Hodgepodge

Hello, dear ones.

I hope these few weeks since I've written have been good ones for you. They've been busy ones for me...I guess it's starting to get to that time in the semester. It is the end of week 6 after all. I guess I don't really have all that much to say. Things are starting to blend together a little bit...but here are a few small updates. :)

A few friends and I went out to dinner on Valentine's Day at a Thai restaurant in a fashionable part of town called The Loop. They have some pretty cool places there, like a corner bookstore, some coffee shops, some ethnic restaurants, and some other fun places.

This is me and my violinist friend Mei Mey at dinner:

This is Diego and Mariana, also at dinner. Diego is holding up a questionable piece of food that none of us could really identify:

Aunt Sandy, I have some exciting news for you! I finally got some cookware!
Check it out:

I got a call today from the Touhill Performing Arts Center, which is the beautiful concert hall on campus. I turned in an application last week, and they called to tell me that I've been hired for the tech crew, which should be fun. I've never done tech work before, but it didn't sound like it will be too difficult to pick up. I'm hoping that I can make enough money from this during the rest of the semester that I can afford to attend a music festival or two this summer. In any case, we'll see what happens.

This last weekend, my cellist from Britt this summer, Katt, came to check out UMSL in her senior year college search, and she stayed with me in my dorm room. It was really fun, and so good to catch up with her. We got to do a lot of fun things, one of which was go with the Arianna to a concert they did at East Central Community College. Since we rode with Kurt and Joanna, we had to be there pretty early, so we had time to wander the halls of the building their performance was in. We rather enjoyed this sign above some random blue chairs in the middle of an above-ground hallway:

At the same place, we meandered into a gallery where we found this...vending machine? Those capsules in the gumball machine have little pieces of art in them, and it's a legit machine! Katt bought several small pieces of art with her quarters.

One of them she gave to me....however, when it came out, it was just black, unlike the others. So, I tried to open it, and look what happened! Yes, it was just full of black paint. That's all. No art. Or was that blob of paint the art itself? How profound. Hmmmm. In any case, it was messy! :)

This picture is of Katt's miracle hot sauce. Hahaha, I know what you're thinking, but Katt dipped her chicken into ranch, then into this hot sauce, and it made this perfect heart all by itself! We were thinking about selling it on Ebay. ;)

Even though I had an amazing time with Katt here, it did take a lot of the time I normally have to practice and do homework away over the weekend. This meant lack of sleep, and added stress, so I kind of crashed on Monday. I've been doing better since then, and have had a little more sleep, so I should be okay, but I'm still warding off stressful thoughts about an audition for Britt I have on Sunday and a concerto competition I have in a couple of weeks....It's time to lock myself in a practice room.

As a sidenote, I just used the word typify in a paper, which is a word I don't normally use...maybe this college education is doing something after all. ;)

And that's pretty much all I've got for you today. Please pray that I would always seek God first, even in the midst of the busy. Here's a little something random to send you out with.

Love always,

Maren