..include "Pardon our Dust." It's pretty dusty here all the time. There's a lot of construction going on all over the city: new sky-rises, new shopping centers, etc. Although there is a bit of smog, it's not so terrible you can't live here. I don't have any issues breathing. In fact, the most uncomfortable thing is the temperature which has been in the high 90s the past two days.
Today was my first day of work with the Central Opera. We (Keyondra, Kyle, Brittany, and Chris) met up with Huan Jing (she was a student conductor with me at CCM but her home is Beijing) around 11:30am; she has been helping us find out way around town. Since Wang Xinyi, the lady who is the head of international relations, was in a meeting, Huan Jing took us to a free lunch that is provided every day for those musicians who are asked to attend double rehearsals during the day. Although we only had one rehearsal today, the orchestra was nice enough to feed us anyway. And lucky for me, the lunch was entirely vegetarian except for a side of fish. Woo!
After lunch, our group left and met one of the conductors (don't know her name) who led us through the three pieces we'll be playing for out concert tomorrow. We then moved straight into rehearsal at 1pm and met each of our respective sections. Everyone warmly welcomed us. At 2pm we moved into the actual opera hall for a quick dress rehearsal with the chorus and soloist singers and then left at 3pm. We signed some paperwork regarding our salary and then left to go to the bank and opened accounts there. The banking process took about 3 times as long as it would i the US to open a new account. I had to give the teller Chris's phone number as mine since I don't have one of those yet... hopefully by this weekend.
The bank process took about 2 hours. I was ready for some sleep at 3 and was hard to stay awake the whole time. At 5:30 our group said goodbye to Wang Xinyi, and took the subway back to our apartment. I'll describe the apartment in a later post... I just want to keep my blog updated as much as possible but I'm super tired right now and really just looking to do the minimum tonight. Well anyway, the entire subway trip takes about 45-50 minutes (including the walk to and from the station/apartment) so we arrived back in BeiYuan JieYuan (our little district) at around 6:30, stopped at the local "Wu Mart" (think like a small Meijer or large Walgreens), and brought our food back home to eat. I bought some peanut butter, jelly, and fresh bread for dinner, and then bananas, onions, potatoes, garlic, ramen noodles, and Honey Cheerios.
Now I am going to go to bed. There is a lot of lightning outside... I seem to be the only one in the apartment who's excited about that... the rain helps clear the smog away, which is a really good thing.
I'll write again soon. I miss everyone and hope that you are all well.
~The Big Cat (meow!)
I forgot to mention that this post was actually written this past Tuesday.
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