San Fran with the Larks!

Hello everyone,

My hopping around the United States is almost coming to an end!!  It's been a crazy wonderful summer of Houston-Seattle-Oregon-Bozeman-Las Vegas-SoCal-San Fran-Seattle.  I am so blessed to be pursuing something that allows me to travel so much, especially since it's with two of my best friends  =)   This summer has really been an amazing one for our trio, and it's been exciting to see our group grow as a group, and also to meet amazing people along the way.  We are now in Seattle to perform one last time for the summer, but I wanted to share some photos of the lovely city we just left: San Fran!  It was kind of funny because I was just there for spring break with my man a couple of months ago, and it certainly brought back amazing memories, especially since we also visited Berkeley this time to see baby bro and my dear friend Alina again!

Anyway, we got to enjoy a couple of days in this lovely city of San Fran, and we can't thank Timmay's sister enough for letting us stay with her!  It was such a different experience too, staying in the heart of the city and exploring via the public transit instead of driving in from the suburbs!

walking around downtown...

We also got to meet some amazing faculty from San Francisco Conservatory and had a few coachings!

and if you haven't had Bi-Rite ice cream, and you're in the San Fran area, please, do go right now! so. soo good.  =)  Their Salted Caramel. Oh my goodness.  Just go try it (and all the other awesome flavors) and tell me it was not worth the trip into the city  ;)

One of the days that we stayed in the Bay area, we took the Bart over to spend a day in Berkeley with baby bro and Alina!  As we were wandering around waiting for them to both get off work/get done with class, we stumbled upon this store.

Too perfect. Isn't it?  haha    so sad..  =p  

Then, we met up with Alina and walked around the Berkeley campus  =)  It was so nice having my bestie roommate from high school and my bestie from college years both with me!  and they seemed to hit it off right away as well which was awesome!  but I mean, I knew they would, how could two awesome peeps not get along, right?  ;)

Oh, and funny story!  As we were walking around the campus, we happened upon this hip hop group rehearsing, and I said, "haha! that looks like something baby bro would be doing!"  When I looked around the group though, I didn't see him, and then I promptly got distracted by this adorable little puppy.  A second later, Abers poked me in the side, and pointed to this random kid in the back who was waving at us, and it was baby bro!  haha!  It was so funny, and we laughed about it all evening  =)

we ended the night with a lovely dinner with everyone, and then Abers and I took the train back into the city!

Oh San Fran, you wonderful city, you!  with amazing mochas. and beautiful people. and colorful buildings!  I would really love to live there one day  =)  Thanks for being the background for some incredible memories!

Next stop?  Seattle.

the view coming into Seattle

We just got back from a camping trip to the Goldmyer Hotsprings, so stay tuned for the update!  It is such an incredible place, and I can't wait to share the pictures with all of you!

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!
--Janny

Capistrano and road trip to San Fran!

Hello everyone!

We're in San Francisco!!!!!!!   It was quite an interesting trip from LA to San Fran that consisted of a random gorilla in the back seat, broken Amtrak train, missed bus from LA to San Fran, a rental car reservation at a closed rental car place, a rental car place that ran out of cars... 

but in the end, we finally got a rental car and had a wonderful road trip up to the good old San Fran!

the sunset that greeted us as we drove up the golden state!

Anyway, before I share the San Fran photos, I wanted to share some photos from the Capistrano Music Festival!  What an intense, but incredible week of music making with some amazing people!!

with some of the students  =)

And our Debussy quartet with Professor Yoko Matsuda!

With Yoko Matsuda and Bill Fitzpatrick  =)  Such incredible people, teachers, mentors. so blessed to have had a chance to work with these two!

The festival was also full of adorableness in the form of the director's son, Arthur.  

You see what I mean?!  too much cute in one place!

For some reason though, Arthur would never let me hold him, =( but on the last day of the festival, he actually wanted to come to me!!  definitely made me a happy camper  =p    ahhh he's so adorable!

It was also an awesome week because I got to hold and play a Stradivarius!!  for the first time in my life!!!  AAHHH  XD  is this for realz?   my Stradivarius cherry has officially been popped!

What an awesome week of music making with incredible people!  in one short week, I got to play Ravel Trio, Debussy Quartet, Ravel Quartet, Brahms Piano Quintet, and Mendelssohn Octet!!

with fellow fellows, the Triggs   =)

With the two professors!

It was such a wonderful experience, and I hope we get to see and work with all of them again soon!
Thanks for stopping by!
--Janny

Last day of Spring Break!

Hello everyone!

School has started again, but I'm definitely still in Spring Break mode...

Here I am, dreaming about San Francisco and our spring break,

when I'm supposed to be preparing for my Orchestral Repertoire midterm...

It's at 4,, so I still have time to practice for it, right?

Oh Ein Heldenleben. 

why you so difficult?!

sigh...

Ah, but San Francisco was so awesome!

 and Berkeley too!

