How does this thing work again?

I'm still a little shocked that a person as technophobic as I am is doing something as computery as blogging. I comfort myself with the certainty that if I can do it, it is definitely not very technological and can't possibly be hip.

Husband gave me my holiday gift early today. I am amazed--he wrote a piece for me to play! It's the first movement of a Prelude and Fugue (that would make it the....you guessed it....prelude). I'm very excited about learning it but the disgusting cold I'm still nursing is preventing me from doing much practicing today.

There's also the fact that I'm sort of hiding from my students. They have been asking me for weeks to continue to teach my full schedule through the holiday break: "But we're not going anywhere! We'll still be here!"

And sure enough, when I snuck into my office today to try to practice Husband's piece, there were two of them. Lying in wait.

Of course I feel guilty about not teaching this week; but whenever I give them opportunities for extra lessons they don't take me up. We're making up this time at the end of the term, so they will all get extra lessons then, and there's always jury week.

I guess it's another one of those things about Thailand that I don't understand yet. They are so eager to study with me and always say that they want things like extra lessons, but when I ask them to choose a time they get noncommittal and say they'll have to check their schedules. Or they'll name two or three possible times, which I take to mean I should leave those hours clear, and then they won't come at all. I honestly don't know what's expected of me--I'll sit in my office for hours, available for them to come, play for me, talk to me, work on reeds, etc. Nothing. But then we come to something like holiday break, or a weekend, or the day of my recital, and all of a sudden everybody's got to have a lesson/important conversation/reed tutorial RIGHT NOW.