Last day in Sevilla

Today is my last day in Sevilla. I don´t feel ready to leave Sevilla, although I am ready to be in my own home. This past week has been tremendously busy and wonderful at the same time. My first week was rather light, having only one technique class, which is only 1 hour a day. Originally I was scheduled 6 hours of private lessons with Pastora, but she had a broken muscle fiber, and she was in so much pain after 1 hour of lesson, so we stopped there. In that one short hour we worked on my body and weight placement, using a short letra of solea. It was nice that she sings during our lesson. Being a grand maestro, she was very particular about technique and small details, so even though my lesson time was short, but my brain was quite fried. The unfortunate cancellation of the remaining lessons with Pastora opened up opportunities for me to take additional workshops this week. I am learning a Rondeña with Miguel Vargas and technique with pasos de Seguriyas with Farru. Those 2 workshops are back to back, so I´m always pooped by the end of the day, especially Farru´s class is quite intensive. He is coming to New York to perform in the Fall for Dance festival at the City Center, as well as teaching his 1 day master class that costs $70. I thought I better take his classes now, since Farru decided to teach this workshop rather last minute, with no advertisement or promotion. But word of mouth gets around very fast and the class is crowded on the first day.

There are many things I couldn´t get to do or see in Sevilla. My schedule this week has been hard in terms of time and energy. I am however, very happy with all the bienal shows that I got to see. Last night I went to a marvelous concert of Miguel Poveda´s Tierra de Calma. I bumped into him at Miguel´s studio when he was rehearsing there, it´s like running into a celebrity for me. His concert was a huge success, his voice is breathtaking and moving. Music really is a universal language that connects people from different cultures. The concert was held at Teatro Lope de Vega, a beautiful granduous theater, very 18th century. At the previous bienal (2004), the theater underwent a major makeover renovation, now the theater has been fully restored, I feel fortunate to be able to see it.

Today I am actually skipping one technique class so I can take care of last minute errands before my way back tomorrow. I want to thank everyone at Fair Lawn church for keeping me in their prayers for my safe passages and my time here. I will upload more pictures once I am home. I did not take as many pictures as I thought I would. My dance bag is always heavy with 3 sets of clothes to change into (and they get heavier once they are wet with my hard working sweat), towels, at least 2 bottles of water, body wipes, basic toiletries, ipod to record classes....many days, the thought of adding the weight of even a camera just make my shoulder sore.

As the bienal continues, I will be on my way home tomorrow. I do miss my spacious firm bed, my big bath tub, and my comfortable home to put up my tired danced feet for a rest. It´s lunch time now in Sevilla, I am going to run and catch my last lunch here before the siesta hours.

Compaña Omayra in Sevilla

It´s a small small world! Of all the places in the world, that we, students of Omayra Amaya, each lived in a different city (countries, Yuki is in Messina), would be able to reunite and meet in Sevilla during this Bienal season. Until I figure out how to enter captions for the pictures, here we are from left to right: Yuki, me, Lauren, Stephanie, Patria, Ivonne (spelling?).
We captured this at Madruga in Triana, a small lounge where there is great live flamenco music. The place became so packed and when they started playing the Sevillanas, people would get up and dance it. The ambiance is wonderful, lively, spontaneous, just everything flamenco should be.

A patio near Plaza de San Lorenzo

Finally I´m able to upload at least one picture, it just takes so long to upload one and painfully slow to upload multiples. Most of the times, the computer would crash waiting for picture uploading, this is my 3rd day trying and 5th computer.
So here is a patio near Plaza de San Lorenzo. I pass by it everyday, it´s beautiful inside, and when the sun scorches the city, there´s always a cool breeze flowing from within this calm patio.

There are more pictures, they shall follow soon.

Finally arrived in Sevilla!

