In Over My Head
Last month Natalie's Kindergarten teacher asked me if I would play the piano for their upcoming 20th Anniversary Fest. Feeling excited that the Germans would even think to ask me, I immediately said yes. Then I went home and started to worry about it and wish I'd said maybe or at least asked to see the music first. At the beginning of this month I finally got the music and was able to start practicing. It's not too difficult, but I still feel as if I've taken on too much by agreeing to help out.
The music was all handwritten by Natalie's music teacher and while the notes weren't hard to read, the little notations she wrote were all in German. I don't know any musical German so that was tricky to figure out. On the plus side though, now I do know some German musical terms. Plus, I don't mind playing the piano here at home where there is not an audience, but I don't love playing in front of actual people. Still, I practiced away at home and I felt fairly confident about my ability to play the songs.
Confident, that is, until I had to accompany the kindergarten kids at a practice. I totally fell apart - songs that I could play almost without looking at home I just kept messing up. Thanks to daily practices of at least an hour, things got a little better at the next week's practice and even better the week after that. Despite the improvements I've made, I'm still worried about how I'll do at the actual performance next Saturday. I have three practices with the kids this week before the big show and then I can stop feeling stressed.
So that I can end of a positive note here, I am really grateful that I was asked to help out. After three and a half years, I'm finally feeling included here in town. Also, it's been a great opportunity for me to get over feeling afraid of playing piano in public and maybe even improve my talent. I think what I'm most grateful for about this whole thing is that it's helped me improve my German skills. Because there are so many American kids at our kindergarten, the teachers wanted to translate the narrators parts into English and they asked me to help with the translation. Even better than that, I can almost always understand what the music teacher and the other teachers are saying to the kids and to me. So while I've been really stressed about the whole thing, I think in the end it's been good in a lot of ways.
The music was all handwritten by Natalie's music teacher and while the notes weren't hard to read, the little notations she wrote were all in German. I don't know any musical German so that was tricky to figure out. On the plus side though, now I do know some German musical terms. Plus, I don't mind playing the piano here at home where there is not an audience, but I don't love playing in front of actual people. Still, I practiced away at home and I felt fairly confident about my ability to play the songs.
Confident, that is, until I had to accompany the kindergarten kids at a practice. I totally fell apart - songs that I could play almost without looking at home I just kept messing up. Thanks to daily practices of at least an hour, things got a little better at the next week's practice and even better the week after that. Despite the improvements I've made, I'm still worried about how I'll do at the actual performance next Saturday. I have three practices with the kids this week before the big show and then I can stop feeling stressed.
So that I can end of a positive note here, I am really grateful that I was asked to help out. After three and a half years, I'm finally feeling included here in town. Also, it's been a great opportunity for me to get over feeling afraid of playing piano in public and maybe even improve my talent. I think what I'm most grateful for about this whole thing is that it's helped me improve my German skills. Because there are so many American kids at our kindergarten, the teachers wanted to translate the narrators parts into English and they asked me to help with the translation. Even better than that, I can almost always understand what the music teacher and the other teachers are saying to the kids and to me. So while I've been really stressed about the whole thing, I think in the end it's been good in a lot of ways.
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