Cobh and a Concert

Today was an unexpectedly busy day! We started with a wonderful breakfast (again), then had a rehearsal for an hour and a half, 10-11:30. Well, it was supposed to be over at 11:30, but Dr. Staheli asked the men to stay a bit later for a men's rehearsal with one of our pieces, then we had a meeting with Sister Hall (a secret meeting...shhh!!). She let us know that our sound was exceptional, superb. But our peformance, our presentation on stage, was not good. At all. Normally we don't really care about that (not out of choice, just our concetration is on technique and musicality), but Sister Hall let us know that the Irish judges will base a lot of their score on our performance (she knows...she's done this a lot before, being from the UK and all). She said her rating of our mock performance yesterday in City Hall (Angie mentioned it yesterday) would have received a 2/10 rating from judges. That's it. SOOO, she told us she'd take notes at tonight's concert on each one of us, and if we wished, we could go to her afterwards and she'd let us know, with complete candidness and honesty, how our individual performance was and what we could do to help the choir improve.

On that happy note, we all got ready quickly and left for Cohb, about 30 minutes east of Cork by train. Yes, we took a train, which was really cool! :) Cohb is the seaport that the Titanic left from on that ill-fated maiden voyage. It was a beautiful town! And look what we saw!!


That's the Voyager of the Seas, the Cruise ship, the exact cruise ship, we took in January! Here, in Cohb, Ireland!!! What are the chances?? Hahaha, we couldn't avoid thinking about it the entire time in Cobh, because it's this HUGE ship just sitting in the harbor. Hehe, anyways...


We mainly visited this gigantic cathedral in Cohb, St. Coleman's Cathedral. It's 210 feet long and 120 feet tall at the highest point. But that doesn't say much of anything about the grandeur of the architecture and stained-glass windows. Oh, gorgeous!






It was so cute too, cause they were having a Catholic School class made just of little girls (like 9 or 10 years old, maybe younger), all preparing for a Primary Program type thing this coming Sunday. And they sang the cutest song about Jesus and how they loved him (I think...). Either way it was way cool hearing the little girls' voices filling the HUGE cathedral while we were just sitting there. :)

Then we finished our time in Cohb with some ice cream (no fish 'n chips yet - too expensive), almost lost one of our basses, then hopped on the 3:30 train to get back to Cork. We got back to the hotel quickly (4:30 or so), picked up dinner on the way (hot sandwiches, only €6 each, and delicious!), then got ready in our tuxes and dresses, and left at 5:45 to get to the venue of our first formal concert, in St. Michael's Church in Blackrock (suburb of Cork). We rehearsed, then had our concert at 8pm. It was fabulous! I was even surprised by Dr. Staheli asking me to sing a solo I had no idea I was even on the list for. :) It went great, too. Everbody was doing their best to show expression on their faces and really tell the story they were singing about in each piece. Afterwards everybody's faces were hurting from smiling so much! Hahaha. But the concert was great. Probably one of the best we've ever had, and far better than our Bon Voyage concert last weekend, even though that was great, too. Sister Hall said our faces and our eyes were so much better, and that was what contributed the most to the improved sound. :)

Oh, and the Irish people! After the concert we talked and talked and talked with this one Irish gentleman who told us all about his life as a global manager for an American company (he never specified) based in Chicago, the "training meetings" they had during 3-day rafting trips on the Colorado River, or 4-day Safaris in Africa, about how he worked on a radio station in Cork for a few years, and all this he tied into the effect of music on people. He was a great guy. :) We talked to a woman who was all tears and handshakes, men who were all smiles and handshakes, and acknowledged many who just smiled and thanked us.

Angie and I realized how much we're going to miss giving concerts and expressing our love of music to people. We're determined to make this last tour the best we can make it and really (no no...really really) make the best of each individual concert. Cause we're never gonna give concerts in this capacity again. And it's going to be really sad. :(

So, that's our day in a nutshell. It was a fabulous, rainy-turned-sunny day here in Cork and Cohb, Ireland, and we can't wait for tomorrow. We have our competition!!!! We'll let you know how that goes! :) Love you all!!

The journey begins

We're in IRELAND!!! And (lucky enough) we have the INTERNET! The hotel we are staying at in Cork, Ireland has free internet and the best continental breakfast ever! We'll be here until Monday morning, so we'll keep you posted until then. After that, I'm not so sure we'll be lucky to end up with the internet again.

Anyway, we left for our trip early Tuesday morning at 8am to the Salt Lake airport. Our flight left at 11:30, we arrived in Atlanta around 4pm (their time) but didn't leave for Dublin until 9pm. We did make a dinner stop at On The Border in the Atlanta airport though and it was divine (and probably our last time eating Mexican food until May 26) :).

The flight to Dublin was 8.5 hours long but Sister Hall guaranteed that we wouldn't get jet lag if we slept during as much of the flight as possible. So Anthony and I took a generous dose of Benadryl AND melatonin and slept pretty much the whole way there. IS was fantastic. One moment I was dosing off and the next I was being woken up by the flight attendant for breakfast with only an hour left on the flight. Others weren't as fortunate (or, rather, they didn't take any drugs) and were up watching movies and playing games through the entire flight.

Once we arrived in Dublin, however, our traveling wasn't over. We still had a 4 hour bus ride to Cork, in the rain (of course). Again, Sister Hall gave us her advice and urged us not to sleep on the bus on the way to Cork. I tried listening to Harry Potter 7 but the narrator's voice ended up putting me to sleep faster. We stopped for lunch in I don't remember where (somewhere halfway between Dublin and Cork) and had our first taste of Irish food. Anthony had traditional Shepherd's Pie and I had Quiche Lorraine. The vegetables were delicious! Most we were already familiar with but a few we weren't - like parsnips and rutabagas.

Finally we arrived in Cork, took the lift up to our hotel rooms and had a group walk around town.

Sidenote: At the beginning of the trip, Nathan (our tour manager) gave us our per diem cards from BYU so we can pay for all of our meals. Their like debit cards with a maximum amount of money available to us. We were given about $12 per meal (excluding breakfast) which transfers to about €9.

So, as we were taking a lovely walk around Cork, we quickly noticed that €9 wouldn't hardly cover a meal at a sit down restaurant or pub. But then we soon found the solution: Marks and Spencer. The UK equivalent to Target, but it also offers ready-made meals to go that are SO much cheaper than cafes and SO yummy. Today we both ate a full dinner, which included pesto pasta salad, 3 bean salad, cheese and bread, AND chocolate pudding for only €11... for both of us.

So far, it hasn't felt like any other tour I've been on. We been in a hotel the whole time and we haven't really performed formally. We did have an informal performance in the Cork library this morning. The audience was probably 85% senior citizens but they were the cutest old irish people and they were the most grateful audience. We only sang for about 20 minutes and even after we performed one encore there was an old man sitting in the front row who yelled for us to do one more. It was so cute, but we didn't really have time since there were other people scheduled to perform after us.

Later on, we did have another informal performance in the Cork City Hall for anyone who wanted to come. The performance was mostly for us to be able to get a feel of the acoustics in the room and be prepared for our real concert tomorrow. But there were a few groups of elementary school children that seemed to enjoy it very much. :)

After that, we ate lunch, had a little rehearsal and went on another walk with Sister Hall around town. This one was a little longer and we visited the beautiful St. