Today is the day.

Today is the day that I am sending in my dissertation!  

Actually, I should say that today is the day that I'm going to finish sending in my dissertation.  It's a long and complicated process.  

It started Friday when, after looking over it 20 more times to make sure it looked alright, I frantically PDFed it and burned it onto a DVD.  Then John and I drove as fast as possible to get to FedEx before it closed, and sent it off to the University of Iowa Thesis Office.  I hope they will be able to open my PDF, because I forgot to embed the fonts.  (Actually, I didn't even know what "embed the fonts" was or that I needed to do it until the next day, oh well.) 

Today I have to send it to all five of the professors on my committee (they're the people who will be at my defense on April 21 and must give their approval of the final document).  Unfortunately, three of them want printed copies.  I was really hoping that they all would prefer to save some trees and save me the cost to print and send them!  Oh well.  

And then all I have to do is to pass my defense on April 21, make any changes that the thesis office and/or my committee requests, send in the final copy by May 5, and I'm done!

Here's a little sample of what my brain has been glued to for the past (who know how many) months:

Quinoa Salad Recipe

I've been doing a lot of cooking lately, and trying some new recipes.  Some of them have turned out really well so I think I'll start sharing them here.  This new hobby has been a good way to keep me from going insane after long hours in front of the computer working on my thesis!

Quinoa is a super grain.  It has a high protein content and contains a balanced set of essential amino acids, making it an unusually complete protein source.  It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron.  It is gluten-free and considered easy to digest.  I need to start eating as much of it as possible, especially because I eat a vegetarian diet!  (But even if you're not a vegetarian, it's still good for you, and it tastes great, too!)

This recipe is easy to make, but you will have to spend some time chopping.

Quinoa Salad

1 cup quinoa
1 1/2 cups cold water
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup celery, chopped small
1-2 small carrots, sliced thin
1/2 green or red bell pepper, sliced thin
1 medium-sized ripe tomato
1 medium-sized cucumber
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, cilantro, or basil
1/2 cup chopped cashews
optional: chopped scallions, greek olives, minced jalopeno, fresh mint

Dressing
2 Tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
1/8-1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
black pepper
Optional: pinch of cayenne, garlic powder, fresh minced garlic

Directions
Place quinoa, water, and salt in a pot and boil.  Turn heat very low, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.  Remove from heat and let sit 5 minutes with lid. Fluff with fork and set aside to cool.

Steam celery, carrots, and bell pepper for 5 minutes.  Rinse in cold water.
Chop tomato, herbs, and cucumber.
Blend dressing ingredients with wire whisk or shake in a jar.
Gently combine veggies, quinoa, dressing, and nuts in a large bowl.   Cover and chill.


There are lots of things you can do with quinoa.  You can eat it in a bowl topped with fruit, cinnamon and milk, or you can put a scoop on top of your green salad.  Try it if you haven't already!

What's in a Name?

I've been married for over 8 months now, and I still haven't changed my last name!  Part of the reason is because I'm lazy, but only a little bit.

I just don't want to let go of BOWEN!  I don't want to cast off the name of my father's fathers.  I feel honored to be connected to the Bowen family.  (It's not that I DON'T want to be connected to the Hustedt family, they're a great family.)  And I know that I'm not important or famous in the world, but before I got married I was just starting to establish myself in the music world as Michele Bowen.

Anyway, I almost kind of feel like if I become Michele Hustedt my identity will be subsumed into my husband's (but of course if it has to be someone I want it to be him!).  

So, what am I going to do?  John and I talk about it sometimes, but we usually just end up laughing about it because it's such a silly thing to get worked up about.

Here are the options we've come up with so far:

1. I could be Michele Bowen-Hustedt.  We've also thought about changing BOTH of our last names to Bowen-Hustedt, to be fair.  But what if we have a daughter who someday gets married and is in this same situation?  Would she be Molly Bowen-Hustedt-Smith?  Or even worse, what if we have a son who wants to marry a girl who also has a hyphenated name but doesn't want to give it up?  Would she be Susie Richards-Gould-Bowen-Hustedt?!?

