Return to Miami

Just finished writing up my travelogue for St. Petersburg, Russia.
It's at http://www.galitz.com/2007-Russia
Now to get back to cello studies.

Day 45

Not too happy with this progress report video from Suzuki Book 2, Bach Musette. I should have spent more time working on it. I found the bowing challenging. On a positive note (pun intended) I think my bowing and tone is pretty good.

My camera battery was ready to die so I have to make do with this "Take 3" video. The first two takes I had to throw out because I stopped in the middle of the piece. However in this version, my 2nd position intonation is terrible and dynamics went out the window (what dynamics??)

Oh well, that's life. Perhaps I'm getting more self-critical now that I've been practicing for a month and a half. Still, this is part of the deal in learning an instrument. Setting a benchmark and trying to meet the challenge. I wanted to post this before I ran away to Russia for two weeks.

I leave at 3pm today. Didn't get a lot of Russian language study done other than the Pimsleur I. My feeling is that a little knowledge of the language of a country one is visiting is better than none. Got a couple of tour guides for St. Petersburg out of the library and there are lots of recommended walks.

More fun later.

Learning Russian

Been trying to learn Russian for about a month now to prepare for the trip to St. Petersburg in June. Listening to Pimsleur in the car twice a week and got a new program called Unforgettable Languages (UL) which uses a link-word system to help one to memorize words.

The "Before You Know it" Flash Cards I downloaded from the internet are nice because you can write the word on your keyboard.

I also have Rosetta Stone.

The only one I have been good about keeping up with is the Pimsleur.

My pronounciation drives my husband crazy. He took Russian back in college 40 years ago...

Hopefully now with classes ending, I can devote more time to the language CDs.