The Adventures of Three Violins

Once upon a time, there lived three violins. They were good, sweet instruments, who delighted in singing for the Lord and teaching other little violins to do the same. But these violins were not content to simply instruct from their own - sometimes limited - amount of knowledge, oh no! They wanted to be the best teachers they could be! So one year, they packed their bags and flew (what an experience! To fly!) to the mountain-edged city of Salt Lake, to learn how to better teach their own sweet little violins back home.

Ten enlightening, mind-spinning, exciting days later, they returned home. Overflowing with new ideas, theories, and techniques, they dove into the next year of teaching with renewed enthusiasm and energy. But always, in the back of their mind, they longed to return and learn yet more from the wonderful older violins at the Suzuki Institute.
A year slipped by, then another, and once again, the three violins found themselves in the brown-but-beautiful state of Utah.

They had returned.

As they basked in the warm sunshine (the violins' girls even got sunburned!), experimented with new techniques for good tone, and watched with grins as their bows and girls did multiple, silly-looking exercises together, they marvelled at all the wonderful things to be seen and heard at Suzuki Camp!

What a crazy, information-packed three days we've had! But in case it wasn't clear from the violin's perspective, I should explain. I'm sitting here on a comfy red sofa with Lauren and Mikaela, in our air-conditioned hotel "suite", just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. We are here to attend Teacher Training for Suzuki Books 2 & 3, but at the moment we are searching for cute lunch and shopping stops to drop by tomorrow (our one day off). We have just had two and a half days of classes, and were I to go home today, there are already so many things I would change in my personal playing and teaching methods - it's great!


Ordering Burgers and Fries Online



We got in Wednesday evening, late. Quite late. In fact, by the time we got to our room, we were hard-pressed to find a restaurant that was still open to satisfy our crying stomachs. Finally, we discovered that "Five Guys, Burger and Fries" (which we had never been to) allowed online orders, and by the skin of our teeth we ordered some dinner and picked it up 15 minutes before they closed. Wheh!

 Thursday we didn't have to be at the Institute until 3, so we slept in, began our Bible study on the Holy Spirit (more on that later) and went grocery shopping for the week. We discovered last year that, if we have a plan for meals, we save tons of money! And yet... this looks like quite a heap of food for three girls, dontcha think?

But we have quite the sophisticated menu, of course. Thursday we had the "European" dinner - brie cheese (yum!), sausage (yum!), french bread (yum!) grapes (yum!) and sparkling juice...yum. Yesterday we made chicken Alfredo, tonight it was tacos and sweet potato fries... For some inexplicable reason, food takes up quite a bit of our time here...as evidenced by the fact that we've spent the last 2.5 hours looking for a place to have lunch tomorrow. *ahem* You'd think we were boys, for all the emphasis we place on this subject! :p

Of course, food is not all we're doing. So far, we've had fourteen hours of classroom time (we've worked all the way through Book 2), a few hours of soaking up the sun on lunch break (we're talking in the 70s...have you ever wanted to just hug the sun?), a few hours of Bible study, gone shopping at Forever 21, and talked with some great Christian girls (how cool is that? Last time we came, we did not meet a single Christian!). I will have to save tonight's experience for later ('cause I am tired), but it involved...chocolate, hysterical laughs, sparklers, divers, and...safari themes. There now, aren't you curious?

But tomorrow, our one day off, we will do our study time and then head off to Salt Lake City for a day on the town! We plan to hit a Bible exhibit to see pages of the Gutenberg Bible, find a cute lunch spot (if we can), and spend some time with our favorite haunt of two years ago, Gateway.

Ta-ta, and goodnight!