It has been quite a long time since I’ve written anything here… but that doesn’t mean that nothing happened! On the contrary, I have been very busy, and didn’t really find the time to write about it. Still, I can’t resist giving a little overview, for more details you can contact me personally.
Firstly, I celebrated my birthday in the end of November, in Hoogeveen, with my family. It was a real success! I cooked “Indonesian” for them, and got some very nice presents. We talked quite a lot and things were very relaxed. Because my parents couldn’t do much (my mom broke her finger and my dad has a back problem), we really spoiled them for once. We slept over, and went back to The Hague the following day with a good feeling.
In that week, the Messiah project started as well. There was a rehearsal in Elburg (I made a mistake with the time, came an hour late, and could leave half an hour later), and in the weekend after that the first performance was planned. The series is not finished yet, next weekend there will be two more concerts (the last ones). I sing ten Messiahs this year, three Christmas concerts and two solo concerts. A bit too much really, but nice to do!
Then my mother had surgery because her finger hadn’t grown back together correctly. It was a bit shorter because of that. She is still recovering and slowly regaining her abilities. My father had an MRI and it showed that he has a hernia. He will get surgery in a month. He’s in a lot of pain, so surgery is welcome. I hope it’ll go well! In the man time my studies were also going on, with deadlines and an exam. In the upcoming weeks I’ll have three more exams for which I have plenty of work to do. I made some of the deadlines and missed others. I need to work on that too.
In between we rehearsed with AeroDynamic a couple of times. We have a performance in IJburg on the 10th of January, which we’re really looking forward to. It’s good to be working together again after a year of almost no time to do that. Some new pieces were written for us, and we have plans to record a CD later this year.
In the last couple of weeks we’ve been in Hoogeveen quite a lot. It’s really good and relaxing to see our parents more often. We travel a lot… Last week I had two nice concerts in Hoogeveen with the Men’s Choir. That was exactly in the weekend that all of the Netherlands was covered in snow, causing trafiic to come to a halt. Good thing we went back to The Hague the night before that… It was even hard to get to the centre of The Hague that Sunday, because there were no trams, biking was too dangerous, and driving was difficult. The days after that, traveling remained difficult and time consuming.
At Christmas’ Eve, after the concert, David, Esther and I drove to Hoogeveen, to celebrate Christmas with our parents. On the first day of Christmas, we were at David’s parents, where we had breakfast together, looked at the echo of Peter and Lilian’s baby, cooked a nice hodgepodge and had dinner together. The next day we went to my parents, we played with my dad’s new laptop a bit, I knitted leg warmers for my mum, we did a fondue and watched TV (The Queen). Relaxed and cozy!
In between all these things I have to take time to relax as well, so I knitted a lot. After my first pair for myself, I knitted socks for my MIL, and a pair for my dad (for his birthday). Then I finished two more pairs just for me, and I’m now working on leg warmers for my mum. The patterns become more interesting with every project, and I dare to knit with pretty yarn now, because I get more confidence. I’m planning lots more: an iPhone cozy for Eva, a black and chique shrug for concerts, fingerless mitts…
And that other hobby… in the end of November I did a real photoshoot of the children’s choir of a colleague of mine, which was very interesting to do! I borrowed Esther’s camera for backup and so that I wouldn’t have to change lenses (the shoot was outside, and the weather was not very good). The photos are nice, and processing and editing them took some time (my colleague wanted the photos to be B&W with the logos still in colour….). After that, I didn’t have much time to take photographs because of all the concerts. But… yesterday I bought myself a Christmas present: a new camera with a really good lens! I had a concert in Zwolle and used that trip to ride to Den Ham with David, to Foto Konijnenberg, the best photography shop in The Netherlands. I already knew what I wanted, just had to hold and feel it. And yes, brilliant! And an awful lot of money. But I worked hard for it. My old camera can’t compare to this one, and that’s quite something.