The last day actually began in Berkeley,

and on our way to San Fran, we stopped by the Berkeley Marina and the longest pier I've ever seen.

We took a leisurely walk on this pier,

and like half an hour later, we were at the end of the pier!

not even joking.

about half way through, I remember thinking, 

'I still can't see the end of this pier...  does it ever end?'

and it wasn't even the actual end of the pier!  

the original pier had kept going, but for some reason, today's pier stopped in the middle somewhere.

 (the other half of the pier and the Golden Gate Bridge.)

Though it was a longer walk than expected,

we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves strolling along the pier,

talking, laughing at antics of the seagulls, and wondering why there were ducks so far out into the ocean...

What was really cool was that when we first got there, it was incredibly foggy;

we couldn't even see 10 ft ahead of us.

but when we turned around to return to our car, it was crystal clear!

Before and after photo  haha

Then, we arrived at San Francisco, and had In n Out burger!

we had been talking about going to eat at In n Out since the first day we got to Cali,

and we still hadn't been able to eat these famed burgers!

My first experience with Animal Style.

yum!

I know these aren't horribly great for us, but sometimes you just crave a good burger, right?

and fries.

oh yeah.

why are they sooo delicious?

Though I have to say, eating out every single meal did take a toll on how my body felt,

and I ate a salad for every single meal for a couple of days when I got back home  haha

salad detox?  =p

But at the time, we thoroughly enjoyed our burger and fries  =)

And then we went tandem biking!

on the bridge!

and it was sunny, warm, and overall an incredibly beautiful day to do so!

David wasn't too thrilled about the tandem idea at first,

and when we first began, I did fear for our lives and our relationship.

haha just kidding about the relationship part, (maybe)

but I did fear for our lives.

We couldn't keep the bike going straight - it kept wobbling- and there were cars coming!

It was much harder than I thought it would be.

and oh my goodness, making sharp turns on the tandem was atrocious!

I'm pretty sure we provided much laughter to the passerbys as we tried to maneuver sharp turns.

After a couple tries and a switch in who was in the front,

we finally figured out how to coordinate everything, and ended up having a blast  =)

Being ballroom dance partners and everything,

I thought we would've figured out how to coordinate movements faster,

but I guess it was a good partnership building exercise...?  =p

We biked all the way to the cute little town of Sausalito (on the other side of the bridge)

and walked around and had some ice cream before we got on the ferry back to San Fran.

on Sausalito's main street

by the ferry landing.  such a chill little puppy!

on the ferry

We were frozen by the time we landed back in San Francisco,

because it's much, much colder out in the ocean,

so we warmed up by having some clam chowder   =)

ahhh  such a perfect way to end our biking adventure!

Oh, and conveniently enough, the bike rental place was located right next to this place.

I never needed much encouragement when it comes to chocolate!

ah, San Francisco, you were so good to us.

We'll be back again soon!

Now, back to the reality of practicing,,,  and my midterm,,,  eek!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

--Janny

to CALI!!!

Hello everyone,

It's officially Spring Break!!!!!

YAY!!!!

and David and I are currently sitting in Houston IAH airport waiting for our flight to California!!

Bye bye, gloomy Houston, 

hello, (hopefully) incredibly sunny Cali!  =D

We're only there for 5-ish days, but we're going to try to fit in as many sight seeing as we can,

and also visit as many of our friends and family while we are there.

hopefully up all of these places marked on the map..?

yay road trip!!

it's going to be pretty epic  =)

I'll try to keep up with the blogging as much as I can throughout our intense spring break adventure  ;)

Happy Monday everyone!!

--Janny

Road Trip Musings

Hello everyone!

I am convinced that road trips are the fastest and the surest way of getting to know someone really well.  I mean, you are stuck in a small box together for an extended length of time:  You can't avoid issues if they come up, you can't just leave the house or just go into your room and shut the door...  Also, you are not as connected to the rest of the world, especially if you are old school like us and don't own iphones or any phone with a data plan.  So these are some of the things I have learned, experienced, and thought about on this road trip with my lil bro, grandma, and an ipod plugged into the car.

• Grandmas always tell the BEST stories!  I mean, they are like walking history books, right?  It's so much more fun learning about history through them than learning it through a textbook (although I find reading history really interesting as well  haha)  Also, I think they had waay more fun back then.  Also, I'm glad arranged marriages are not common anymore,, even though both of my grandparents had arranged marriages, and their marriages were very happy.  Grandma dated grandpa for only 2 months before getting married!  2 months!   D=

• If you are driving, and you get sleepy, you should ask someone else to drive right away.  Because it's dangerous.  But, say, if you feel like testing your willpower to see how long you can stay awake, continuously slapping yourself lightly works pretty well.  (lil bro made fun of me for it, but I woke up once to find him doing the same thing!  haha)  Trying to count multiples of 7, on the other hand, doesn't work very well--it only works for a couple of minutes.

