jazz festival

every year there`s a jazz festival in a city called Montreux at the lake geneva. tons of great musicians are playing there during 2 weeks in july. i went to a concert of roberta flack, david sanborn and TOWER OF POWER! it was an awesome show and i loved listening to the funky sound of T.O.P. check it out at the movie below!



we stayed in montreux for 2 nights. friends of mine were there on a little boat - our home for the weekend :-) they used to get up on top of the boat and play for the people who were walking on the lake front. concerts, playing at the promenade and singin on board of the ship... music from dusk til dawn you could say!

nice!

Wedding

My good friend Angela got married last weekend. 2 friends of ours and I were planing everything for them and on of their wishes was that all the guests dress up in fifties and sixties style. so we did - just the way Audrey Hepburn showed us how to do :-)
we all wore nice dresses with big belts, hats, huge sun glasses and some even wore gloves that came all the way up to the elbow.
the wedding was a blast and everything went really well.


I just finished the 6th semester of school. in september i`ll start the master`s program which includes a major in music. i`m very looking forward to that and can`t wait to take all those interesting classes at the jazz school. yay!

so much for now. i`ll try to keep you posted more frequently than so far (well, i mean every 3 months or so IS a regular base, but.... ) talk to you soon :-)

acappella

some of you might know that some of the music students from my school and i rehearse weekly (since november) to sing acapplea songs. we`re 8 students total and most of them are in my semester, 2 started studying one year later than the rest of us. it`s a really fun group of people and we absolutely enjoy each other`s company.

at our chuch we have an art gallery every year for about 2 weeks. as soon as the lady in charge heard that we`d started an acappella group she booked us for the opening of the gallery. it was very exciting for us because we didn`t exactly know what to expect. i mean, i know the people from church, but all the others didn`t.
there were about 200-300 people there and they were thrilled by our performance!
they didn`t want to let us go :-)

here`s a pic of the ladies and gentelmen singing

off school

since christmas i`m off school. first really enjoyed the holiday but then i had to study for my exams. everything went well even the math test that i had not passed last year. i was actually really goot at that test. yeah!

we had my niece and my nephew over for 3 days. it was so much fun to be with them not just for a couple of hours. mirco (newphew) is a bit more than 3 years old now and solène just turned one in november. i love both of them very much but did you know that little kids are bright awake at about 6.30 in the morning. goodness :-)
here i had a little salsa dance session with solène. awesome!





















after exams i started an internship in a school to teach math (9th grade) and music (8th grade). they were off school last week so that gave me one week off as well. i enjoyed it very much because it actually WAS a vacation for me. i didn`t have to study or work - loved it! i went snowboarding for 3 days. here`s some pictures of the swiss alps (on the left side you can see the matterhorn :-) )



one day i went with 3 friends from school. i spent the night in the appartement that my parents rentet for the week (they were up in the mountains the whole week!) and went snowboarding again the next day. that was at the beginning of the week. on friday a friend from church and i decided to go snowboarding again on saturday. it was just beautyful weather!
we ate lunch in front of a tiny little wooden chottage and enjoyed the view


it was so good to be out in the snow and in the fresh air and away from school and work and everything else. once again i was amazed by the magnificent work the lord has done creating the world! unbelievable!

school

school started again 3 weeks ago. right now it`s not that busy yet but it will be once my next internship has started! during four weeks I will teach 4 P.E lessions a week in a school close to where I live (about 10 minutes away). for those who don`t know: the school i`m going to is in Bern. the neighborhood is really cool and it`s fun to be there because the streets af filled with students. here`s a pic of what the main street there looks like.

there are school buldings spread all over down and I have to change building quite often. the one where we have music is on the other side of the river (it`s called Aare) and you have a great view from there because it`s on a hill.
in a couple of weeks I can substitute for a teacher I know in the school where I already did the musical during summer. so I already know the school and some of the kids. it should be fun!

cambodia

last friday i got back from a 2 week trip to cambodia. my sister is working there since january of this year. she`s an optician and is checking the eyes from kids and staff in the orphan homes in cambodia. a friend of ours and i decided to visit her! so here you can see our friend Anja, me :-) and my sister Tabea.After spending the weekend in the capital (Phnom Penh) we drove to the coast in Sihanouk Ville and from there we took a boat to a lonely island out in the ocean.
Usually the tourists stay just during the day and go back with the boat in the afternoon. but we stayed there 2 nights and 3 days. there are about 30 cambodians living on that island. mostly fishermen i think. 2 guys were running the one and only restaurant on the island and also took care of the bungalows.

this was our lillte bungalow. there was room for 4 people to sleep in and we even had our own bathroom. that was very special because all the other houses didn`t have a bathroom. there were 2 toilets in a seperate house. if you wanted to take a shower you just grabed something like a big cup, filled it with water from a barrel and poured it over you. it was fun, believe me!!
there really was nothing to to there besides reading your book in the hamock, swimming in the warm blueish green water or take walkes on the beach. on the other side of the island there was a big nice beack with no houses or people. awesome!
as you might guess we totally had a good time there, enjoyed every minute of doing nothing and tried to burn the great views into our mind so we could remember when we`re back home in cold switzerland.


after another weekend in town we could join tabea and the 2 cambodians she`s training on a trip to 6 orphan homes in the province to bring the glasses. of course the roads there are sometimes not what we think roads should look like. so the trip took a while even though it was not that far of a distance.
one of the orphan homes is built on the water. actually the whole village there is built on floats on a lake. during raining season a big part of cambodia is covered with water. so building your home on a float is not a bad idea.

the kids from the orphan homes were very trusting and came to us, sitting on our laps, holding our hands, jumping on us, playing around. it was so much fun. they seemed really happy in their homes!

it was very fascinating to see the look on people`s faces when they first looked through their new glasses. one lady was blind on one eye and couldn`t see very well on the other one. so they made glasses for her to see in the distance but also to read. my sister gave her a book - the bible- to see if the glasses do their job. she started reading out loud and her voice became all shaky because she was so touched! if you want to see some pics from the people we gave the glasses to, visit my sisters blog on www.tabeas.blogspot.com


i`m very thankful that i was able to go visit my sister in her environment there in cambodia. it was awesome and just a very refreshing trip!

aladdin

as some of you might now: since almost a year i`m practicing with kids from the school where i live for a musical called "aladdin". it`s based on the disney movie from 1992 an brought to stage. we adapted it, added some new parts, wrote additional songs. there are 150 kids on stage, 30 people in the orchestra and almost all the teachers from the school involved in this projekt.

yesterday night we had premiere. it was awesome! the kids were really focussed on their parts and did great. there are things that can and will be improved. but we have another 13 shows, so we have plenty of time :-)

here some pictures to het an impression of what we`re doing.


Bazar in Agrabah


Prince Ali`s cortege and town folks


Aladdin and Genie, the ghost of the lamp