Living the Dream - an American folk tale

Lubbock Series

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:52:00 +0000

Many of you might be thinking at this point where the hell is Lubbock?! Is there anything we should know about this place?! Why would someone travel from Brazil - or anywhere else - to live here?! I will try to answer some of this questions in a series of 4 posts - maybe more. In the first one I gonna try to talk about the way I got here. The second probably gonna be about Lubbock City. The third one about Texas Tech University and the last one is going to be about my living experience in Texas so far. So, keep your ears up and stay updated with my posts. I hope you all enjoy it!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:36:00 +0000

As you can tell, I had a pretty busy week. I had so many stuff going on that I couldn't sit down to write a decent post. Anyway, I am here writing again. I wanna share with you the events that kept me busy this week. :-)

This week started with the Fall Break - which is a weird break for me because unlikely the Spring break it has something of stillness in the air. Over the Spring break people are all exited because the summer is coming and the classes almost finished. In other hand, the Fall break brings you the first cold days as if reminding that the next 4 or 5 months are going to be really cold.

Since it was my first fall break – last year we didn't have a break here – I wanted to do something different. I was thinking about leave the town, get on the road and make my way to Dallas to visit Emilee (my girl) or something else. What I didn't think was that some issues would blow away my break plans. Since I was moving in a new place I sacrificed my break in order to get my things moved before school starts again. But the break wasn't bad, actually it was awesome. I got a chance to hang out with friends, watch some movies, workout a little bit and etc. My friend Gina bought a car on Friday, so I helped her going around the legal system in order to buy the car. It was very instructive to learn how things work when you need to buy/sell a car.

The break wasn't over and I was already busy. I had lots of students this week - about 20 hours teaching because a professor went in a trip to Brazil and gave her students for a week. As if it wasn't enough I had Lubbock Symphony every evening from Monday-Sunday! But it was fun, I learned a lot this week with both the students and the symphony. We played some interesting music - the concerto for two timpani by P. Glass and Tchaikovsky second symphony. The Timpani concerto was like a old ritual music and as you might expect it was really percussive :-) I didn't like the Tchaikovsky at first, but by the end of the week I could find some connection with the music.

That's pretty much it. I spent the week between students and the symphony. I didn't had time to really practice the violin or take care of my stuff. But after this week I gonna have less and less stuff to do until Thanksgiving. Over Thanksgiving I am planning in going to Utah to visit a friend! I hope it works well - I'll keep you all updated - Please Subscribe to my RSS Fields!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:55:00 +0000

Hi. I have been thinking a lot about starting a blog about my experiences here in US. I think the time has finally come! The idea isn't new for me - I've tried to keep a blog when I first got here in 2008 but I just didn't. But it was last night when I realized that I was having such a great time here that I should probably share it with people. It's been a month since I got here and so much things have happened! I've just moved into a new house to live with two incredible persons - Thereza and John. They are both lovely and easy going west Texas folks.

I spent a week looking for a place to live. Then I was talking with people about moving then someone told me Thereza had a room for rent - which was amazing because we spent the summer together in the Czech Republic. I sent her a message on Facebook, then she called me to come over and take a look to the place. I came by with my friend Gina and I found the offer a pretty good deal for me. I moved in the next day - which was last Wednesday - to live with Thereza and John. On Thursday I came by with some stuff, and Friday (I'll talk about Friday) I took my clothes, shoes and things and bring it up here. When I got here with my stuff Thereza asked me if it was OK to have kind of a homecoming party because I was moving. I said it was a great idea and we started planning the events.

Yesterday I woke up and went to school to teach some students in the morning - nothing special - then I went to swim at the Rec Center. It was great because I didn't had that much of exercises since last May. I got home tired but I couldn't rest because a guy came over to clean the carpets that ended up wet all afternoon. The only thing I could do trying not to waste my whole afternoon was to practice the violin. And I did practice. I am starting the Bach Chaconne - which is an amazing monumental piece. I won't talk how much I like this music now. I guess the music itself deserves a post here. When the practice was done Thereza and John came over with some Salmon fish and sweet potatoes and started fixing the dinner. I invited Gina over to eat with us. I started drinking some beers - Thereza bought some Pilsner Urquell! - and we had this amazing meal. When we were about to start dinning this guy called Josh came over with a guitar and a nice Banjo.

We all ate together and started to get in the party mood. Thereza took out her violin, John took his guitar, Josh - wearing a cowboy hat - tunes the Banjo and John offers me a guitar. It was so awesome the music they played! They have this band which plays old american folk music and they do it really well. As time pass by people start to show up and the house is suddenly full of nice Texan people. I met a lot of new people as normal and I saw some old friends. It was a fun night surrounded by good music, beer and friends which made me start to write again in my blog!