Hi y'all!

It has been really hectic for the last five days getting to know the feeling of being a student at the University of Memphis (U of M) as we got into our first week of classes. Basically, in this blog, we'll update you on our U of M experiences and what we did after our classes.

We considered to do a Dutch blog as well, but decided not to do it as we are two very busy people and most of our friends/family understands English. So, Lena up first to talk to you about our Monday until Friday of University experiences…

LENA: I had no idea what to expect of the classes and definitely had no clue about the teachers. Were they going to be nice? Or will they give us a hard time because we're foreign exchange students? Looking back, I have to say, we could not have picked better classes and have better teachers. We have the same teacher for three classes and one for another class. So, in total, we taking four classes:

-Copyright/Music Publishing
-Music Management/Promotion/Marketing
-Internet Distribution/Communication
-Blues

The first three are taught by Prof. Tonya Butler, who is the most outgoing teacher I've ever seen. The way she teaches puts a smile to your face every time. Haha! And then there's Dr. David Evans for the Blues class. He's just a sweet, sweet old man who's got a whole lot of love for the blues! He's also a blues performer and has been to Europe several times. Very impressive :)
But there's not much of a difference between the classes in Holland and here (the way they're taught, I mean). So, that's easy to adjust to.

What is hard to adjust to, though, is that we need a car for almost anything we want to do. Oh yes, we can walk for 15 minutes to a grocery store, but try walking back for 15 minutes with all your groceries! (Oh what a painful trip it was today… :S) And we don't want to bother friends or roommates every time we want to go somewhere. There is public transportation, a bus, but you would have to guess when it'll stop by since there are no schedules or anything. That would definitely be an option next time for grocery shopping. Why not get a bike? Well…biking in the same lanes cars do, that speed up to 40 mph, no thanks :)

So, first week is almost over and there's still so much ahead of us, can't wait to do all these things. You'll find out soon enough what they are ;P So, check back soon and don't forget about us!

Love you all,

-Lena-

P.S. We got ourselves a P.O. Box in case anyone wants to send us mail. If you want the address, please e-mail me or Jesper!!! Since it's on my name, any mail should be addressed to me. Just make sure you let us know if you sent something!

JESPER: We are taking four classes that Lena and I decided to do together. First, we individually searched what we would like to do and 3 outta 4 classes matched so we discussed the fourth one and came down to the same conclusion. As Lena mentioned before, we are taking four interesting classes that is relevant to our education.

We decided to take the 'Blues' class, because we are in MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE!!! Knowing that the Blues is really big in Tennessee, but also in Memphis that has great artists such as: B.B. King, Memphis Minnie and Frank Stokes. David Evans is a good Blues artist as well that is playing around Europe and actually is teaching us everything we need to know about the Blues. He is such a nice "old" guy that loves the Blues with his heart and still owns many LP's from back in the day. I am sure we will learn everything we want and need to know from this amazing respected man.

As for the other three classes, we have this crazy loving funny and unique woman who goes by the name of Tonya Butler. She is highly respected in the business as a professor, but also as a business woman in the music business (many "business" words in this sentence, but hey…deal with it,;-P haha). We feel blessed that she is our tutor for the next couple of months and will probably teach us more than any other person did so far when we are talking about becoming any type of manager in the music business where Lena and I are in!:-)

All of this comes from the heart, because we have experienced one week of classes with them and I am really excited about this semester. We need to manage an artist from High Water Records that is owned by the U of M and in control by David Evans + Tonya Butler. We will create a new website for High Water Records as well. We will focus on copyright/music publishing in the USA and on International grounds. And of course, we will learn everything we need to know about the Blues. WILL THIS BE A GREAT SEMESTER OR WILL THIS BE A GREAT SEMESTER? THIS WILL BE A GREAT SEMESTER! And the good thing is that these classes are all spread in five days, meaning we have just a couple of hours class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and 1,5 hour each Tuesday and Thursday. After and before those classes we make good home cooked meals (more credits to Lena ;-))and look around campus of what we can do and believe me you can do something EVERYDAY!

MONDAY, we took our first Starbucks after our first two classes. Starbucks is on campus, actually in the bookstore where we definitely will buy our Memphis TIGERS merchandise to be fully integrated into our temporary University. It's only $3.00 to get a grande hot chocolate, YEAH! TUESDAY, we just simply took class and relaxed a bit like taking a nap or two to fully get our jetlag outta our skins. WEDNESDAY, we went to a Comedy show in the evening on campus in the Rose Hall Theatre. The comedians for that evening were Tommy Johnagin and Arvin Mitchell. It was hilarious! The theatre is pretty big as well; actually it reminded us a little bit of what you see sometimes on MTV's shows 'Made'. Totally funny! THURSDAY, we focused only on buying books and making copies of what we need for our Blues class. FRIDAY, we did some shopping at Krogar that was like a 15 min. walk from our Carpenter Complex. Advice: don't buy too much or else you will have problems to carry too many groceries while you have to walk on the side of a 5 lane road. That evening, I decided to go out to Beale Street again with our International friends and a couple of American friends. This weekend is 'Labor Day' weekend so it was not crowded at all as everybody went home for the holidays, but I still enjoyed myself just to keep up my dancing skills a little bit…HAHA! I was thinking to follow dance lessons on campus, but not sure, if it's possible OR maybe even do something else…play SOCCER, but everything is still a big MAYBE!

Pictures and videos will be up somewhere next week so just keep yourself updated regular and you will see many cool pictures from the month September. You will see pictures of what we talked about in this blog and the many whole cooked meals we made during the week to show our parents how healthy we eat and also how good we can eat those major snacks over here!:-) Videos will be on YouTube as 9 outta 10 videos has a larger size than required for this blog.

Much love to the family and friends…next update in about 5 days (Wednesday/Thursday)!

-Jesper-