2. I have been trying out Michele Bowen Hustedt for a few months.  As in, Ms. Bowen Hustedt or Sister Bowen Hustedt.  That way if someone writes a check to Michele Bowen or Michele Hustedt I can still deposit them in my bank account.  And I'll still be able to use my credit card.  But it hasn't been working that well.  I still get called Sister Hustedt at church, no matter how many times I tell people that my last name is Bowen Hustedt.  (And I'm not assertive enough to correct them.)

3. John and I have also thought about just having me stick with Michele Bowen.  Outside of the rural conservative areas in our country, this is becoming more common.  We also think (again, just to be fair) that if we both have different last names, then it would be fun to give each of our kids their own individual last names. (We've had so much fun coming up with some interesting ones!)

4. And of course, we haven't ruled out the option of coming up with a new last name altogether.  I would have to give up the name of my fathers, but at least he would too.  We could combine our names into something like Boustedt, or Hustowen.  Or something entirely new, like Gifford.  Michele and John Gifford.  

So what should I do?  Any suggestions?  

Untitled

I have been procrastinating this blog for a while because I wanted to write about the rest of our Vietnam trip.  I think it may have to wait a little while because it involves pictures and the names of places I don’t remember, so I’ll skip it for now and write a little update for December 2009!

John and I came back from Vietnam on October first and my tan has already gone away, boo hoo!

We moved into a nice little one bedroom apartment in Atlanta, close to John’s work.  This place is a total dream: our apartment community has a fitness center, a business center (with computers, fax/copy machine, and wifi) and a non-chlorinated salt water swimming pool.  The carpet, walls, doors, and cabinets are made of recycled materials.  And we have a valet trash service.  We have a nice view of the trees from the balcony and it’s quiet.  Oh—and we got about $300/month off the normal price because we came in the off season!  We also bought a car.  It is the first car that either of us has owned.  It is a ’99 Camry and we had all of the money saved up for it!

I decided back in October to finish and send in a rough draft of my dissertation to my advisor by the end of December.  I have been working on in every day like it’s my full time job.  Spending every day like this totally bums me out, but I have dedicated myself to one last stretch of hard work and before we fly home for Christmas, whatever I have on my computer I’m turning in no matter how bad it is.  I’ve been working on this thing for so many years and months that if I don’t finish it soon, I might give up! 

John is enjoying his job at the CDC and we are both enjoying having an income (although it doesn’t seem like much compared to our mountain of student loan debt—but thankfully John doesn’t have to begin repaying his for three years because of this job) and our Federal Employee Health Benefits.  He has also been playing tennis as much as possible and watching the TV show Better Off Ted with me. 

I have three piano students and one flute student!  This is quite astonishing to me.  John’s supervisor at work asked if I would teach her two daughters piano and flute, and our Vietnamese friends asked me to teach their little girl.  So we’ll see how this works out, especially since I’m not experienced on either of those instruments.  Someone did ask me for violin lessons and I had to draw the line there.  No bassoon students yet, ironically.   I have been getting lots of gigs lately however, including most recently the Atlanta Pops Orchestra. 

I am also excited about the recent release of a CD that I recorded with the Atlanta Chamber Winds last August.  The CD is titled Music from Paris, published by Albany records.  It features works by lesser-known French composers, and I only play on three of the six pieces.  This isn’t the first professional recording that I have contributed to, and I wasn’t initially very excited about it.  But I listened to it a few weeks ago and it’s actually really good! 

John and I are going home to Utah and Wyoming for our first Christmas as a married couple.  We are excited to see our families and the mountains again.  I hope we will be able to see everyone, but we will only be there for a few days so we’ll do our best!

Ok, that's all for now!

John and I met exactly one year ago today.

I was just looking back on my posts and I can’t believe that I never posted anything about our wedding!!

Well, it was a wonderful day. I’m glad we did it.

