In the Heat of the Windy City

After a day of mowing lawns and picking blueberries in South Bend, IN with my mother, I was headed to the Windy City of Chicago. Because I grew up so close to the city, I have been to Chicago many times. But I've never lived in a condo downtown for 5 nights.
I liked it.

And did I mention that it was on the fourth floor of a Thai & Sushi restaurant? Well it was. And it was amazing.

The Chicago Institute was around 20 miles north in Deerfield, so it took me around 35 minutes to drive there every morning. Coming back it took nearly 90 minutes. Chicago traffic is horrible. However, it has definitely improved my driving skills.

One evening while I was eating dinner with my host family in the Thai restaurant, the electricity went out. In the whole block. We discovered that the transformer blew out. It was over 100 degrees outside, but we made it 12 hours without air conditioning or my phone charger. The flashlight iPhone app is wonderful for lighting stairways. Especially as you lead three 65+ year old seniors up to the fourth floor. It was an exciting time. We lit candles and I played baroque music while we enjoyed dessert.

Here is a photo taken the morning of our un-airconditioned night. Even though I'm making a face, it really wasn't that bad. I even wore long-sleeves that day.

Everything in Chicago takes longer to do. Dinner is an event. Grocery shopping is an event. Driving anywhere is a haul. I love the city, but the only way I would live there is if I could take the metro to work and was in walking or biking distance of nearly everything.

The day I arrived, we took the metro in to the loop so I could get my violin checked over and my bow fixed at William Harris Lee & Co. on Michigan Street. My violin teacher from high school is the manager there, and we were able to talk some about life, Suzuki, & violin before I left my bow to get straightened.

The Chicago Institute is the best one that I've been to so far. I have been amazed at the quality of playing produced from the students there. My teacher instructor of Book 7, Nancy Jackson, was a woman who was very selective of the words she chose to use. She does not give false flattery, and keeps all of her students accountable for responsible practice.

My class only had 4 students, which was very different from my training the previous week that consisted of around 15 students. I enjoyed the size of the smaller group a lot. Unfortunately, the smaller group did not mask my obvious lack of practice. I had thought that when I was Suzuki trained that I had completed Book 7, but apparently I only played one piece before I moved on to a traditional teacher. So that made this week's training tricky. I had to learn new repertoire and memorize the Bach A minor. Fortunately, it was only the 1st movement.

A discussion I really appreciated our last day of class was the importance of saying "no" when demands are placed on you to alter your policies. One of my biggest strengths is adaptibility. I am able to look at a situation, see what is needed, and quickly come up with a solution. However, I have had many people take advantage of this.

For example in a lesson:
A student may call me 30 minutes before their prepaid lesson is supposed to be, telling me they can't make it that day because of a soccer game. They then ask if they can reschedule for another time that week. I then look at the time that I was going to clean my house on Saturday and decide to clean during their lesson time. Then I give them the option of coming during 30 minutes of what was supposed to be my cleaning time. 


While this may not seem like that big of a deal, I have had several people assume that because I allowed that to happen once, then it must not bother me that much. Which isn't true. But then a similar scenario with the same family happens again.

I learned in this lecture that whenever you say "no" to something, you are usually saying "yes" to something else. In the example I gave, if I were to say "no" to adjusting the lesson time, I would be saying "yes" to giving myself that morning to get things done uninterrupted. I would also be saying "yes" to helping that family learn how to be responsible and to be respectful of me and my time.

I really appreciated that lecture because I don't like to say no to people and am willing to alter what I want to do to make things more convenient for them. I acknowledge that I have to know when it's okay to be "adaptable," yet still be okay with saying "no."



I'm off to Ithaca, NY now for training in book 5 & 6. My dad is helping me drive to Erie, PA where he'll catch a train, just to give me time to nap in the car. What a good father I have.