Two winners.

The challenge started in the beginning of the summer, in July, to be specific, whether you call it the beginning of the summer or not.

Ivana's and mine music teacher together with her Mom, who is a piano teacher as well, announced the competition for "The most hours practiced student", followed by the ice cream party.

Ivana is pretty competitive at heart, I should say, and she took up on the challenge with a lot of vigor! She had practiced her violin almost daily, sometimes even twice a day. I was trying to stay on track with my praticing, taking advantage of quiet time in the evenings when everybody went to sleep.

During the day time I used to enjoy playing the piano, but now that the baby is all over the place, crawling, getting up and reaching to the piano keys, he does not let me practice. I end up picking him up, holding him in fron of the piano, so that he "plays", and even then when I put him down on the floor hoping he'd have enough, well, he had not! He wants more. So, as lond as I am by the piano, he is there, too. I've learned to kind of pull my left leg forward and let him use the base keys, meanwhile trying to play the tune on the rest of the piano. Well, the melodies that we are producing together are far from being enjoyable! So, now I practice in the evenings. I'd put the piano on the soft pedal, close the door to the craft room, sit by the piano and gaze into the black hole that is in front of me (the dark window) and enjoy the tunes.

We had to put the minutes we'd practiced together for the big finale! The ice cream party!
In the morning Ivana found out that I had a bit more minutes than her, so she was not going to let me be first and picked up her violin and added another 30 minutes to her practice sheet, almost sure she had got me then!

There were about 20 students altogether at the mini summer ice cream recital and everybody was supposed to memorize a piece, perform it in front of the goup and then we had to announce the minutes practiced.

I went on to be the first at performing. This way I would have it behind me and didn't have to wait for my hands to start sweating (smile!). Ivana wanted to be the last to perform!

It was so wonderful to participate in an event like that! I was on the cloud nine! I felt alive and was so happy to be a part of a "musical community"! Let it be very small, young musical community, but my dream is coming true! I am learning to play the piano and enjoying every minute of it!

Ivana turned out to be the second in minuts, anyway. She got total of 1,528 minutes! I was very proud of her! But I was proud of myself as well. I got total of 1,535 minutes. We got both collection of classical CDs and"Symphony" chocolate as prizes. The third runner up had around 1,000 minutes. We set a very high standard for the rest of the students, and sure learned a great deal in just two months of very intense practicing.