First Rehearsal

Ok, so I am absolutely DRAINED! Rehearsal started this morning at 8:30 and went until 3:30. We had 2 breaks plus lunch, but still, it was an awful lot of rehearsing. Usually, my back starts to hurt right away but I played for 3 hours before it started hurting. I was so happy! It doesn't hurt as much as it has but it still hurts a bit. So, we're rehearsing in a classroom at a middle school (it's been a different location every year) and we are playing Beethoven's 4th symphony and Mozart's 35th symphony. They are very neat pieces. We learned the 1st, 3rd and 4th movements of each symphony today and got them pretty much up to tempo (some go FAST) and barely started sight-reading the 2nd movement of the Beethoven. So we got through most of the music. There are kids from 14 other countries in our group. I met some really neat people and I'm anxious to get together with them again. I think the most exciting thing that happened during rehearsal was one of the pictures on the wall fell off and crashed to the floor. There was glass everywhere. I saw it wobbling and start to fall but obviously there was nothing anybody could have done because the only people who saw it were facing it (those on the other side of the room.) It scared those who didn't know it was coming because it was loud. Luckily nobody was hurt. Oh, and the bell kept going off. It was an F# (yes, I'm a geek.) More to come later.