American Suzuki Institute- Day 5 (Friday)

Today was the last day of lessons and groups lessons. Gavin did a terrific job in lessons this week, and he cannot wait to demonstrate his vastly improved violin posture to his home teacher, Paula. Garek loves his new friends from his group, and made sure that we took time to pass on email addresses etc to stay in contact with our friends. Garek also made huge leaps forward in being able to do his bow hold and hold his box violin, I have the feeling Garek's "real" violin days are just around the corner. Gavin and I also managed to get my bike chain fixed at the local bike shop- yay!!

During our lunch time today we fit in lunch and swimming, so that we could rest after the afternoon lessons in preparation of our evening violin festival concert. Then this afternoon we had some down time where the boys watched a movie and we went out to get pizza for dinner. Notice how each boy preps for a concert...Gavin gets ready and is concentrating, while Garek snoozes...

Of course Garek decided to crash last minute and he ended up falling asleep at about 6:15, when he had a 7:30 concert to be at. Luckily, I managed to convince him to get up, and he and the other pre-twinklers got to go up on the big stage to show off their abilities with their bow holds and violin set up. Garek did an awesome job and even got to be the leader!

The live version of Garek's performance. . .

Then the festival continued. What they do is start with the upper level students and then work their way down levels, adding players once they reach the piece they can play. By the end, all of the violin players are playing the twinkle variations.

Gavin did such an awesome job with his variation and he even had his bow going in the right direction the whole time. This was a great experience for the boys, even though they were REALLY hot by the end (it was quite warm and not air conditioned in the gym they were playing in).

At the end, their lesson teacher Paula showed up to see how their week went. (She is coming to the teacher trainings tomorrow and will be here all next week). When we got back to the dorm, Garek and Gavin played with their new friend Michael (a young cellist staying on the same floor in the dorm). They spent quite awhile making paper airplanes and running around, way past bedtime! I think that concerts are both tiring and energizing, or maybe they are on their "5th wind" or so.