Voice Lessons are great

So I had my first voice lesson yesterday and I was a great experience. Of course, not really singing in so long I have a lot of issues to fix. My new teacher is wonderful and she already had much insight into my voice just from listening to me vocalize yesterday. It was really nice. She assigned me a couple of Lieder songs to get into my voice that will help to re-strengthen my vocal muscles (that is one of the reasons that I was getting so tired after singing). I also have issues with my breathing....I'm using too much air which causes me to have to breathe too often. She gave me an exercise to do to help get that back into shape too. My "homework" is to practice twice a day for 10-15 minute increments until my voice gets tired and to not do any more. Well, I practiced for half an hour today and I didn't realize that my voice was tired until about an hour later. Now I know that I did too much - I shouldn't give my voice the opportunity to get tired. So I have a lot of hard work ahead but it will be worth it. Singing just gives me joy that I don't get out of anything else.


On another note, we had our introduction to Indian culture yesterday at work. I felt really bad for our India team that was here because yesterday was their Republic Day (which is like our 4th of July); it's the day that they celebrate their independance from the British and the day that their constitution was finalized. They showed us pictures of the parade that they have in Bali every year and it was amazing! The road they have it on is about the size of 35W and they have floats and their armed forces and people dancing all in the parade in these amazingly beautiful and colorful clothing. So because they were here, they had to work and if they had been home in India, they would have had the day off. One of the other things I learned is that each of the states has it's own language, culture, traditions and way of preparing food. Because of this, each of them speaks like 3 different languages!

They also showed us pictures of what they call the Lotus Temple - it was so beautiful! You can't go even in the gardens at the temple without taking your shoes off. Apparently, you have to leave your shoes at the gate, walk through the gardens and the actual temple shoe-less.
They also have a temple in India that is made completely of gold - I have never actually seen anything like it! One of the saddest things they told us is about the northern-most state. They have been fighting for this state with the people of Packistan for 50 years. This is because one of the stipulations of gaining their independance from Britian was that they had to split into 2 countries and apparantly this state was never decided upon, whether it would be a part of Packistan or India. Because of this, it is unsafe to travel there and it is supposed to be the most beautiful place in India to visit but nobody has actually seen it. The last interesting tidbit I will leave you with is that the city of Bali is 3 times the size of New York - can you imagine that??