Salzburg

Two summers ago, Napa Valley Youth Symphony went on its first international tour. We traveled to Salzburg, Vienna, and then Prague. Despite the fact that I got sick and refused to eat all the fried food we were served, therefore losing five pounds over the course of ten days, it was the most memorable trip of my life. But don't be alarmed, I gained back all the weight that was lost and more once I went to Taiwan two weeks later when my grandma's only mission in life became to fatten me up.

The first city we visited was the city of Mozart: Salzburg. Right before we left the hotel to go to a nice restaurant, it started POURING. Do not underestimate the word pouring because I had never endured such fierce rain, and this is coming from someone who has endured countless typhoons in Asia. Since the streets are so old downtown, the buses couldn't travel very close to the restaurant and we were forced to walk the rest of the way. It was raining so hard that all of our rain gear, jackets, and umbrellas, became useless. By the time we entered the restaurant's staff was horrified to see that every piece of clothing we had on was DRENCHED. We were literally ringing our hair out on the front porch of the historical building. On the second day in Salzburg the weather cleared up and presented us with the perfect weather to complete a walking tour of Salzburg's castle, cathedral, squares, and gardens.

By that evening all of us were exhausted from jet lag and the afternoon of walking all over the city primarily up the stairs of the grand castle. Lucky for us, we had a performance that night. If the church didn't have so much echo, all of our mistakes due to pure exhaustion would've been all too obvious. Once we finished what seemed like the longest performance of our life, many youth symphony members said they didn't even recall playing parts of piece because they just zoned out. There was even a point in Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony where I was the only first violin who didn't miss our entrance. Even though it was a performance that people could hardly even stay awake for, it is somehow the performance that nobody can forget.

After a good night of rest, we were off to spend three days in Vienna and another three memorable days in Prague. Below is a picture during our dress rehearsal before our grand performance in Vienna as the finale performance of the International Mahler Music Festival.

That devious boy

In Elementary school, pretty much every girl has endured that annoying little boy in their class who had a crush on them. Sadly as we have all learned, elementary school boys aren't exactly the best at flirting. By second grade, the idea seems to develop around the lines of if I poke her 100 times to get her attention, then she'll like me. These boys become the devil you don't want to get icky cooties from.

Ten years later, these girls still remember those sad stories when their fellow boy classmates went through unusual trouble to get their attention. Of all the weird ones I endured at Alta Heights Elementary School, the craziest one occurred when I was enrolled in school in Taiwan during the winter of second grade.

On my first day of school in Taiwan, my mom and the school principle walked me to my new homeroom classroom at the four story elementary school. Upon entering, every pair of almond shaped eyes turned to look at me. Never have I ever felt so white in my life. This was an unusual feeling since I had always been pegged for my half-Asian background. But at this moment, I felt like the only American on the face of the planet. I looked at the green chalk board and saw math far beyond my abilities, realizing I had entered a world future Einsteins. (Below's picture isn't actually my classroom but looks similar. Only difference is that the students at my school had to wear blue and white uniforms.)



After shyly introducing myself and taking my seat in the back, I endured two hours of pretending that I understood the textbook while the students around me recited the text loudly in unison. I learned at a young age what it felt like to feel like an idiot. I endured this feeling of stupidity for a month. The only exception was English class, the only class I aced.

To my surprise I actually didn't have trouble making friends at this school. Everyone was interested in getting to know the American girl with naturally brown hair who could run faster than most of the boys. However, there was this one boy who never came close but still managed to make me nervous even if he was clear across the classroom. One afternoon during a break in between classes I went back into the classroom to fetch something from my backpack. When I looked up from my bag I noticed that boy standing in front of me smiling. I was confused by it, but thought maybe he wanted to be friends! Before any second thoughts, he grabbed me by my left arm with such force that I fell to the dirty cracked concrete ground. Instead of stopping and helping me up, he kept hold of his death grip on my arm and began running. He kept running and dragging my small body until he gave me the full tour of the amount of dirt on the ground between all eight rows of desks. By the time he finally stopped I was kicking, screaming, and crying. Scared and struck with disbelief, I looked up and saw that boy smiling. It was then that our second grade teacher walked in the classroom to find me terrified, crying on the floor covered in dust and dirt with that boy standing over me smiling like an idiot.

It wasn't until after my teacher shooed out that boy and cleaned me up that she explained to me the boy's reasoning to perform such a crude act. She tried to explain how that boy had a major crush on me and didn't know how else to confront me. As the victimized second grade girl, I was having none of it. Why would any boy do such a thing to a girl they had a crush on? I refused to believe her. That boy was the devil. But what I did learn was that a second grade boys' inability to flirt with a girl is universal.

The next winter when I went back to Taiwan, I once again went to school there for a month. Being in a new third grade advisory room felt like starting over, since I got to meet many new people. One afternoon, about a week into my month at the school, when I was walking up to the third story to get to a music class with some of my friends, I made eye contact with a boy in the hall. To my horror it was THAT BOY. Yeah, THAT devil. Except this time, to my delight, he exclaimed my name, dropped his food on the ground, and took off running in the opposite direction.