February 28, 2007

End of the month=pay time! YAY! I'm taking a practice break right now. I just found out that I need to learn the whole of Mozart horn concerto No. 3. I'm really excited to perform more this spring...anyway, Dave and I just got back from our mini-break holiday to Kanchanaburi, the province directly to the west of our province and neighboring the Burmese border. Kan is known for their abundance of national parks, waterfalls and endless exploring but we just had a day to explore, and we're beat from the semester so we slept a lot. The most famous tourist trap/attraction is the Bridge over the River Kwai. I guess it's a movie too..anyway, there's a really rich and sad history there. During WWII when the Japanese occupied Thailand and enslaved PoW's to construct 416km of railway connecting Thailand to Burma. It was supposed to take 5 years but was built in 20 months. Over 100,000 people died including 16,000 Westerners. It was interesting to learn about such an awful history, a reminder of the horrors of war really. The town of Kanchanaburi is really not tourist friendly. There's hardly any taxi's and their really rude and annoying. So that aspect was tiring. I feel for anyone that doesn't have a car that could use one. Seriously..everything takes soo much longer to do! Our hotel was pretty funny. It was next to the convention center which means it had bad food..and it did. Really gross food. But this sweet restaurant Apple's in the town made up for it. They have a cooking school there, which we didn't go to but we ate there twice because the food is some of the best Thai food I've ever had! All and all, a great escape from Bangkok. It was really clean and quiet and oh oh, I found a travel wedding ring. I've been NOT wanting to wear my ring this spring on all our trips we're doing b/c I don't want to lose it. So I've been trying to find something really cheap and cute. I found out that black onyx is mined in Kan so I got a great deal on a simple black onyx band. It's super cute.

I put up some seriously hilarious videos of Cheddar today and updated photos from our trip. Have a happy day! Oh my gosh..also, Cheddar has officially sung "Old McDonald had a farm...meow..and on that farm he had a Cheddar...meow" He can do the whole song!!! I gotta get that on video!

February 22, 2007

I'm so re-inspired to write in my fancy smancy blog. I love it! Friendster was wearing me down! haha. Juries are over, school is almost finished. I'm teaching some last make-up lessons tomorrow and then I'm finished for the semester. WAHOO! Dave and I have been looking over all the traveling we're doing this spring. It's kind of ridic but waaaay exciting. I've talked about our big bike trip but right after that we're heading to Hong Kong instead of coming back to Bangkok. It'll be Songkran (thai new year) and I do not want to be here for that again. Last year, Dave was still in the states during Songkran and I got my butt kicked at the water festival. It was an intense day filled with guys grabbing my hiney, soaking wet clothes and white paste all over my face, glasses and hair. Yikes...So yeah, bring on the Hong Kong. I've heard such great things about HK..if anyone has been, please give us some tips. We're trying to go budget there but it seems tough. We're staying at a basic hotel and it's $85 a night. I think we could go cheaper if we shared a bathroom but umm..hi? That's gross. Anyway...our first trip is to Hanoi in early March. I'm way excited for that and Hanoi is super cheap so that'll be fun. I can't wait for a colonial French feel in Asia..I can't even imagine. Then Singapore for a visit with friends. Gotta get to Singapore....then a trip to Burma after the Bike trip to help teach at various music schools. I'm waay excited for that because I'll be the first French horn player to teach there!! Isn't that sweet? I think there is one player there! Oh, that'll be a real highlight for me...and seeing what it's like there. I must say I'm pretty curious. Then one last trip again to Vietnam, this time Ho Chi Minh. Real curious to see the war museum..we've heard the city is like Bangkok. Ummm..hi? I think that's it.

So in case you haven't checked out our youtube, we have Cheddar singing "If you're Cheddar and you know it..." It's cool but I'm moving on to harder tunes. I'm teaching him Old McCheddar had a farm..but it's really hard. It may take some time but I'll get that soon! hahaha.

I think that's about it for now. I'll be updating more soon. Dave's taking me somewhere next week and it's a surprise. I can't wait to see where we're going! YAYAYAYAYYAYAY!

February 18, 2007

Oh my gosh! I'm so excited. I finally got around to figuring out how to use blogger (google's blog template) and using ftp to attach it to my website. WAHOO! It took a few days and some help from Dave...but we figured it out and I'm soo excited. I am trying to simplify my space on the web and friendster is totally annoying except for the blog. So I'm archiving all of my posts from friendster onto my new blog. That'll take me a few days but then you can access my new blog from www.hilareharts.com. Oh yeah. It's soo much better than friendster. Seriously. OK..so I'll do one last post to announce my official change of blog.

