I wish I was in Europe...

The title of this post really has nothing to do with the actual post. I just really wish I was in Europe right now, as part of an ongoing battle of figuring out my place in the music world...

I was up at Interlochen last weekend for graduation. While it was wonderful to see my friends and teachers again, but it also felt very strange to be back. Mostly everything was the same; the Concourse and Rotundas still had gritty sandy floors, TJ House still had that aweful disgusting smell that I lived with for a year, the lake was still beautiful, and you still saw a lot of blue. Lots of blue. It didn't seem true that I could have been away from the pines for a year, as if everything had stayed exactly the same until that day.

While at Interlochen, I was able to reconnect with some friends and teachers from my year there. I briefly went to the bonfire Andrew set up across the street at the state park campsite (word to the wise; flashlights in a dark woods are a good idea, and cell phones just don't do the same thing). I finally met Pei-Ting's mom and sister who came all the way from Taiwan for her graduation. Her mom speaks no English, and I speak no Chinese, but I feel like we could still understand each other, proving one again that language is not necessarily needed to communicate with another person. I talked with Mr. Norris, my voice teacher at IAA, as well as my IAA accompanist, Mr. Larson, who found out about the Facebook fanclub I created for him.

After our excursion to the American Siberia, mom and I went to Chicago for annual Girl's Weekend. We explored the downtown area just north of Michigan Avenue we hadn't seen much of before. We came across a delightful tea shop called TeaGeschwender, a German-based tea merchant that sold every imaginable sort of tea. Our cute clerk showed us several sorts of teas from the over 70 selections, and we finally settled on a Darjeeling and a Russian Samovar tea. Both taste wonderful. We also walked past several of the beautiful (and freaking expensive) houses in that area, and of course I'd like to live in one of them. But....well, that probably won't happen. Oh, but we can dream, can't we?

I want a samovar.