That’s right, in addition to being freed from the depths of the winter chill, I am officially freed from a week of classes! Much of the city has emptied as people head off to beach destinations or other trips, but I am sticking around to work on grading papers, working on my internship search for the Fall, wedding plans, and hopefully getting ahead in my research papers due at the end of the semester. While that may not sound exciting, the fact that I don’t have to sit through multiple hours of class means that I have TONS of free time! I’m so excited to get to eat at my own house, clean my room, organize myself, and otherwise relax with no deadlines, no meetings, no need to be anywhere “on time.” It’s a great feeling!
To kick it all off, when I got off work yesterday, Dave texted me that we were going to meet his sister Nikki and her kids for dinner. We went to a wonderful little family-run Vietnamese place and I LOVED everything we ordered from sweet-and-sour pork to beef tamarind to soybean milk. Meg (Nikki’s almost-20-year-old daughter, Dave’s niece) came down and is off for Spring Break too so hopefully we’ll get some more time to hang out during the week. It was great to relax with them and Nikki has been so welcoming and inviting as my future sister-in-law.
Then, Dave and I headed out for a night at the opera. The Syracuse Opera only performs 3 operas a season, and tonight was their big opener with Romeo and Juliet. Neither of us had sat through a full opera though we had been to different samplers and I had studied operatic form in my past humanities classes. We met up with another girl from the Branch majoring in music education and were lucky enough to get seats on the orchestra level! Both the Symphony and the Opera offer student specials for whatever seats don’t sell that you can get a half hour before the show begins. But, you never know where you’ll end up. The seats were close to the back but a perfect view for catching the English translations projected overhead.
It was the first time we’d been back to the Symphony since Dave and I got engaged there on Valentine’s Day, so, naturally, we were both admittedly sentimental. It may just be another civic center, but it will always be a special place for us where we shared our love of music, our love of fine arts, and our love for each other. I’m very blessed to have a great man who loves me in my life and it was sweetly humbling to cuddle up next to him while robust music filled the dark concert hall. We talked about how, unlike popular media with skeleton-skinny drug-addicted and moral-less models parade around on screen, the opera singers were larger, robust, and confident people who, with nothing beyond their own lungs could fill an entire hall with rich tones and harmonies. Yes, there was elaborate costuming and stage props and the backdrop of the set of visual enhancement, but their real beauty lay in their love of music and the recognition of their God-given talents strengthened by years of practice and polishing. Needless to say, I love the performing arts and it’s been AWESOME to attend so many high-caliber shows...and share them with my sweetheart.
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