The dinner group split up tonight to do various different things, so I made myself pasta and homemade marinara sauce for dinner, since I needed to use up a few tomatos. The produce here is really tasty, when you get it... Our lunches are provided at the school where we have our classes, and their idea of vegetables seems to be shreaded lettuce. But I get it every day. I don't know what I would have done for food if I hadn't decided to explore meat options while I was here. PBJ every day, or something.

The past week has been more work, work, work. I had a coaching with Andrea Huber today, and it was really nice. We actually just talked, mostly, cause we hadn't really gotten a chance to chat much, since I've been here. As she said, I've basically had the rug pulled out from under me, here. For the past year, I've felt like I was missing something essential, and when I got here, about 50 different people told me what it was. I'm eternally grateful to them, but I'm also a little unnerved and uncertain... I won't bore you all with technical mumbo-jumbo, but it's basically something that I don't think I ever completely understood. It's not that my voice teachers have been doing the wrong things with me. I think it was just explained in a such a way that I didn't really understand what was going on. Also, people here work with you for six weeks only, so they're a lot less invested, and can afford to be completely honest with you. I sang in the Artist Recital on Wednesday, and when my coach, Semyon, came up to me afterwards, he said "very good, very good... BUT... you're diction..." and I wanted to give him such a big hug for his unabashed honesty. As Tracy said, If I was really doing everything right, I'd be at the Met right now/.

Another interesting thing that happened this week: I was buying postcards in the Hauptplatz the other day, and I was just about to go buy an ice cream, when I was approached by a girl from Amnesty International Austria!!! She was trying to sign people up, and wanted to tell me about "Frauenschneidung," the German term for Female Genital Mutilation. I told her that I was already a member in the US, but we talked a little bit about terms for various human rights abuses. People are always coming up to you in this town asking for money or trying to give you funny magazines, so I asked Tomas, a student (actually from Slovenia) who lives in Graz about it, and his answer was incredibly interesting: Apparantly the black fellows who are always trying to sell you magazines about this and that are refugees from Africa. In Austria, they basically live in these places set aside for refugees or asylum seekers until they get their official status, and then, because it is so difficult to get work here unless you are an EU citizen, they are employed in selling these magazines. Supposedly, they earn a Euro for each one they sell. It's an interesting system... It sort of results in this funny network of people trying to sell you magazines... but it's a hell of a lot better than throwing the asylum seekers in jail, and then randomly turning them loose, like we do in the US.

I sat in on Bodo Igesz's stage artistry class yesterday. He was a staff director at the Met for almost 30 years... so I decided I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I was not disappointed. I'm definitely sitting in on it for the rest of the program... maybe I can even get a chance to sing for him at some point. I'm not "ready," as they say, but... what a connection to have. He seems so intersting and nonpretentious and frankly, brilliant.

Well, I'm not sure what I'm up to tonight or tomorrow, but I'm doing a pretty rigorous hike on Sunday... hope my mountain legs aren't too far gone!!