The night before I had a little “batchelorette party” with my bridesmaids. We had a great little slumber party. They helped me calm down, (no one ever told me how stressful it is to get married!) we made crepes, had root beer floats, and maybe watched a movie, I can’t remember. We had decided before to have each bridesmaid choose her own blue dress to wear and let it be a surprise how they turned out. So that night they decided to put their dresses on to see if they looked o.k. together. And RACHEL PARKER pulls this one one me:

“Ok, Michele, here’s my dress, how do you like it?”

Ha ha ha, very funny Rachel.

We all managed to get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning I choked down a little bit of food and relaxed (tried to relax) while they helped me with my hair and my make-up. Then my mom got lost on her way to pick me up and kept calling every few minutes, which was NOT helping with the nerves! Anyway she finally got there and we hurried to the temple. When we got there they told me that I had to sit at the front desk to wait for my groom to arrive. So… I waited for like 30 minutes until he showed up (Ok maybe it was 5 or 10). Anyway, so we had the sealing ceremony and it was really nice. It was so nice to see all my family there, most of whom I hadn’t seen in a long while. And especially my Grandma Bowen. I wasn’t expecting her to be there and it made me so happy to see her.

The old lady temple workers were really nice to me, even though there were like seven other brides in the temple who they also had to look after. And can I just say, to those of you who were waiting for John and I to come out of the temple after the sealing, I was ready to go atLEAST like 20 minutes before him. I swear I was sitting there for EVER waiting for him to get his tux on. J

Anyway, it was a nice overcast day right up until the moment we came out of the temple, when it started pouring. POURING! I’m telling you, it was a monsoon out there. And freezing cold, too. My hair was destroyed almost right away, my dress got wet, and most of the family stayed for one quick group picture, and left.

But I didn’t care, I was so happy. Happy to be married to John, the guy who it seemed was made-to-order just for me and placed right where I would find him one year ago today! (And it was a good thing too, because I was about ready to throw in the marriage towl and go join the Peace Corps or something.)

Anyway, so we didn’t get any good family pictures at the temple, but it’s kind of funny to see all the ladies trying to hold their skirts down and their hair back in the pictures we do have. Luckily my bridesmaids and most of our immediate family members stayed longer, and the storm finally let up enough for us to get some pictures outside under the umbrellas. (I have to give credit to my bridesmaids for buying umbrellas on the way to the temple—no one else thought to do that!) At the very end it even let up enough that we got a few pictures without the umbrellas! Thank goodness.

We had a really awesome family dinner that afternoon and a beautiful reception that was put together by John’s mother and aunts. I was so happy to see all of my relatives and friends, especially the ones who traveled hundreds of miles to be there. I couldn’t believe that I had done something important enough that people would want to come all that way. The only sad part about the wedding day was not getting to spend very much time with any of them.

I think the idea of marriage was still a little daunting to John and I even up until our wedding day. But we knew it was the right thing to do so we just sat back and enjoyed ourselves. Even after we had been married a while one of us would ocassionally look at the other and say, “can you believe we’re married??” On our honeymoon we stopped at a diner in West Yellowstone, and ran into my dad’s cousin Tom and his wife Betsy. I introduced John as my husband and John looked around to see who I was talking about! But now that we have been married for three months it seems a lot more believable. Especially since we have been spending 24 hours a day together for the last several weeks here in Asia. So far we haven’t gotten tired of eachother! But who knows what could happen! Just kidding. J

We are heading back to our homeland on October 1 and John will be starting his job a week or so later. It will be interesting to finally settle into “normal” married life!

