The idea of coming to Vigo rather than another Spanish-speaking place was born years ago at Sierra Fiddle Camp, before covid. In 2019, we met a woman there named Teresa. She is a pianist and a music teacher from Galicia. We hit it off and talked about how it would be fun to be able to live in Galicia with the kids going to the school where she teaches. A dream, but not a reality. We spent some more time with Teresa after the camp in Monterey and San Francisco, and we stayed in touch after she returned to Spain. Then the pandemic hit and tabled our thoughts of going to Spain.
During the pandemic, there were a lot of creative people figuring out how to use technology to keep playing music together. One group, FiddleQuest, created a daily musical meet up where an instructor from somewhere in the world would show up for an hour and teach a tune or two to a group of people who logged on. Our kids loved this and joined every day; in fact they still join the group that is still going on Saturday mornings. One teacher who showed up was Alfonso Franco, a Galician fiddler. It turns out that Teresa took lessons from him when she was younger and the kids also enjoyed learning from him. Alfonso taught on FiddleQuest several times and G practiced a few of his tunes. A month later Sierra Fiddle Camp came up with their own online camp. Just as at the in-person camps, there was a time for people to perform tunes for the other participants and G decided to play one of the tunes he had learned from Alfonso. And who happened to be watching...Alfonso. Take a look at this sweet video of G playing the tune and Alfonso's reaction:
Long before we arrived, I was trying to decipher the website for ETrad, an organization for teaching traditional Galician music, where Alfonso teaches. I was trying to figure out how to sign the kids up for classes, which classes they would take, all the details. It was about as clear as mud to me. Teresa generously tried calling them and asking questions and telling me what she found out, and I was still confused about how it all worked. So after we arrived, I started going to the building that houses ETrad regularly to see if it was open, but, of course, everything is closed in August in Spain. So as soon as September hit, I headed over to ETrad to inquire. And I understood enough of what he said to know that we would need to alter school schedules, get on a waitlist, and hope they got in. Oh, and have that NIE number and empadronmiento I have mentioned that we don't have yet. The registrar allowed us to get on the waitlist for the intermediate fiddle class and the weekly group jam session without the empadronmiento (luckily we had just gotten the NIE numbers), and we waited to hear. Last week we got an email that the children needed to come in for a try-out. So today we headed down to ETrad and they got to play for Alfonso.
It was sweet to meet him in person. And look what happened:
Finally, por fin, playing together in person!
Afterward we went out to celebrate with a warm drink since it has been rainy off and on, Colacao for the kids and espresso for D. Colacao is a packet of hot chocolate served with a cup of steamed milk. You add the Colacao to the steamed milk yourself and mix it, a bit of a ritual. It is less sweet than packets of hot chocolate in the US, and the steamed milk makes it extra yummy.
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