This week I have...

1) Had my first day at school (even if it was only for 1½ hours). That's right, a real school. I went to vaccinate the school's rabbit for one of the teachers who I know and she asked me to stay and sit in on her Year 10 Drama class.

2) Become the only double-reed player in Poa ensemble - and already I've been dragged into playing in a concert on Wednesday! Later on I found out that most bassoonists start out exactly the same way, due to the high demand for bassoons in ensembles.

3) Started a new subject/course called Successful Living. It is a 1-year study based on the first 9 chapters of the book of Proverbs. It looks great so far, and I'm very much looking forward to doing more work on it.

4) Saw a policeman directing traffic - definitely one of the highlights of my week.

5) Saw the number plate 'MY CAR' which happens to be one I've been looking for for years - one of the highlights of my month.

6) Have officially started teaching my first student - a family friend who is learning the flute. I've given him 6 lessons on a trial basis to see whether he is interested in continuing, which he is, so I'll be teaching him until at least the end of this term.

7) Finally gotten around to doing a blog post. Although I guess that's kind of self apparent...

And such concludes all the major happenings of my week that I can remember at the moment.

I'm a bassoonist!!!!

No joke, I really am! It's almost as much of a shock to me as it is to you!! If someone had told me 2 weeks ago that I would be playing the bassoon before the month was over, I would never have believed them. But then God started working again, and opened all these doors that made it amazingly clear. Basically, this is what happened:

1) My piccolo which I had been looking forward to learning to play turned out to still have problems. I still haven't had an opportunity to have it fixed.

2) My passion for Woodwinds was reinforced, and I couldn't stop dreaming about the bassoon. Even when I wasn't dreaming, it seemed like there were bassoon reeds following me all around the School of Music.

3) Mum started talking about how much we will need a bass instrument to replace the cello when Bradley goes off to Uni. This was the first time I started thinking that it might actually be a reality, not just one of my dreams.

4) I told Mum (and Dad) about the bassoon and what it could do, and mentioned that it has been my dream to learn to play it. Amazingly, they were both very positive about it. In fact, the idea met absolutely no opposition at all! This convinced me that God was telling me something, because I had been expecting to spend months convincing the parents to let me learn another instrument!

5) Then I had to face the reality - buying a bassoon would cost me about $5,000 to get a decent instrument. I didn't give up hope, though, and kept praying. Then God opened another door when I found out that the Canberra School of Music had a very good bassoon sitting in storage that I could 'rent' for free as a MuST student!! I became convinced that God creates these 'problems' so that we can watch him at work solving them, rather than just take everything for granted.

6) The worst problem of all then presented itself. Playing pretty much any wind instrument can have very bad effects on one's flute playing. I had to give up playing the trumpet, clarinet & oboe for that very reason. However, it turns out that bassoon is the ONLY wind instrument (besides maybe recorder, which is technically a type of flute) that is compatible with flute playing!! To me this is nothing short of a miracle.

So I decided to take the challenge and learn another instrument - and before I knew it my dreams had become reality! I brought home the bassoon (haven't come up with a name for him yet... suggestions welcome! =P) on Tuesday afternoon, and much to my relief it came with a reed (a reed is the bit of cane that vibrates to make the sound - without the reed, you can't play a bassoon). I think I would have died if I had had the bassoon for a whole week without being able to play it. I'm seeing my new bassoon teacher on Tuesday, which, needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to. He is the Principle Bassoonist of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, a position he's held since 1965. He has also received a Canberran of the Year award, as well as an Order of Australia medal for his work in youth orchestras.

And now I've come to the point where I realize that in all my excitement I forget to tell you what a bassoon actually is. Most of you probably wouldn't know, due to its extreme rarity. Well, the Bassoon is the bass of the Woodwind family. It is made of an 8-foot long pipe which is bent double over itself to allow the player to reach all the keys. It has an extremely complicated fingering system - most of the fingers only have to cover 1 hole each, but the thumbs have to control 13-14 levers between the 2 of them. Crazy, I know. Especially when you're the one playing it. But trust me, it's definitely worth it!

Since bassoons are so expensive, hardly anyone plays them, so they are very in demand in ensembles and orchestras. After only playing for 1 day, I've already been asked to play in a beginner orchestra group and possible another ensemble later in the year. This afternoon will be my first experience playing bassoon in an ensemble, so wish me luck!

Finally, here is a picture of the bassoon I'm using. This photo doesn't show the size very well, but standing up it goes up to about the height of my neck. I might add some photos to this post later on if I can manage to take any that aren't as bad quality as this one.

