November 11, 2004 at 7:17 AM

So, I finally arrived. We are in a gorcious hotel, where all the contestants share appartments. Luck of the draw wants that I am sharing my room with a former Juilliard eartraining classmate. In fact, I heard there will 16 contestants of which 7 I think have a link to Juilliard. The names of the contestants are not official yet, they would not let me see the list but Erin (my roommate) knew about a whole bunch of them.
Oh by the way, for the ones reading this, I am not as underprepared as it sounds. When I write I can play through Konigliches Thema somewhat decently, it means it's going quiet well, but ofcourse we are dealing with an international competition and therefor I am being very hard on myself. It's a way of motivating myself. I know what I am doing and the reason Gasa is not where it needs to be is because I have not had a pianist to work with. So no worries, I'll be fine... I think!
The unofficial list of participants is very impressive, prizewinners of the Queen Elisabeth, Nielsen and some other impressive competitions are here.
The environment is amazing. There are many little islands, imagine mountains coming right out of the see. Also, fall is just starting here and so the leaves are right now coloring, it is beautiful. In fact immediately in the ride from the airport to this harbor town, my view about Isang Yun's music started changing. Also, hearing he language around me all the time, is helping in finding a particular sound which I have been searching for in regards to Isang Yun.
The whole trip I have been incredibly excited to go to Korea and be here, but now I am here I realized that I had been travelling from tuesday morning on (it is now thursday afternoon) with very little sleep, 3 hours on the plane and 3 hours in the hotel in Seoul. I went to bed for a nap and I am a complete chaos. Also I practiced for an hour, which was utterly useless since I was so tired. I think I'll go for a walk in the muontains and then try again...
PS: If you want to follow the competition on the web go to www.timf.org/gimc and you can see our schedule and probably soon if I got lucky nr.1 to start :)
Greetings from Tongyeong!
Carla

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November 11, 2004 at 7:17 AM

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