In other news, classes are officially over! Can't even handle. I have 2 days of juries this week, and I'm still going to teach make up lessons, but it feels over. Weird. Dave and I have been napping a lot this weekend and even totally crashed during out foot massages yesterday. Speaking of yesterday, I got contacts. YAY! I love it!!!

So Dave and I started training today for our bike trip. hahah. We did a 1 hour bike ride at the gym and went 25K. I was soo exhausted afterwards but I feel pretty good now. I don't think we'll be all that serious about training but it's pretty fun. Ok..gotta eat some Vietnamese food..soo hungry.

Oh..one more story...I was trying to open a bottle of wine the other night and screwed it up so I was trying to push the cork in. Well, it worked but the wine spewed out all over my face, hair, clothes, floor and even the wall. Nice!!

February 14, 2007

Happy LOVIES day! I really enjoy valentine's day..not the cheeeez of it all, but the colors. YAY! I got Dave the Lonely Planet for "China." It's huge as in HUGE and contains soo much info about where we're traveling. Dave suprised me with a 2 day trip next week but he's not telling me where we're going. totally romantic. I'm almost done teaching this week. Hard to believe we're almost finished. Oh dudes...this is sooo weird but the other day Dave and I both had dreams about leeches. Isn't that gross? What's up with that? I thought it was weird when we started thinking the same thing..but this is just crazy.

It's crazy that it's been 3 years since Dave and I started dating. I think it's true that time flies when you're having a blast! Our funniest V-day (althought tonight hasn't happened yet) was in Rochester. We went to this nice Italian place but the whole damn place was so coupley and the tables were set up like cow stalls or something. It was trippy and we both vowed to never go out on Valentine's again. HA!

I better get to my next lesson. I can't even believe the semester is almost done..AHHH!

February 9, 2007

I'm killing some time between students on this overcast Friday afternoon. I'm so sick of Thai food and rice. I've been skipping lunch or eating at the coffee shop that sells crappy junior size sandwiches. I meant to make a killer egg salad this week but was still sick on Monday and didn't! Anyway, tomorrow morning we're going to get a western breakfast in Bangkok before some appts. We found the best hospital ever! I wish I would have known about it before. Dave went there last week b/c he was having too many migraines and we're going back again tomorrow..Dave to see a migraine doctor and me to get new contacts (not doing LASIK). Weeee. Seriously though, this hospital is like a 5 star hotel. It's so nice. I could hang out there. HA!

So I've had a couple hilarious stories on my mind that should shed light into our daily lives and I finally am remembering to write them down. On Wednesday morning we get back from the gym and our electricity was out. So we go down to the office and ask about it. And they ask "have you paid rent?" I responded that I had (even though I haden't) trying to see why that would matter. Well, apparently, they decided to start a new program (without telling us) that if you haven't paid rent before the 5th of the month then your electricity gets turned off. WHAT? Yeah..so we explain to them that we have lots of food in the fridge and you can' just turn off our power without explaining etc etc. etc. Oh my gosh..I about lost it on them! Anyway, they turned it back on and all is well but seriously, this stuff happens everyday!

Yikes..I gotta go warm up. I'm teaching a breathing class to all the vocal majors today. HILARE..should be fun. Dave's in town getting our visas for Vietnam. YAY! I'm sooo excited. BYE.

February 4, 2007

I think it's been a while since I last posted. I'm sick. Yucky! I guess that's what happens when you try to fly to NY and back in 7 days. Yikes. We had a good trip. Umm...Dave is making a killer stirfry right now so I gotta go. Just wanted to write that we're back from a much needed trip to the states. I always enjoy a good wear of the parka. I even went to a Land's End store to see if they had more parkas..but the didn't. It wasn't a lost cause though b/c they had personalized towels for real cheap...mispellings of names etc. that were written on the bottom of towels. It was HILARE going through them. We settled on a pink towel for me with "shosanna" written on the bottom and a red towel for Dave with "Edward" written on it. HA! Good times. We finally got Cheddar meowing "if you're cheddar and you know it" on video. I gotta put that on your tube. He does it everyday but gets totally camera shy. haha. I'll put that up soon. Food is getting cold...peace.