jill.musick

This semester, the high school orchestra has been playing the theme song from Mission Impossible. We performed last Tuesday in the informal recital after school, complete with sunglasses!

This semester’s social chair asked if the students could come over to my house and bake cookies. Naturally, I said yes, although scheduling a time that actually worked for everyone took a few weeks. So on Sunday, I made lunch for them (they helped make the mashed potatoes), then they all worked together to make chocolate chip cookies. While the cookies were in the oven, we watched Mission Impossible! Every time the theme music came on, they all started playing “air violin” or “air cello” and singing along. What a great bunch!

Sometimes the small treasures in life are worth celebrating, or at least acknowledging with thankfulness.

• Saturday I went on a 20 mile run with another Jill. Along with the joy of fresh air and beautiful trees and meadows, I’m thankful the cough I’ve been battling didn’t affect the run; we had good conversation for 3 hours!
• I got hit in the face on Sunday by a soccer ball; thankfully, I only got a very small bruise on my jaw. It could have been a lot worse.
• On Monday, the Intermediate Orchestra cleaned up the chairs and stands in 16 seconds. It’s a new record!
• Also on Monday, a student and I noticed that a rubber band had fallen on the floor in the shape of a treble clef!
• Tuesday, I was thankful for violin shops, the smell of wood and varnish, misty hills with autumn colors, castles in the clouds, and the joy of seeing a broken instrument turn into an experience of a lifetime for a student.
• I’ve had 2 spontaneous dinners with people this week, plus coffee with one student and lunch with another. I deeply enjoy that time of caring for students one-on-one and letting others care for me.
• There’s a tree I walk by every day on the way to school. I’ve been watching it turn yellow, orange and red from the top down. It makes me smile every day!

Sunday was the beginning of Thanksgiving season. American Thanksgiving is still a whole month away, but Germany and Canada both celebrate earlier. This Sunday at church was our Erntedankfest Gottesdienst (‘Harvest-Thanks-Festival service’). One of the local harvests celebrated is that of the grape. A grape grower from a large vineyard nearby brought in a large, leafy grapevine and presented a description/demonstration of all the work that goes into each vine throughout the year. I took notes on what he said, but I may have missed a couple key points or misunderstood his description; his dialect was kind of strong.

• In the winter is the vine-cutting. They cut all the branches off a vine except 1.
• In March comes the bending time. The branch that is left gets bent (to the point it crackles) but not broken.
• When the branch starts budding, 2 out of 3 buds are removed.
• Through the Spring, the vines are cultivated and cared for.
• In July and August, 10-20% of the leaves are taken off so the leaves can each get enough sunlight and air. All excess is removed so the right amount of sugar gets produced and stored in the grapes.
• At harvest time, only the good grapes make it into the cellar – up to 50% are lost every year because they just don’t meet the standard.

Grapes are high-maintenance; you have to do a lot of hard work to get exactly the desired product. You can infer your own parallels to Jesus’ statement that He is the vine, we are the branches. The pastor’s sermon was about abiding in the vine – John 15:1-8.

Right after church, Katrina, Emily and I went over to Holzen’s fall festival. We met up with Marit and Natalie and the staff from Storch dorm. The freshly pressed apple juice was amazing! And the pumpkin soup was probably the best I had ever had! It was a good way to celebrate the local harvest.

To bridge the time between German/Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to be intentionally thankful for an entire month. Each day I’ll post a quick “thankfulness” status update on Facebook. Some of them will be just a hint of a fabulous story from the day; others are encapsulated fully within the short phrase. If you want to know the background, just ask!

Last week right after Emily got back from Rome, we walked up to the monument hill overlooking Kandern in the east and Tannenkirch in the west. Emily knew the sun was setting at 7pm, so we went up about 10 minutes before to watch God paint the skies. I love seeing how the setting sun transforms the familiar sight of Kandern into a freshly colored storybook town!

It’s good to have Emily back!

Yesterday (Wednesday, October 3) was German Unity Day, which is like Germany’s Fourth of July, but without the fireworks. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, but it wasn’t until October 3, 1990 that East and West Germany re-united into one country. Germans celebrate the holiday by taking off work, so we do the same at BFA.

