St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar

Hello everyone!

It has been awhile since the last post, and so many things have happened.  The Meadowlarks and I finished the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, I visited Boston for a bit to see my guy and have some adventures there, and now Tim and I are at Garth Newel Music Center again for another year of amazing music, people, and food!  My last year's posts from Garth Newel can be found here  =)

I'll be catching up on Boston adventures soon (and then Garth Newel adventures) but before that, I wanted to share some photos from our adventures at Stanford!

I really loved our time at Stanford.  The SLSQ program is so unique in that it brings so many different people from different walks of life together to create music together intensely for 10 days. There are professionals (chamber music legends), pre-professionals of different ages, and amateurs who are doctors, lawyers, professional photographers, and many others..  It was really simulating and refreshing, and I loved all of our interactions throughout the whole program.

Some of the highlights included a talk with John Adams,

sight reading sessions with a mixture of musicians that included the faculty,

exploring Palo Alto and seeing Tim join in on some belly dancing,

and of course, performing with the Meadowlarks in this beautiful space at Stanford!!

Photo cred: Warren Wu

After the concert, we celebrated with our amazing coaches while watching fireworks!  The fireworks were for the soccer games, but it seemed like it was for us, and we enjoyed it with our ear plugs in  ;)

One of my favorite parts of the night was seeing my baby bro!  He came with his girl, and it was so good to see them  =)

It was an incredible experience, and I feel so blessed to have gone to SLSQ this summer!

I hope you're having a wonderful weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

--Janny

Magnolia Plantation and Audubon Swamp

Hello everyone!

While we were in Charleston, David, Peter, and I visited the Magnolia plantation and the Audubon swamp. What a beautiful property!

As soon as we walked in, we were greeted by a few peacocks!  We found it very funny that they just roam around the property like this.

The garden was huge, and it took us a few hours to walk around.  Actually, I don't think we even saw all of it--maybe about 70%?

Mostly, it was a good chance to hang out with baby bro and fiancee.  

It was nice too because it gave Peter and David a chance to get to know each other better.  They're going to become family soon, so it seemed fitting  =)

the property was divided into many different sections, so it was fun to walk from one to the other and experience many different atmospheres. 

some bridges were rather... shaky  haha but this one was the most stable of them all, and we joked that it was because it had a tree going right through it  haha!

the one I wanted to visit the most was the maze!   haha

I have to say, it looked better from above than actually in the maze, but it was still fun =)

we made it!

we also found a rogue photographer in the maze  =p 

The weather was absolutely perfect (especially for this still-frozen Bostonian) and the whole place was so tranquil that it was a perfect counterpart to the amazing, but busy wedding day the day before!  =)

2 of my favorite guys =)

Next, we visited the swamp. You do have to pay extra to visit the swamp, but it was worth it for us because we really enjoyed seeing the wildlife!

It was heaven for this shutter bug (and the baby bro)

 All of the following pictures were taken by Peter and I'm so impressed!  =)

I especially love these!  Good work Peter!

When we looked up the swamp, the first thing everyone said was that we would see alligators!  We did indeed see them, but it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be haha  they weren't walking around or swimming around near us, which I guess makes sense since that would be quite dangerous.. haha

We had a wonderful time, and if you have never been, we would recommend dropping by!  It's quite beautiful, and sine we had amazing weather, it was perfect!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful week!

--Janny