I was talking to Michiko Sensei about playing the piano (because we are both musicians) and it made me reminisce about the times that I use to take lessons. Like I said in the last blog, I took lessons from this guy from  Czechloslovachia (I hope I spelled that right) named Roman Serla. We heard of Roman through my mom’s co-worker, whose daughter was taking lessons from him. They had a lot of great things to say about him and suggested that we come to one of the recitals to meet him. So we went to one of the recitals and it was a really interesting experience. It was my first recital and everyone was pretty good. The thing I remember most was the age differences between some of the students. There were kids that were 5 years to adults that were 30 years old. After the recital, my family got to meet Roman and we liked him right away. He was really funny and a very lovable guy. The only thing I thought was weird about him was his strong body odor. Anyways, after that,  we got started right away and soon my brother and I were taking lessons from him once a week. He really emphasized learning the fundamentals of piano before learning anything else so for the longest time, we were just playing scales during our lesson and then maybe learning a song. I thought it was super boring at first but I learned later that it was necessary to be a good pianist. But then my first recital was coming up and he gave me this one song called “The Swan” to play. I really liked the song but I was really nervous about the recital. So I practiced and practiced during the weeks before and finally the day came for me to play. At the recital, Roman makes all of his students sit in the front row of the venue and  go one by onto the stage to play. So the girl that went before me was this 8 year old girl and she did really good. I got more nervous because I didn’t want to sound bad after she did so good. But after she was done, I went on the stage and began to play. The spotlight was on me and I could begin to feel myself shaking. I kind of blanked out before I started playing but the funny thing is my body kind took over and played the song for me. By the time I knew it, I was done with the song and everybody was clapping. Wheww I thought… I did okay. It was probably one of the more nervous times in my life but I’m glad I went through it. I’ll never forget it.