party time

you know it’s that time of year when you’ve been to four parties in three days! saturday night i had a little party at my place- we crammed 12 people into my miniscule studio, giving quite a cozy atmosphere. it was mostly the  friends i made from auditioning for lebocha (as meredith says, the band that has “adopted” me) as well as my friend vanessa from dutch class. apparently, i have friends! then leander, a lebocha guy, invited tristan and me to a dinner party on sunday, which was also great. on monday morning claudine (the english department secretary who has also adopted me) invited me and a few of my co-workers to a little kerst ontbijt (christmas breakfast). this was my only party where the conversation was in dutch and i definitely appreciated the chance to practice. unfortunately i was having one of those moments where i feel awkward no matter what i do. there i was with all those nice people who i really like, and i couldn’t break free of my cloud of Awkward! it was like i was 13 again:-<

thankfully, the best party was saved for last! my fulbright friend steph had a winterzonnewende (winter solstice) party in antwerp, to which we were encouraged to bring 1) a friend, 2) a dish, 3) a candle, and 4) a talent (a song, a dance, or something simple like a joke…). the friends coming together made a great mix of people from all over the world (including quite a few students from steph’s dutch class). the dishes, as a result, were quite varied and tasty! the candles set a great atmosphere, and were welcome on a day when i had left the house at 8:20am and still seen street lamps on! (the sun also set at 5pm.) and finally, the talents were a fantastic way to get everybody laughing and dancing. we had a couple of singers, one who intentionally made us laugh and one who sang a beautiful czech song. we had a funny true story (in dutch and english), and a chill-inducing poem by a native american (in dutch, enlish, and sign language). steph, an american sign language interpreter, interpreted 3 songs and made me very sad that i gave up learning ASL a year after i started in 4th grade. someone brought a very cool-sounding song by the nigerian artist 9ice (“nice”), and we all got up and danced! it’s a little harder to start dancing with a group of total strangers, but once you realize that you may never see them again you can really let loose;-) after some more dancing (including to some of tristan’s and my favorite songs, which steph asked us about ahead of time and then got off of itunes), we had a group percussion experience (sounds from all the tables, chairs, and cups!) that led into an amazing belly dancing performance, followed by some pro-looking salsa dancers. every ethnomusicological molecule in my body was buzzing. as it got later, things quieted down and we saw a performance by a trio of a cellist, flautist, and bass clarinetist, who sounded sublime on a few pieces by telemann. and THEN the trio brought out the real magic– they turned off the lights and gave us a candlelight improvisation, which even contained some beautiful spoken quotations. it was so beautiful and well-coordinated that i thought it had to be pre-composed, but it really was improvised. they invited volunteers to join in with them, so i did with one other singer, but i think we put them off-kilter a little bit (they’ve apparently been improvising together for a long time, and it was hard, as a newcomer, to find a common vibe). then somebody let the cat out of the bag that i play cello, and the others insisted that i play something. it turns out the cello was *awesome*- as its owner put it, “a Jaguar” among cellos. it was so smooth and resonant, and actually much easier to play than my own cello. i even got to play an improvised number with the other instrumentalists, after which the cellist (who turned out to be a cello teacher) invited me to join in a performance by 40 of her students! i’ve never played with that many cellos before, so i’m going to try to make it work out. all in all a fantastic evening!