Kristina from Croatia, Friday

I met Kristina in Croatia on my course last summer. She is a student of my good friend Ana Domancic. Kristina studies flute at the university in Split and is very interested in music education. I invited her to come and visit and I'm delighted she has been able to take me up on the offer. I'm sure you'd like to know what we are up to.

Kristina arrived last night. We didn't do a great deal aprt from have dinner and I showed her SmartMusic. We've had a long, interesting day today but she's now working really hard learning a new pieces by Louis Ganne, using SmartMusic. She's never seen this programme before and she seems to be working really well with it. I wonder how many hours she'll do tonight!?

This morning we went to Blatchington Mill School in Hove to see what they do in music. It's a great place with an incredible tradition in excellent music education. Many Flutewise course members will know our wonderful pianist, Dave Glasson. Well, he was head of music there for many, many years and helped all of his students achieve the most amazing things. We saw three classes. The first was a year 7 class who were working on Programme Music. I was really impressed with the attitude of every single pupil. They were really focused and obviously really enjoying what they were doing. It was great to see how keen they were to perform their own compositions to the rest of the class.

We then saw a year 10 GCSE group working. They were using Garage Band to produce a jazz piece inspired by Miles Davies. The equipment in the room was very, very immpressive - I've never seen so many Macs in one room! The standard of their work was also excellent. Next door to them, the 6th form were working on their compostions for their music A level. Like Year 7, they were working on Programme Music. Both Kristina and I were bowled over with their great compositions. Ahh, if all schoools were like Blatchington Mill. I asked permission to take a few photos for Kristina, promising not to take any faces - more about this another time.

After a quick lunch, it was off to the printers. Yes, Flutewise is printed and almost ready to go out, it just needs collating, stitching, trimming, packing and posting. Not many more steps then. Kristina was given a tour of the printworks and I think she was quite amazed at how complicated it all is.

Then it was off food shopping to Tesco and M&S. I think Kristina was quite taken aback by the size and volume of people.

So now I'm cooking dinner and Kristina is practising. Not sure what we might do tonight - maybe you could suggest something. More tomorrow.