This trip has really been a trip. I got back to NJ on Thursday evening to get ready for my flight to Spain on Friday. I don´t really know what time zone my jetlag is in anymore. The flight out of JFK is so late due to the weather in New York, we were finally airborn at 11pm, 2 hours later than our original itinerary. However hard I wished or peddled in my seat, the plane just couldn´t go faster, so by the time I arrived in Madrid, I had missed my connection to Sevilla, after all that running through the passport inspections, customs, taking a tram to connecting gates, and running down the terminals to my gate. I got to the gates breathless, and saw my plane about 100 feet on its way to the runway. So I spent the next 3 and a half hours getting to know every inch of the Madrid airport. When I got to Sevilla it took me over an hour to find my bags. Apparently they separate out the bags that are not originated from the UE countries nowadays. With all this delay, Flamencarte adjusted my pick up with Yuki´s. So by the time Yuki got in, she got a surprise pick up with me. We have been planning to meet in Sevilla for 2 years and it finally happened this time around.

As soon as we got to our apartment, I have no time to unpack, I rushed over to Teatro Central to catch Pastora Galvan´s ¨La Francesa¨. The performance was bold, creative (choreographed by her brother Israel), and powerful. Both the music and the choreography were very inclusive of untraditional musical instruments and body movements. Starting on Wednesday, I will study with Pastora, so I had to make this performance to get a glimpse of her style. Tonight I´m excited about going to see Isabel Bayon´s ¨La Puerta Abierto¨. Thanks to Flamencarte for getting my Bienal tickets early, there are still plenty of people trying to hope for scouts tickets.

As soon I figure out how to upload the pictures, there will be some photos. Right now the computer I´m using is all in Spanish...no metiendo.

Since Monday I´ve been in Miguel Vargas´technique classes and it´s like a training bootcamp. I am going to rest my feet and find a pair of comfortable slipper to walk around this town, which is full of old streets, with cobblestones and uneven pavements. There are many quint spots, and I promise to share the sights once I figure out the photo uploading in Spanish. Ciao.

Katelyn

This past weekend I had the pleasure of knowing a lovely little girl named Katelyn. Her grandmother Ruth and my mom are old friends. Our families met back in 1979, I can't remember if it was enroute from Japan to the US or somewhere else. My parents loved to travel and were so loving and brave (or crazy) to have me and my brother tagging along everywhere they went. It's not until very recent years do I realize how much work there is to travel with children, especially with very lively children like me and my brother David. Back to Ruth's family, David and I played with Ruth's three daughters: Wendy, Janice, and Cindy. We played like there's no tomorrow on the beaches of Hawaii. Then both of our families were swept apart by the waves of immigrating to the US, albeit on different coasts. Ruth and mom kept in better touch than any of us children. Praise to God for my recent reconnection with Janice and my current trip to San Francisco, which provided a wonderful opportunities for us to meet face to face. The ironic thing is that Janice and I travelled towards the opposite sides of the country at the same time, so we missed each other this time around. It is this past weekend that I met Wendy's daughter Katelyn. She has so much charisma and energy (all kids of 5 have way too much energy), and she surprises me with sensible comments that surpass a typical 5 year old's.
She is a delightful ray of sunshine.

Katelyn and me Katelyn and Wendy

From left to right: Wendy, Ruth, mom, me, Katelyn, and Dad

ACS in San Francisco

Before I can get to Spain, I've to make it through the ACS (American Chemical Society) national meeting in San Francisco. It's a well attended meeting of 10,000-15,000 people. Aside from all the talks (oral presentations) and poster presentations, it's also the most common place to run into old colleagues and people we went to schools with, people we have not seen or have lost touch in years. Big meetings like this can be overwhelming, but this time I tried using the ACS personal schedular to come up with a more practical plan rather than the usual multi-colored highlighting amongst the pages in the technical programs of the C&EN News. To my surprise it worked out well so far. I was not "talked out", and saw some very good talks. Hopefully I can retain all this memory so that I can still pull a report together when I get back from Spain.

a little Pitt reunion with Rosa and Ulrich (you all gotta check out www.skinnychef.com)
See, not all chemists are so nerdy, if you know us, we'll break the stereotypes of a chemist's dynamic personalities.

Baby blogger

New to blogging. Finally decided to join the blogging generation. The crazy travelling schedule will commence this coming Saturday. First stop, ACS meeting in San Francisco. Work work work, seminars, poster sessions, exhibitions, blah blah blah. Then off to Sevilla to immerse myself in the world of flamenco for 2 fleeting weeks. Hopefully starting Sept 16 or so, I'll be able to start sharing my photos and stories from Sevilla.