Page76,~78 First draft 200601024 Noh Young Sun

The  Dreadful Piano Lessons        Learning new things can be daunting and stressful for all of us, especially when we try to learn things that are way out of our comfort zone.  I took piano lessons from my grand mother. In general, people tend to avoid doing things that they are not unfamiliar with. There are a handful of adventure seekers who are willing to try new things, but most of us are prone to become conformists who are  afraid of change or new ideas. However, stepping out of our own comfort zone and trying different things can enrich our lives and souls, even though it could be painstaking and hard in the beginning. The learned this lesson the hard way through the piano lessons that I took from my grandmother when I was little.        When I was a second grade in elementary school, my dad made me take piano lessons from my grandmother so that I could spend more quality time with her. My grandparents used to live just a stone's throw away from where I and my family lived, so I went there twice a week after school to learn the piano and have dinner with them afterwards. Truth be told I just wanted to go sideways and play in the playground, since it was totally against my will. My grandmother was not exactly the nicest and funniest teacher in the planet. She was old school when it comes to teaching kids. Whenever she put on glasses to teach me, she would turn into this stone faced old lady who neat- picked every mistake that I made. The books that we used were Bach, Chereney and Sonatine which were so boring that could put you instantly to sleep. Learning to read music was just dead difficult. My grandmother scolded me a lot since I was rather slow in reading the notes. She used to correct the positions of the fingertips on the scale and told me a million times that my hands did not make a shape of an arch when playing the piano. She did not let one mistake slide. Whenever I hit the wrong keys, She would made me play that part over and over again until I get that part right. It was a real torture.   Years later, I called it quits and my mother started giving me lessons instead but it fizzled out  after a certain period of time.      Even though I dreaded every minute of the piano lessons, now I feel that it was worth the pain. Not only do I have an ear for classical music, but also I can play the pieces on my own. The thrill that you get on your fingertips when they touch the scales of the piano when playing your favorite songs is something that people who do not play the musical instrument could never ever experience. Those hours of utter nightmare was indeed worth the pain.