• There are some really odd names for roads and cities.  For example, Bond Butt Rd.  After 13 hours of driving, this becomes 'James Bond's Butt Road' in your mind.  Also, after many hours in the car, one of these odd names will be enough to have everyone in the car dying from laughter.

Martinez Hercules!!!

• Actually, now that I think about it, an incredible amount of things are funny after 10+ hours of straight driving.  And then you look back and wonder,,, 'why did we think that was funny?'

• Bring a blanket for those not driving!  When you are driving, for some reason your temperature runs higher than those of the passengers.  Also, the cold temperature helps to keep you awake, so naturally, you blast the AC.  Unfortunately, this means frozen passengers.  A simple blanket will take care of this issue.

• Lil bro is one smart cookie.  I took a Theory of Ethics class last year, and I was explaining some of the philosophical views and the issues that came up in the class, and we had fun discussing philosophy for quite a bit of Oregon.  We also discussed how history can be interpreted in so many different ways.  President Lincoln is always a fascinating subject.  We also discussed his future.  Though he is going into Pre-med, and I couldn't have been farther from Pre-med in my undergraduate studies, I had many friends who were Pre-med, so I tried to be helpful.  I think he's going to be just fine =)

• When you want to eat a picnic lunch and see a sign for a lake, make sure to check just how far this lake is.  We didn't, and ended up driving 10 minutes out of the way just to get to this 'lake'.  In the end, it wasn't even a lake,, and it smelled funny.  but it felt very adventurous because the road was extremely narrow and squiggly.  We also saw a rope bridge which was blocked off.  If Grandma wasn't there, we probably would have attempted it anyway.  Grandma probably saved our lives.

• I've seen deer crossing signs, but Oregon has bear crossing signs and California has cow crossing signs. I wish I would have taken pictures. We were laughing so hard when we saw the cow crossing sign.

• The West coast is incredibly beautiful.  The landscape varies every hour or so, but I enjoyed seeing every single one.   It's funny how quickly the changes happen as well.  As soon as we got into California, almost in an instant, the landscape changed!

• Did you know that Seattle is NOT the capital of Washington?  It's Olympia! Who's heard of Olympia?  (I actually learned this on my last road trip with daddy, but I just thought I'd share)

• My brother can pop his ears just by thinking about it.  For me, I have to yawn to do that.  I thought that was how it was for everyone?   I spent the rest of that car ride trying to pop my ears by sheer willpower.  I didn't succeed.

• We were incredibly happy to see I-80.  It was kinda surprising.  (it's the highway that runs through Nebraska)  Aurora, NE, the first place we moved to from Korea, will always have a special place in our hearts =)

• The way we felt when we saw the Seattle skyline after so many hours on the road must be how one feels when seeing an oasis in the desert.  Also, why oh WHY does California have to be so long?!  We cheered for a good couple of minutes when 'Welcome to Oregon' sign came up.

• I had another popular music crash course (because I am always behind on the latest popular music trends and lil bro is always on top of these things).  I learned that I still am not a member of the Bieber fever.  Still not a Taylor Swift fan.  Still don't get rap. at all.   We whipped our hair back and forth (and the car did a little bit as well) to Willow Smith.  My favorites are still the oldies.  We really like Michael Jackson; we tried to sing as high as he was singing.  When Mexican music comes on while surfing the radio, our heads automatically bobble side to side.  I found that I really enjoy acoustic music--like AJ Rafael, Jason Mraz, Jeremy Passion.  so nice!  Oh, and Lil bro and I can now belt out 'Lucky' by Jason Mraz and Colby Cailllt--right harmonies and everything!

• and it reminded me of the last road trip we took to the East Coast.. about 8 years ago.  We were belting out duets back then as well.  It was High School Musical...  Don't judge, we were young!  haha   but they had some really nice, singable duets on the soundtrack CD.  =p

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Happy Monday!

--Janny

Impromptu San Francisco Day 3.

Hello everyone!

We were planning on driving back home yesterday morning, but somehow, we ended up going back into San Francisco for one more day!  I think the main reason was that we are nerds, 

and wanted to explore the science museum (the Exploratorium)  haha.  

On our way there, we decided to go by the Namugaji restaurant because we liked their food so much, 

and stumbled upon the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade!  It was a sight to see.  

I was so busy just taking it all in that the pictures are a bit lacking, 

but here is the gist of what was going on.

There was so much excitement in the air, and though we were stuck in traffic for almost an hour, 

I'm so glad we got to experience a part of the parade.

Because we were stuck in traffic for so long, we barely made it to the Exploratorium.

Though they recommend 2-3 hours, we decided to go in anyway for 40 min.

We zipped around as fast as we could, trying to tinker with as many toys and exhibits 

before we got kicked out  lol

bubbles and shadows

Racing.  I won, by the way =p

hovering bubbles

hug a tornado

What do you read?

Tallest I've been in ma life!

As a last stop in Cali, we had In-N-Out Burger.  It's a must, right?  =)

I hope you had a wonderful weekend, and thanks for reading!

--Janny