Since returning from Romania on Tuesday last, I have been thrown headlong back into my vicious schedule of researching, working on grad school applications, and other minor annoyances tasks of great import. Tuesday began the one-month countdown to the biggest share of my application deadlines, so I have, unfortunately, been forced to prioritize this most unsavory part of my life.
It wouldn't be quite so bad were I applying to a normal program, like Geology or Classics or Rocket Science. To apply to these kinds of programs, you fill in your information, write a statement or two, send your transcripts, and voilà: Four months later you get your rejection letter, and that's that. But applying to seven different Choral Conducting programs requires writing thirteen personal statements, uploading four different versions of your résumé, lists of works conducted, and lists of works studied, submitting videos of yourself conducting (cut to seven different lengths), and sending a bottle of expensive wine to seven different admissions offices to ensure they don't lose any or all of these items. Woof.
Be that as it may, I have no choice. All of these things I must do in the next two weeks or be forever ridden with guilt that I never gave myself a chance.
Why two weeks? Glad you asked. Because, it is now confirmed, I will be happily incapacitated the last week of the month. The 22nd marks my unofficial transition to Old Age with my ascendance to mid-20's-dom, and Laura is flying in (most assuredly road-weary and hung over, fresh from a wedding in Los Angeles) for the week. The 24th is Thanksgiving, (see this post for my overly exuberant treatment of Thanksgiving), and there have been talks of a Belgrade trip the 25th-26th. It will be a good week.
But, as seems to be the case with any plans for mini-vacations, there is much to be done before they can happen. Grad school applications aside, I have a lot of research to do before I can take a holiday even remotely unencumbered by guilt or nagging worries. The good news is that I finished Tim Rice's book May it Fill Your Soul on Friday, and I have since been focusing Maria Denkova's dissertation, which I will need to finish by this prospective holiday. If I can get a few other short pieces of literature read and analyzed by then, I should be in satisfactory shape and will consider myself deserving of a decadent break.
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Go-go-gadget non-sequitur:
This past weekend was fairly interesting. Thursday night I went to Locàl, a bar close to my apartment that plays host to an "International Night" every Thursday. This was my second trip there, and I'm thinking I may go quite a bit more often, as it has so far afforded me the opportunity to meet interesting people from Spain, Italy, Denmark, Korea, and, of course, Bulgaria. Thursday night, I met my friend Agi (whom I had, in fact, met at International Night a few weeks ago) there, as well as two of her friends who were in town for the weekend from Denmark. I would see them all again Saturday night, and meet a couple of others, all of which were very cool, to boot.
Saturday night, incidentally, Greg, his family, and I had dinner at Чевермето, a supposedly "authentic" Bulgarian folk restaurant, replete with music and dancing, at the National Palace of Culture. As it happened, it wasn't terribly authentic, but was nevertheless a good time, even when the dancers made me get up and join them. No pictures of this heinous insult to Bulgarian culture (and by that I mean my dancing, not the restaurant) will be forthcoming.
This week will feature more of our featured material: Research, grad school apps, and, on Friday, snow. Stay tuned.
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