An answer to prayer

Okay, well most of you may find this post irrevelevant or even boring (as probably most of my posts are), but something so exciting happened that I have to share it with someone - or everyone.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been praying very hard about how God wants me to spend my life, and what career pathway he has planned for me. I have some of my own ideas based on my own feelings, but I really want to know for sure exactly what He wants me to do with my life. So I've been praying really hard about it for quite some time, but not really getting any answers. In fact, it didn't seem like I was getting any response at all.

But then things started happening. Seemingly out of the blue Mum received an email from a student of the Sydney Conservatorium whom she (Mum) had emailed months before, with no response, whom we had all forgotten about long ago. Apparently she was doing research as part of her PhD into the effects that being homeschooled have on one's music education. She was looking for willing families through which to conduct the research, so of course Mum volunteered us. Months later we received an email back saying she would very much like to come and see our family in the July holidays.

So on Tuesday she came and spent several hours interviewing us and listening to us perform. Nothing special had happened up to this point. Then we got to talking with her and found out that she was homeschooled (which we had kind of guessed already) and had studied a Bachelor of Music Education majoring in Flute. You can imagine how excited I was to have somebody to talk to that has experienced and done exactly what I am interested in doing. It was the most amazing help to be able to ask all these questions I've been wanting to ask someone for YEARS, as well as having the assurance that this person understood exactly where I was coming from, having come from there herself. To me it was a heaven-sent opporunity to find the answers I'd been looking for. Long story short, we (or I) ended up interviewing her more than she did us. Fortunately she didn't mind at all, and I was overjoyed at receiving the guidance I'd been praying for. Not only because I now have a clear idea of what God wants me to do, but also because it was such a blessing to see prayer answered so effectively!

P.S. I didn't take that photo, much as I would like to say I did...

Kittens - for the last time.

Don't worry, it's not as serious as it sounds. Only next time they'll be so grown up they can hardly be called kittens anymore. Juveniles would be more accurate. Even now they're pretty much independent already. Physically independent, that is, but they're still very young emotionally. They still need a "mother" to look up to and learn from, and someone in leadership that will keep them all "in line." Since they're being weaned, we're trying to keep them separate from their biological mother (Pepper), but they now have a new "foster mother." Cinnamon, the new Plush Lop, was very keen to take on the job of raising them to adulthood and teaching them how to live, so she now lives in the shed with them instead of Pepper. Fortunately the kittens idolise her and she adores them, so everything is working out fantastic at the moment. Cinnamon is no longer lonely and longing to be bred, and the kittens have a new 'mother' that can they can look up to as a mentor. At least that's the way I like to think of things. ;-)

Here are some photos of the kittens and Cinnamon playing together 1 day after being introduced to each other:

Cinnamon with Cookie:

(Left to right) Isabella & Frensky.

Arthur, Isabella, Cinnamon & Queensland.

Frensky - I love the colour in this photo.

Cinnamon & Victoria - these 2 seem to get along especially well together.

Cinnamon and Queensland.

Group huddle...

Arthur, Isabella, Cinnamon, NSW, Frensky & Cookie.

Lesson from my iPod

Well, not exactly, but something that happened with it taught me something. On the weekend Caitlyn and I were travelling on the bus up to Canberra for a rabbit show, and we were both listening to songs on my iPod. After some discussion as to which songs we should listen to, we decided to save 'the best' for later on in the trip, and started listening to some of the 'not-so-nice' songs. Unfortunately, though, we had only listened to a couple of songs before my iPod died (it has a habit of randomly turning itself on while it's in my bag, and playing until it runs out of battery). Imagine my frustration when we didn't get to hear any of our favourite songs, and then had 4 hours of sitting on the bus with nothing to listen to. I felt so silly for actually choosing not to listen to the good songs. It brought into sharp realization the fact that there is nothing to gain by saving good things for "later." There may not be a later. If you have something you want to do and you have the opportunity, don't wait. Just do it.

I'm the sort of person that is constantly setting goals for myself. It struck me how much I'm always thinking of a new goal and then putting it aside to do "later." I have stacks of goals to be completed some other time when it's more convenient. Well, one thing I've learnt lately is that life rarely (if ever) gets more convenient and that there is no time like the present. If you don't do something now you may never get the chance again.

So my new goal is to accomplish all of my goals as soon as opportunity presents itself without waiting for it. So I shall make a start by publishing this post before it gets so long that nobody wants to read it and before my laptop battery runs out and my computer dies.

Happy Holidays everyone!