China: Yantai, Day 2

One of the nice things about Yantai was that they prepared all our meals just for us. In the other two cities we visited, the hotels provided buffets for all the guests, but the Yantai Celebrity Hotel only did it for our group. After breakfast, it was time to get down to business. We boarded the buses with our instruments and headed over to the Poly Grand Theater, right inside the cultural center, where we held our rehearsal. It was a different stage than I remember seeing before, so I'm not sure how many they have. After our successful rehearsal, we had lunch at the hotel and then visited the lighthouse on Yantai Hill. When we got there, we saw yet another welcome sign for us. It was still pretty overcast, so we couldn't see the view very well, but it was still cool to visit. It was there that we learned "Yantai" means "smoke platform." That was our only sightseeing stop for the day, since we had to prepare for the first of two concerts in Yantai. Since we prepared for traffic and there wasn't any, we had about two hours to kill once we arrived at the theater before the start of the concert. Part of the time was dedicated to dinner, which consisted of a bag of bread for each person and some fruit. Needless to say, by intermission, I was starving, so I downed a bag of Bugles I had bought at the store the day before. Before the concert, though, we ate our bread bags and messed around with our instruments. Some people played entire pieces from the concert repertoire from memory together, others sightread cello and trombone duets, while yet others brushed up on their improvisation skills. I did one of my favorite things, people watching. Finally, it was concert time. Our soloist on Rhapsody in Blue for this concert was Jessie Chang, the same soloist from our Bon Voyage concert in Balboa Park. I wasn't as focused as I should have been for this first Yantai concert, so I felt it was a bad concert for me personally. I am my worst critic, though, plus one second violin who is off doesn't affect it much. So, in reality, it really was ok. The audience loved it. They were even more respectful of concert etiquette than Beijing was. Again, there were a lot of children in the audience, which made me happy. To be honest, though, I was sill upset with myself for not playing better so I went straight to my room after the concert instead of joining everyone else at the celebratory dinner at the hotel. Plus I was tired. Playing an instrument can be taxing. Also at this point, I was pretty homesick. I enjoyed being in China, but it was hard being away from my home country and my family, who were in two different states. A good nights sleep was just what I needed.