Choir Audition

Today I came out of my Mexican Culture class feeling very guilty and depressed. We talked about the Spanish conquest of Mexico today. Hernán Cortes was a major douche. That’s not a strong enough word. Basically he killed a lot of people who didn’t deserve to die and ruined one of the most interesting civilizations I’ve ever studied. According to my professor, the Spanish conquest caused Mexicans to have an inferiority complex that has kept them from accomplishing anything significant in the world today. He started with the example of the Olympics: how many gold medals does Mexico have? Zero. Did you know the man who invented the color television was from Guadalajara? Apparently he tried to get funding for research in Mexico but they just laughed him out of the country, and he ended up getting funded in the US. This is, apparently, all due to the grand inferiority complex that Mexicans suffer from. Now I’m afraid to do anything because I don’t want to make anyone feel inferior. This sucks.

After class I ate a delicious lunch at home (Mexican-style spaghetti with lots of garlic, meat, salsa, and cream) and dawdled around my room until I got a text from Cassandra reminding me of my choir audition today. Lucky she sent that or else I would have completely forgotten. I met her at CEPE at 4 and she drove me to her music school where she takes piano lessons so that her teacher could appraise my skills.

Let me begin by saying that Cassandra told him that I’m catholic because this is a church choir. He had me do some simple vocal exercises and quickly deduced that I’m a soprano, which I am not. He thought I didn’t understand him when I told him I’m an alto in the US and kept repeating himself. Next he wanted me to sing something so he flipped through his book of songs. He paused on Kyrie and tried to get me to sing the soprano part which is way higher than I’m used to singing, so I faltered and he moved on to something else. I recognized the name of the second song but I had never sung it before so I faltered again. That’s when he turned to Cassandra and said, “And she’s catholic?” I really am a bad liar. He gave up and just had me sing the national anthem. In the end, he said that I sounded good and he was only worried about me being able to understand the conductor. So he’s going to tell the conductor yes and I’ll see how it goes at the first rehearsal.

I left my audition and headed for Centro Magno. I realized after getting my nails last Saturday that I can’t play guitar with these things on (or anything else really) so I went back to the nail place and asked if they could shorten my nails. It was the same woman who had put my nails on and she didn’t charge me anything which was really nice of her. Now they are the perfect length and I can touch things with my fingertips again! Then I went and bought and ice cream and walked home.