May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii

Photos of the mixed level hula performing "Hawaiian Lullaby"
Photo of level 2/3 performing Yellow Ginger Lei

Today was my school's annual May Day program. The theme was flowers and I wrote a script for all the children. They were wonderful and memorized the entire performance! We titled the program "May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii".

Each Hawaiian Island is represented by a different flower. I learned many interesting things while working on the script. Here is a quick break down for you readers!

The Island of Nii'hau's lei are the white PuPu shells. They were Queen Emma's favorite lei.

Kaua'i's color is purple and their lei are the Mokihana berry. This berry can only be found on the island of Kaua'i.

Oahu is Yellow and their lei is the Ilima flower. It takes hundreds of Ilima flowers to make a single strand of this lei.

Moloka'i is green. The lei are the kukui nut, leaf, and flower.

Lana'i is orange and their lei are the Kauna'oa vine.

Kaho'olawe's color is silvery gray. Their flower is the Hinahina plant. This little plant can be found amongst the rocks down by the shoreline. (the bushes growing on the beach!)

Maui is pink and their lei is the Lokelani flower. This is the only flower not indigenous to Hawai'i.

And finally the Big Island is red and our flower is the Ohia Lehua flower. The ohia lehua provides rare color on a black lava field. They are the most abundant native trees in Hawaii and are among the first new life in new lava flows!

The videos I've posted include our school chant, Level 1 performing Pupu Hinu Hinu, Level 2/3 performing Yellow Ginger Lei, and Level 4 performing Pua Mana. I had to sing extra loud since I was both directing and video taping at the same time. As you can hear, I had to learn the Hawaiian words for the songs. I'm not just mouthing "watermelon watermelon watermelon"!

Why I love my job!

My 3 and a half year old student!

I have had the joy of teaching her since she was only 2 years old. And she can read all the lyrics to any song. She just melts my heart and makes my day every week!

Salerno Strings Recital

This evening 30 out of 75 students performed in my annual Salerno Strings Recital. The remaining 45 students are either located in Kona, are adults too scared to perform in my recital, or are on spring vacation! I am so proud of my students. There was not one single shaky nervous hand twinkling the ivories tonight! Everyone did such a beautiful job and the smile that filled their faces after accomplishing such a task was priceless.

This year I rented a church for my recital and it turned out to be the greatest idea ever. Because:

1. I didn't have to clean my house...Messy Jessie's House that is!

2. The church has plenty of folding chairs and pews.

3. The church has a piano.

4. The church also has a kitchen for dessert and juice after the recital.

All in all it turned out to be such a wonderful evening of music. I came home and Alex met me in the driveway and said "Go take a look down the private road". And there were my two little escape goats! They don't like anybody but me (they won't go near Alex!) So I got out of my car and just calmly walked down the road towards their pen, goats in tow. I've totally mastered this goat herding thing (No thanks to my herding dog Moki!!) If I'm just super calm and cool acting like nothing is wrong, they will follow me wherever I go. So I walked back into their pen, goats a follow, and noticed that part of the pen had collapsed (hence the e-scape goat adventure). I fixed the fence. Went back home, and now we are off to dinner to celebrate a wonderful day. I feel so unbelievably blessed to have the most amazing students and families in my life.

I saw a student posted a youtube video of her 1st grade daughters performance. You'll notice I'm squatting to play the duet part. I would have blocked all my students from the audience had I sat on a chair. Click HERE to watch a clip from the recital.

Appalachian Spring and Overture to Marriage of Figaro

This past weekend was the 2009-2010 season finale for Kamuela Philharmonic. In the videos I am the third stand first violinist at the very end. We performed Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, a Mozart violin concerto, and Mozart's Marriage of Figaro Overture.

A little music history for my blog:

Aaron Copland was born November 14, 1900 and lived to December 2, 1990 in Brooklyn NY. Several members of my orchestra actually had the opportunity to play under his conduction when he went on tour around the country working with different orchestras during the last decade of his life. He was an American Nationalist composer, with pieces that truly evoked the vast American landscape. He also incorporated percussive orchestration, changing meter, polyrhythms and polychords in most of his work. I would consider Copland's music to be much more percussive than melodic. His other most famous pieces I have performed in the past are Rodeo and Billy the Kid.

Irish Step Dancing

Tonight my friend Fabie and I watched a few Youtube videos on Irish step dancing. We mastered these steps within a few minutes! We feasted on Cornbeef and cabbage and listened to Irish pub songs on pandora.com. Note to self...don't dance too much after such a big Irish feast!

Alex in Waterworld screen shots

Here is Alex on the raft. There is another scene in the extended version that shows his whole body.
OhmygodOhmygodOhmygod it's a chest shot of the dreamy Alex Woodbury!!!!!
Here he is walking directly in front of Kevin Costner


Last night we couldn't decide what movie to watch so I suggested we take screen shots of him starring in Waterworld. There are other battle scenes where you can see Alex but they move so quickly it's hard to catch it in a screen shot.

I told Alex I remembered seeing this movie in the theaters when it first came out. I said "Little did I know back then at age 15 that one day I would grow up and marry the boy who walked in front of Kevin Costner in Waterworld!"

Virtual Piano Lessons

Well shoot folks, I don't think I can top last weekends post! Life is sort of boring right now. Nothing hilarious!

But tonight I embarked on a new directional branch of my career. CYBER lessons! That's right folks, I am now officially a virtual piano teacher. Available to my abroad students via ichat or skype. I did a test run with one of my middle school students tonight who is moving to Washington in May, to a small island without a piano teacher. So instead of her coming over for a lesson tonight, we skyped it. When her face popped up on my computer screen, I wanted to ham it up and say in a computery futuristic voice "Greetings. And welcome to your virtual piano lesson. I will be your cyber teacher, Jelexica, coming to you live from my pod on planet Jupiter". Jelexica was the only space age-y version of my name I could make up.

In other news,

There was a plague upon the Woodbury dwelling for over a week. We are both on the mend now. Spring break is here so I have 2 weeks off of school but will continue with private lessons.

And finally, we discovered a very funny song this week regarding the tsunami that never took place. Click HERE to hear some good island humor.