has always told my sister and me: “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” – more or less meaning…always work hard and do your best because you never know when an opportunity might present itself.

With that in mind, lately I have been thinking about where I am today, how I got here and really whom I have to thank for it all. Yes, I certainly put in my time and worked hard, but I could really only control the Preparation part of the Luck equation.

So…the process of Opportunity. Friends and professors are all major parts of where I am today, but I’ve got to hand it to my parents. It’s easy to forget to show proper appreciation for parents because everything they do is their responsibility as parents, right? Well..wrong, actually. My parents are the most selfless, knowledgeable, honest and hard-working people I will ever meet.

Beyond the basic parenthood duties, it is everything else my parents have done for me (and perhaps your parents for you) that need to be recognized and appreciated: offering knowledge and advice only one can give with time, working jobs that were perhaps less desirable to provide for a family, providing health insurance when I was not offered my own during school, jobs and internships so I can get experience and (hopefully) get a job because of these experiences, PLANNING AHEAD for my sister/me (which perhaps meant personal sacrifice for our long-term benefit), staying up late proofreading papers, allowing us to live in a safe neighborhood, helping me prepare for piano/violin lessons, providing a violin/piano to use, taking my sister and me to Museums, concerts, classes, etc., teaching us extremely important lessons about 401Ks, taxes, economics, politics, religion, international relations, etc., and of course the latest act – helping me move down to Austin, as there is absolutely no way I could have pulled this off without them.

Perhaps I am especially grateful for and appreciative of my parents because everything they/my sister/I have today is a result of their hard work. My parents are both first generation Americans and have worked ridiculously hard for everything, both for them as well as for my sister and me. Something my Dad said to me while helping me move down to Austin was to the effect of ‘we have worked hard so you don’t have to’ which of course is 100% true, but also makes me feel pretty guilty, not going to lie BUT at the same time inspires me to keep working hard and prove there is/can/will be a high ROI in all they have put in (=

A few years back I attended a workshop given by Ed Gerety, perhaps the most memorable part was when he picked an audience member and said, “If you had one hour left to live, who would you call, what would you say and why haven’t you done it yet?”, handed his cell phone to the student, and had him make the call. Not going to lie, it was pretty powerful…obviously if I’m still talking about it 2 1/2 years later.

I hope at this point, my parents already know the immense appreciation I have for them, but if not, here’s another shoutout that really does not even begin to cover my gratitude. (= I would also hope that if any of you have remarkable people in your lives, you would not hesitate to let them know. Genuinely good/caring/selfless/saint-worthy people tend to be few and far between…but really deserve all the recognition and appreciation in the world.

And…so this doesn’t end on an emo note (cough MOM cough) (=, I will conclude with something near and dear to my heart, pride of the motherland (Hungary’s anthem to follow):