Coro

I had written an enormous post about my experience at the Chorus of the City of Granada yesterday, but I didn't really like it, so I decided to summarize it for you. Here goes:

* I was supposed to join the chorus of the University, but apparently the woman in my program office who was helping just decided to google "chorus granada" and picked the first chorus that came up.

*It was in the windowless basement of an old and crumbling building which may or may not have been a church, due to the signs proclaiming that "Jesus is Love," while other walls had bizarre modern art, and still other had what must have been cards from Rorschach tests. I couldn't put my finger on what was missing from the room until the director took out a box with a battery-operated Casio keyboard with a two-octave range.

*The Spanish choir members are all over 40 and are from all walks of life, and the other half of the chorus, HALF!, is made up of foreign students who all apparently googled the same thing, mainly blonds from California.

*I was the only base at the rehearsal, which went alright except that the conductor was upset that I told him I didn't need to go over my part again, when he asked, condescendingly, how many people from the chorus weren't from Spain.

*We sang three songs; one in Latin for which I could have given a pronunciation workshop, one in Catalan (a regional language in Spain) which no one spoke nor had any idea how to pronounce, and the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah, a piece in English which I know well, which was hilarious to hear sung by Spaniards with extremely thick Spanish accents.

*The worst moment of the day was when the woman who led us to the building came over after rehearsal to tell me how great we were and to thank me for coming. She leaned in a bit while she was saying goodbye, so I figured she was doing the two kiss thing again, so I leaned in, she leaned away, and I got completely flustered. I started asking her in English, "how does the kiss thing work...," when I realized she was looking at my strangely, since she had no idea what I was saying. Then I asked in Spanish, and she replied that it was to say hello and goodbye. "Yes," I thought, "that's what I was doing," when she laughed, told me it didn't matter at this point, and walked away. Argh, different cultures!

My friend from my group who also went to sing with the chorus and I aren't sure that we're going back. Unfortunately, the group's first concert is in the Capilla Real, a beautiful chapel attached to the main cathedral in Granada where Ferdinand and Isabella are buried along with their daughter, Juana la Loca (she wasn't actually crazy, but that's another post), her husband, and a grandchild. It's a beautiful place, and would be an honor to sing there (some bishop is coming!), but I'll be in London, and my friend will be in Morocco with the group. Oh well.

On another note, I just walked into the kitchen where my Señora is already cooking, and she told me that she was preparing a homemade cream of mushroom soup for me for dinner. "Oh," I said, "I loved that the last time," because she's already made it. "You've never had this! This is special soup, with mushrooms!" I argued with her for a second, because she made the soup last week, but I've accepted that she's losing her mind - she's been staying with a sick friend at the hospital every night for the last three nights and hasn't been getting much sleep. At least I like the soup, and I've still got about 1/4 of my jar of peanut butter left - I bought it a day and a half ago, but I'm a bit of an addict.