Orchesta, viajes, y otras adventuras...

So, on Wednesday, Kristen and I met Ellen and Miguel Monreal in La Plaza del Castillo to go to the Pablo Sarasate conservatory to see if we can play in the orchestra there!! I guess that Pablo Sarasate (a famous composer that wrote crazy but amazing violin music) lived in Pamplona, and I've heard that he's like the "tierra" (earth) here! That's really cool. I'd love to study one of his pieces while I'm here... anyway, we talked to the orchestra director and I get to play! The orchestra meets Wednesday nights from 7-9, and the conservatory is in a neat old building in Casco Antiguo. There are three levels of conservatories here, and I'm in the middle one for now (the "Profesional" level). My stand partner is a 16 year old violinist who's currently working on the same pieces that I worked on when I was his age! He's amazingly friendly and was really helpful: he taught me the Spanish names for bows and notes- whole notes are "redondas" (rounds), half notes "blancos" (whites), and quarter notes "negros" (blacks)! (I found the names for notes kind of funny...) Anyway, it was funny too because we're supposed to play one of the notes in the piece we played staccato (short), and he wrote "little," attempting to write English for me to make it easier! hehe... Overall, it wasn't too terribly challenging (we played an arrangement of 1812 by Tchaikovsky), and many of the players are 16-17 years old (the concert master is 21 though) but it should be fun :) AND, on the weekend of March 19th, we give a concert in Irun (right by the French border) and two in Pamplona.

Yesterday, we didn't have class (in honor of some Catholic saint... just for students!) so I had kind of an adventure then too! I ended up meeting Bacilio, a student from Taiwan, in Pamplona to cook Taiwanese food! We met at noon, bought groceries at the Chinese store, the supermarket, and the meat market, met up with his friend Isabel, and went to his piso (apartment) to experience homemade Taiwanese cooking! He started out by giving Isabel and I a light green-tinted drink ... he said to guess what it was before he'd tell me what was in it. I smelled it and it reminded me of plants... I guess it was milk blended with avocado and honey! It wasn't actually too bad ... after, we shared a ham and cheese sandwich made with bread that was dipped in egg and pan fried (French style), and then had pan-fried pork with garlic. Lastly, we made Taiwanese "empanadas" (dumplings) which were filled with pork seasoned with five spice powder, green onions, salt, pepper, and soy sauce, and made the wonton wrappers out of flour and water. After we rolled out the dough, filled it with meat, and folded it, Bacilio cooked them covered in a pan with oil and water mixed flour. We ate them dipped in soy sauce and they were pretty good! Bacilio didn't have any recipes either... he said he got them from his "imagination"! It was interesting when we ate the pork, because Taiwanese people pick up the meat whole with chop sticks or silverware, so they weren't sure how I would eat it and gave me a knife and fork. I ended up leaving around 4:30, but they were still cooking something in the style of "red cooking" when I left ... I don't really know what it is, but it takes a lot of time and what he was making involved tofu, an entire cup of minced garlic (he said me, the American, probably thinks Taiwanese people are crazy for eating so much garlic!!), hard boiled eggs soaked in soy sauce, and well-cooked sugar mixed with water (a dark red color) ... I have yet to adventure to this area of cooking!

 

(this is the dessert thing...)

 

(empanadas in the process!)

(finished product :) )

One more thing: traveling. Kristen and I decided today that over spring break we're going to mainly stick around Spain and experience the southern coast area... we're planning to start out with Sevilla to see the world-famous Easter processionals and after, will visit Granada, Málaga (on the Mediterranean coast), and Mijas (a white-washed town near the coast). We might also see Segovia on the way home, where there is a big ancient aquaduct. We also were talking to a girl at the café at school today, and she and another exchange student are going to a British-run surfing camp in Morocco for a week for their spring break. That sounds ridiculously awesome too! There are SO many options for traveling here... it's so hard to decide what to do, since the possibilities are endless, but regardless of what we do it'll be amazing.

That's all for now! More to come soon :)