A Love Story

So, I promised I'd tell you the stories to some of the photos I posted last week of me and my hubby. No time like the present, right?
2001:

 here's the story...

This picture was taken on the steps of the Sydney Opera House!

 5 days after we were married, we left on a 'working honeymoon' to tour New Zealand and Australia with the New England Youth Ensemble, an orchestra which we toured with several times throughout college. We started out with one week on the North Island of New Zealand and then spent six weeks wandering all around Eastern Australia. I think the only major city we missed was Perth out west!
One of the highlights of this tour was that we got to play a concert in the Sydney Opera House. This had been a dream of mine since the very beginning of my life as a musician. I started playing viola in the 4th grade:

 It just so happened that my fourth grade teacher was an incredibly amazing, once-in-a-lifetime teacher and she taught simply because she loved it. Every summer she would flit off with her husband to some new, exotic destination and spend the entire summer there. She used these trips as inspiration for her entire next year of teaching so every year had a different theme.  She had traveled to Australia the summer before my particular year so my fourth grade year the theme was Australia and everything we did was somehow connected to something Australian. Our desks were arranged in pods named Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra. Our name tags on our desks were koalas. Everything we did whether it was math or reading or social studies...all of it was centered around the exotic and interesting things that could be found Down Under. The things I learned that year kindled a desire to visit that impossibly far away land and experience it for myself. The iconic sails of the Opera House captured my imagination and the first time I saw the Opera House in person as we crossed the Harbour Bridge, it took my breath away.

The concert was every bit what I'd dreamed...from being able to explore backstage (I still have my guest artist pass!) and look out the greenroom windows at the Harbour to sitting onstage and looking up at the plexiglass 'donuts' they hung above the stage to improve the acoustics. It's unlikely that I'll ever have the opportunity to play there again, but I surely will return to attend a concert or two!
 So, the photo is very sentimental for me as it reminds me of a dream fulfilled - and fulfilled, no less, with the love of my life by my side.