I’m sitting in the hallway outside of Lesley’s studio in Braun Music Building listening to the St. Lawrence String Quartet rehearse Schumann’s Piano Quintet with Kwang-Wu Kim (a great way to help time pass as I identify reef fish and critters from ID books).

The week so far has been insanely busy because I’m participating in the St. Lawrence String Quartet’s Summer Chamber Music Festival. There are lots of familiar faces, and the musical instruction and immersion has been quite intense.

Living in Oakland does not make full days at Stanford easy. Some of the others seem to be bonding well because they are living on campus and have been spending late evenings reading music and hanging out (while I’ve been going home to do work). It’s been a vastly different experience than in years past, but I’m still having a great time. There’s a BBQ-dinner/music-reading party tomorrow night that has always been a lot of fun, so at least I’ll get to socialize a bit. :)

Back to real life on Monday. Apologies if I’ve been hard to contact.