jill.musick

You know you live in Germany when all social norms are turned upside down the week before Ash Wednesday.

This Thursday, the festival known as Fasching, or Carnival, started with a bang. There was a band that marched by my house; the cymbal player gave an extra crash right in front of my window. Katrina said she heard a band playing outside her window at 2am. Any other time of the year, a noise at 2am would be highly disapproved. This, however, is Fasching week, so anything goes. Technically, the festival starts November 11 at 11:11am, but this week is the biggest part of the celebration.

Costumed people walking toward downtown Kandern

In addition to bands, there are people wearing wooden masks and large clown-shoes. Lots of the costumes have bells attached to the ankles, so it sounds like Santa’s reindeer have come to town. Some people dress up like trees and walk around town. People stay out late in bars drinking. There was a giant parade today, and all the streets in Kandern were full of oddly-dressed troupes. Monday, known as Rosenmontag, is a holiday from school and work. How can you make a bunch of hung-over people work?

Tree people!

Why is all this ridiculousness happening this week?

Historically, it started as pagan rituals with masks and dancing with loud noises to scare off winter and bring in summer. Judging by the snow yesterday, I don’t think the cymbal crashes worked.

Somehow, that pagan ritual combined with Catholic traditions (sin as much as possible before Ash Wednesday, confess, and be holy through Lent); Fasching turned into a loud celebration of  immorality before Lent starts. It’s like Mardi Gras, but worse. The masks and costumes make everyone feel free to sin anonymously. There is underwear hanging in the Blumenplatz, and drunk people walk around all day long in costumes that no proper German would ever dare to wear any other time of the year (people stared at me for wearing flip flops in the Fall – it wasn’t even cold yet!). I have heard that spouse swapping occurs sometimes here.  I was warned that this week is the one time in the whole year that it’s not safe for a girl to walk around by herself, so I’ve avoided downtown Kandern as much as possible.

The whole idea of sinning a bunch just before Lent is like trying to take advantage of God’s grace and use it for personal gain. Paul addresses this very issue in Romans 6.

¹What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? ²By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Sometimes, this town seems so innocent; it’s almost like a fairy tale. This week, however, I am reminded that many or most of the people in Kandern have not died to sin; they are in need of a Savior!

Pray that I would have opportunities to talk to my German friends in Band about the Gospel.

The last two weeks have been tough for BFA. I cannot say in too much detail what happened, but here is a statement from the director:

Dear Friends of BFA, Thank you for your interest in Black Forest Academy. BFA is going through a difficult time. There has been an incident involving a male student who was physically involved with several female students. He is no longer at BFA. This is a difficult time for all – students and staff alike. Please pray for our administration, faculty, residence and counseling staff, and students as we work through this issue.

Tim Shuman, Director, Black Forest Academy. 10 February 2010.

There are many hurting students right now. This kind of thing hits home to everyone; in a small school, everyone knows at least one person connected to the issue. There is pain, anger, resentment, a sense of betrayal, fear. Lots of kids don’t know how to handle the information; it will take some time to process it all.

Some of my students are unable to function normally because of the weight of this issue. Most of the kids in orchestra find it a relief to play their instruments; physical movement gets their minds off their mental and emotional anguish. The happiest kid in orchestra stares into space whenever he is not playing; I have never seen him so downcast.

It’s a good reminder for us to trust in God, not in BFA. As safe a place as BFA is, bad things do happen here. We are still in a fallen world, and we should be putting our trust in God, not people.

It is hard to understand why this happened and what we should think about it. It is apparent in Jude 18-24 that there are many responses toward situations like this.

In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly dsires. These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear – hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.

To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy – to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

Some of my students like to match each other. Strangely enough, I find that I start matching them by accident, too! My cellist in particular likes to match with people. The yearbook photographer has noticed that we match at least 3 times.

Here she is matching another student:

Twins! (almost)

On Friday we both showed up wearing our orchestra hoodies, dark blue jeans, and brown shoes. How funny!

Matching head to toe (except our hair)

Some of the kids are still rounding up money to buy their hoodies. It’s fun for them to have the hoodies to show that they belong to the group.

Friday night was Museumsnacht in Basel. All the museums stayed open from 6pm until 2am!! Anyone under 26 could get in for free. I showed my ID at the first museum and got a yellow wrist band. That wrist band let me into all the museums PLUS the museum route busses. It was amazing to be able to see fascinating museums for free!

I went there with Amanda Kelly (it was her weekend off) and Manda Thompson.

We started at an art museum called Fondation Beyeler. It normally costs 25 Euros to get in there, so we were pretty excited to be going for free! We saw some original van Gough, Cezanne, Monet, and Picasso works. There were some very strange things there, too. There were human bones laid out on a table (I thought they were animal bones until Amanda, who majored in Biology, started naming them and said they were human). That was kind of disturbing. There were also some Jenny Holzer pieces, which are streams of LED words that make political statements.

After that, we took the bus to the Munster cathedral in the center of Basel. Small ensembles made up of members of the Basel Symphony orchestra played mini-concerts throughout the evening. While we were there, we heard flute and harp duets. The sound in the cathedral was amazing – I wished I could have brought my violin in there and played some Bach just to listen to the resonance!

The Munster Cathedral in Basel

Next, we walked to the Antikenmuseum. It was fascinating to see artifacts from ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, and Egypt. Amanda and I saw little clay things that were probably idols. To think – so many wars were fought over these false gods. We now easily recognize these as useless idols, but we depend on other idols these days without realizing how foolish it is.

We were going to take a bus to the next place, but it was too crowded, so we walked. It turned out to not be too far. The Musical Instrument museum (!!!) was located in a renovated jail. Each former cell had a small collection of instruments and a podium with information on the instruments in 3 languages (German, French, and English). One of the cells had different horns that everyone could try – everything from a brass horn, a glass bottle, animal horns, to an orange cone!

Multi-bell trumpet? I wish I could have tried this one or heard it played!

The final museum we visited (we were exhausted by that point) was the Puppenhausmuseum. It was a museum of puppets and dolls. It was fascinating! So much detail! There were carousels and teddy bears and miniature wine cellars and shoe makers…. we could have spent hours there if it hadn’t been midnight after a long school week!

What is practicing? Some students who have been playing for years still do not know what it means. Some of my students have really funny ideas about practicing.

Today in a lesson, I asked a student how much he had practiced. He gave his amount (which was lower than it should have been). I asked the reason, and he said, “It didn’t work.” It is like pulling teeth to get descriptions out of this student, so I prodded him further. “What do you mean it didn’t work? What didn’t work?” He said, “The scales. They didn’t work.”  “You mean, you couldn’t play them right the first time, so you just gave up?” “Yeah.”  “That’s why you practice! Practice when you can’t play something, and then by the end you can play it. Practicing does not just mean playing through things you already know how to play!”

It sure can be handy to know how to practice.

Speaking of handy, that word has another meaning here. Handy=Cell Phone, and today I got my first German cell phone! I mean, Handy!

Katrina took Rachel and me to the store. We got really cheap phones – they can’t do much of anything besides call and text, but that’s all we need. I’m doing pay-as-you-go, so if I don’t use the phone at all, it doesn’t matter. I mostly wanted to have it for emergencies and meeting up with people.

Random fact: The emergency number here is not 911. We have two numbers: 112 for fire and ambulance and 110 for police.

My new handy on the German flag colored Handy Sock

Rachel and I were pretty excited about the cases we got, too. They look like little German flag socks!

Maybe I should use my phone to call up my students and see how their practicing is going….