The Vietnamese National Opera and Ballet Orchestra

Wow, what an experience! Nothing could have prepared me for playing with this orchestra. I showed up the first day to rehearse, and was told that the orchestra would not be rehearsing the wind section that day. But at least we got to meet both of the conductors and they were really nice to us. So, I asked for my music which they photo copied for me and we went home. The next morning I showed up at 8:40 to warm up for the 9:00 rehearsal. I waited for 10 minutes and finally someone came to unlock the door. I was starting to wonder if I was in the right place. I went in the room and sat in the second bassoon chair. By about 8:54 I decided that I might as well start warming up, even if no one was there yet. And then the orchestra members started arriving—STARTED arriving at 9:00! I could not believe what I was seeing. In any professional orchestra in the US, the musicians will usually start showing up around 20 minutes before the rehearsal begins, and for sure everyone will ready to play 10 or 5 minutes early. So, people started trickling in… and I thought, well, they’d better hurry if the rehearsal is supposed to start like right now! But no. They mozied around, chatted with eachother, talked on their cell phones, and gradually got their instruments out. The conductor finally stood up and started yelling at people and a few minutes later the “A” was played (with no tuner, I might add) at 9:20. I was flabberghasted! And not only was the A given with no tuner, everyone was TALKING during it! So then about 5 minutes later the conductor said some things that I didn’t understand and the rehearsal began. People were talking to eachother, checking their cell phones, and TALKING on their cell phones throughout the rehearsal! And whenever the conductor stopped the orchestra to say something, everyone started chatting with one another and I was wondering if anyone was really listening to him. I for sure wasn’t, because I don’t understand a word of Vietnamese (luckily the first bassoonist speaks a little English and translated anything that pertained to me). And just when I thought that I had seen it all, the conductor stops the orchestra, pulls out his ringing cell phone, and answers it! Really, I could not believe it.

I told John all of this that afternoon and he just laughed and said, "well that's just how Vietnamese people are!" So, I guess that's the way they do things here!

But the interesting part about this is that they sound so good! The program for the concert was all Vietnamese traditional music. It was all new to me, and I thought it sounded wonderful! We also played some pieces with the opera chorus and they sang SOOOO beautifully!

Our performance was last week in the Opera House downtown. It was built by the French when they were here, and supposedly is a copy of the opera house where the Phantom of the Opera lived. It was pretty neat. The concert was given for the Vietnamese national day. We found out the day before that they were not selling tickets either, that it was by invitation only. So I was worried that John wouldn’t get to come but I should never have doubted, because John is so good at making friends with important people. So he did get to come, and it was a great night. The orchestra members were all really nice to me and I’m glad I was able to play with them. I hope I have more opportunities like this in the future.

Thailand

Thailand was great! The biggest thing I noticed was that everything was SO CLEAN! I was happy. We flew from Bangladesh to Chiang Mai and stayed there for a few days (this was a couple of weeks ago). While we were there John took me to see an elephant camp near Chiang Mai, which was quite entertaining. The only other time I had seen an elephant in real life was in a zoo. We got to feed them and pet them. They gave a little show for us where they played harmonicas, played soccor, and painted! I never knew elephants were so friendly, gentle and smart.

We went to church on Sunday and that night took a sleeper train down to Bangkok. After spending a day there, we took another night train to the city of Chumporn, and from there we took a boat to the island of Koh Tao. Koh Tao was amazing!! It was the first tropical island I have ever been to. It was beautiful and so peaceful and relaxing. Once we got there I noticed how funny it was that I went from being the most immodest woman in Bangladesh to the most modest woman in Koh Tao. We spent a couple of days there relaxing on the beach. I couldn’t believe how crystal clear the water was. The white sand and the bright blue water was so nice, I thought I was dreaming. The morning of our last day there John went scuba diving and I stayed back and got a Thai foot massage on the beach which was like, the best thing ever. When he came back we rode a boat over to a smaller island to go snorkeling. It was awesome to see choral and tropical fish so clearly in the water! I was a bit afraid of the fishes, especially after a few of them took a nibble at me, but I’m glad I did it! Next time I will hopefully be more adventurous and swim further away from the beach. We were only able to stay on Koh Tao for a few days, unfortunately. But it was good that we didn’t stay too long becuase the only thing to do there is relax and be lazy. I think it is quite an enchanting place.

Anyway, after leaving the island we went back to Chumporn, rode the night train (for the last time, thank heavens!) back to Bangkok, and hung out there for a few days before finally heading back to Hanoi. The predominant religion in Thailand is Buddhism, and I saw a lot of Buddhist temples there. Too many to talk about but you can see some pictures. They were all very ornate and beautiful!

Thailand was great. I’m glad I went there. I think I could live there and feel like I wasn’t too far away from home.

Here are the pictures from our Malaysia/Bangladesh/Thailand trip. Hope you like them!