practice with the blue hearts

I'm glad to say that my drumming 'ability' will be put to use again on November 18th at Naruto Technical High School's culture festival. Me and three of my students will be performing three songs by the Japanese rock band The Blue Hearts- a group that I have not heard of until I was handed some sheet music and a CD by one of my band members. Our first practice was last week and I admittedly showed up without listening to the songs beforehand. This did not go over too well with the other guys and I realized that they wanted me to play the drum parts note-per-note with the original version instead of playing by ear (which is what I usually do). So I spent my free time on Monday afternoon listening to the songs on my ipod and mapping out the song structures for my own visual reference. Needless to say, practice went a lot smoother after I put some effort into my end of the deal. We all had a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to pounding the drums again tomorrow after school.


In other relevant news...I finally squared away my plans for the winter vacation. I was debating on where to go for a little while but a week ago I decided to buy a ticket to Bangkok, Thailand. From there, I will be catching a flight to Chiang Mai (Thailand) to meet up with Caitlin and her sister who is currently living there to work with Burmese refugees. As of now the plans are open ended for once we all meet but Cambodia and Laos are on the radar of places to visit. I'll be arriving in Bangkok on December 26th and I'll make my way out of southeast Asia on January 7th. It feels good to finally have my plans set. The other travel option that I was considering was a solo bike trip through New Zealand but think I'd like to give myself at least a month for that one. Maybe next winter, we'll see.