Silent Tunes

The main problem with this blog is that it's about me. Though I may be captivated by all that I write about me, I doubt that anyone else is. In fiction you can write about yourself under the guise of writing about made-up people.

I live in Budapest, Hungary; I'm here studying music. My father's a diplomat and was posted here for three years. When he got a new assignment in Africa (Libreville, Gabon) my older brother began attending college in the States (Notre Dame), and I decided to stay here. I study piano with a private teacher and attend a music high school for other subjects like solfege and music theory.

I'm interested in people. I enjoy watching them in the buses, on the sidewalks, and in the underpasses. I like listening to them. And I like writing about them. I haven't quite figured out yet how much of a person's art comes from themselves or from the people around them.

Because Daddy's in the Foreign Service, we've traveled a lot. I've lived overseas since I was five, with only relatively brief returns to the United States. This has had the result of making America a foreign country to me: strictly speaking, it is not my home. There really isn't a culture or society that I feel is my home, as I've grown up in so many. Being homeschooled has added to this effect.

I expect it would be good to thrown in a mention (for effect) at this point of the failed mutiny we lived through in Central Africa, and of the riot that took place when we were in China. The latter resulted in our being evacuated from our apartment behind the consulate to a hotel, and the former in our being evacuated back to the States, though in both cases Daddy had to stay behind. During the riot I remember being frightened by the burning down of the consul general's residence next door, and by the thought of how small the walls around our apartment building were. My brother and sisters slept through that night. During the mutiny, I recall continuous gun fire (I was ten at the time) and driving in a military truck through town and not being able to take off at first for Cameroon because of fighting near the airport.

On a final note, my favorite Agatha Christie mystery novel is And Then There Were None.

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		wTuesday, November 11, 2003
		Daddy's visit was wonderful. Superb. And saying goodbye again was very depressing. Now I've started the countdown until Christmas, when I'll get to see not only him again but the entire family. Daddy and I did a lot of talking while he was here, catching up on all the news that didn't make it through emails. We visited various places we used to go to, and saw people we used to know when we were all here together. And we ate out every evening. It was delicious. I haven't eaten so well in a long time. Although I don't do too much of my own cooking now (which is definitely a plus). Katalin said I was looking thinner, so now I have a meal sent in every day. There's a company called A'la carte that offers various meal choices to be delivered to your home each afternoon or morning. They give you a lot of food for one meal. But needless to say, the dining out was not the best part of Daddy's visit. The best part was...Daddy. Of course. On a more gloomy note, solfege will be the death of me. Theory goes enormously well, but I can't seem to master the other. What's more, Kodaly can scare the heck outa me. Not good. The theory/solfege teacher is very - how shall I say? - interesting. I mean his personality. You know how there are some people whose characters you would like to take apart and examine? His is one. Or maybe character-dissection is a writer thing. Although I'm doing precious little writing at the moment. And I was going to write about George... posted by Rebekkah at 7:16 PM

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