I celebrated by having the kids from Intermediate Orchestra over to my house for Kaffee und Kuchen – coffee and cake.

This particular group is younger than in years past, and I’ve noticed that they are talkative in orchestra (I have to work harder to keep them focused on playing), but it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized just  how talkative they really are. You have to see it to believe it:

They literally talked and ate cake and other snacks for an entire hour before we jumped into a game. We played a slow-moving game of Apples to Apples; I say slow-moving because each person’s turn took extra time while they tried to get everyone’s attention. Then we played Telephone Pictionary, where each person writes a sentence, then passes the paper to the next person. Then everyone draws a picture based on the sentence, then folds down the first sentence and passes the paper. Next, everyone writes a sentence to describe the picture. The sentences and pictures get convoluted like in the game of Telephone, so it’s fun to see where they end up!

It was a more rambunctious way to celebrate German Unity Day than a typical German would, but it was lots of fun!

The Seniors (and my roommate Emily) are in Rome right now. (Read here for my account of last year’s trip) They’re having a grand time in the sun on the beach while the rest of us plug on with school. We make the most of it, though.

For me, it means a lighter schedule – I have fewer lessons to give this week. Orchestra goes on almost as normal, except we’re missing one of our cellists. Guitar class, though, is completely disrupted. 3 out of the 6 students are seniors. So, what is there to do? Have a little fun with the guitars, of course! Last year, a guitar student introduced me to this video. It inspired a Spring Concert rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow with 4 students on 1 guitar. But this time around, we took Walk Off the Earth’s arrangement (minus guitar-sharing).

This morning I looked in my school mailbox and found, in addition to some regular mail, these lovely items:

Thanks, Marit, for brightening my Monday morning!

Recently, we found out that the local Asian restaurant in town is closing down in November; it has been closed more often lately as well. Whenever we find out it’s closed, our typical reactions are that of disgust at the inconvenience it causes us. And when I found out it was closing, I thought, “Where am I going to get my Asian food now?”

Tonight as I was walking home from soccer, the thought came to me: “What about the family that owns the restaurant? Is their closing a mere ‘inconvenience’?” Their closing down could be due to financial troubles (as many businesses in Kandern face that problem), or family issues, or other personal reasons. Whatever the reason is, I’m quite sure that it affects their lives more than mine. I can’t walk 5 minutes and get Asian food. They have to pack up their lives and move somewhere else and face a Transition of some sort.

God, give me the grace to see people as You made them to be, rather than seeing merely what they can or can’t do for me.

Today was the Basel Marathon, Half Marathon, and 1/6 Marathon (a 7k). I wasn’t planning on racing, but my friend Katrina asked if I could “coach” her through the half marathon. She wasn’t sure she could make it alone, so I ran with her for moral support.

There were 7 of us participating: Megan, Rachel and Heather ran the 7k, Susan, Katrina and I ran the half, and Tommy ran the full marathon.

We met yesterday for a pasta party and Chariots of Fire showing. Ironically, Eric Liddel chose not to run on Sunday, and ours was a Sunday race. Katrina and I had a unique church service on the race course. We both had music playing – hers on her iPod, mine in my head. About a quarter of the way through, I started quoting as much of Colossians as I have memorized – currently chapters 1-3 with a couple memory bumps along the way.

After Colossians 1-3, I started looking at chapter 4. Verse 2 stuck out to me – “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.” That idea of being watchful in prayer was interesting – we’re not just supposed to continually bring requests before God in prayer, or constantly adore Him, or thank Him, or confess our sin – we’re to be anticipating God to work as we pray. We’re also to be watching and listening for how God is directing us to pray, even as we’re praying. How often am I really “watchful” in prayer?

Memorizing Scripture is one of the things I do on long runs, so my project for the year has been to memorize all of Colossians. I also like to pray and just process things – running gives me the space and time to clear my head and think about the people God has placed in my life without the distraction of things to do. Maybe in the coming months I’ll try to be more watchful in prayer as I run.

It was truly a blessing to run with friends!

Photo credits: Rachel and Katrina