Home, Home on the Range!

One of these months, I'll actually get to spend more than a week sleeping in my own bed at home! After one week at home of unpacking, catching up with family and friends, and working on graduate school researching, I arrived today at my family's farm in central Missouri, where I'll be spending the majority of my time for next month (I may be going home to St. Louis on weekends). I will be training horses, fixing things, painting stuff (like gates or doors or suchlike), and any other jobs that need to be done. It's a farm; something always needs to be fixed or an animal needs to be taken care of...I'll have plenty to keep me busy, not to mention keeping my voice in shape and working on senior recital lit so I can hit the ground running at Truman in August. I may also have the opportunity this summer to teach some voice lessons to some middle or high school students in Hermann, so that will be good experience in preparation for taking Vocal Pedagogy this fall in addition to the voice students I'm already getting lined up for the fall. :)

However, farm work generally ceases when the sun goes down, my voice can only handle so many hours of practice a day, and I have to take a break from grad school research/apps periodically, which means I'll have more time theoretically to get this blog up to date with anecdotes and pictures from my travels, albeit after the fact. (Sorry!)

In other news, I got really nostalgic for Italian food tonight. My grandpa gave me wine with dinner and his wife had made Italian style pizza, which reminded in taste and seasoning of the authentic pizza I had in Naples, Italy, less than 2-1/2 weeks ago. While I don't feel the urge to up and move to Italy after studying there the way I did with London, I still did really enjoy it, and things like the smell of pizza seasonings or the taste of wine that trigger memories of Italy (like eating pizza in Naples--the birthplace of pizza--or sipping local wine at sunset overlooking the Mediterranean in the Italian Riviera) do make me miss it. I hope to be able, as I have these moments and process what I learned and how that affects how I live henceforth, to share those moments through videos, pics, and stories here, so that maybe--if I do my job well--you, too, can be nostalgic with me for a beautiful country with a fascinating history, fabulous music, flowery language, and fantastic cuisine!

Ciao amici!
-Emily