Suzuki Festival!

What a whirlwind week I have had. On the 4th of January I traveled to Lima to and was picked up by Omar, my couch surfing friend and Victor, Marco's colleague who had a car and drove us to La Molina from the airport. I was super grateful for the ride and it was nice to catch up with Victor.


On the 5th I started the Suzuki violin book 2 teacher training course. Now, you may be wondering how I took the book 2 course when I haven't taken the book 1 course. Since I took the philosophy course in July of this year I asked permission to take the book 2 and book 1 course at this festival and they OKed it. They also gave me the rest of my scholarship back in cash after the cost of the classes.


The festival has been wonderful so far. There were a ton of violin students which was wonderful because we saw quite an range of playing ability. Every day at 2pm there was a play in and the teachers led songs from twinkle to Eccols Courante from book 8. It was an awesome sight to see.





My teacher was Nancy Lokken who teaches in Minneapolis and does teacher trainings all around the US and South America. She was excellent and very structured. I really liked that. Every day we started at 9am and finished around 5:30 or 6:30 depending on how many hours of observation you wanted to do during the day. We were required to do 8 hours and there were two nights when we had to stay for concerts; the teacher concert and the final closing concert. They were loooong days. We had 5 days of the book 2 course and then on the 6th day half the class went with Helen Brunner, the book 4 teacher trainer. We had two days of teaching strategies. It was an intense 6 and a half days but totally fun and extremely informative. We even had a master class with Helen which was awesome. I played German Dance for her from book 5. She made everyone get up and dance. It was great! We had the treat of being able to play her own violin that is a Nicolo Amanti 1681 I believe. It is crazy to think about the history of that violin. It sounds amazing! The picture with this paragraph is from our teaching strategies group. Suzanne is on the far right side.


Who is Suzanne you ask? I will be working with her this year at Qantu. She is taking over for Angela and I know we are going to get along great because we already do. It is going to be a good year! I can feel it. We went to Miraflores today and had lunch together. We are both trying to get to know the city a little better and enjoy our days off before we start up again on Tuesday.

On the 17th I start the book 1 course and I get my restrung bow back from Tito! I can't wait! It will be nice to have a lighter bow to play with. Right now I am enjoying Lima. I have run a couple times too. It is so nice to go running and not feel like you are going to die from lung failure like I do when I run in Cusco. It's also more interesting because I can actually run on the streets and sidewalks here because it isn't so crowded and the streets aren't as narrow. I have found the SAE clubhouse and made a book exchange. I also found a cute little cafe called Il Cappuccino in Miraflores that has a great 20 sole menu.


Today I met up with Nella and met her 4 month old baby girl Micaela and her son Adriano who is now 2 years old. He was Micaela's age the last time I saw him when I first got to Peru. It's so crazy that a year and a half has gone by since I last saw them. They hosted me for the 7 hours that I was in Lima before I caught my flight to Cusco. It was really nice to see them during the day and to play with little Micaela. She is a smiley face for sure or as Marco would say risueña. :)

That's all for now!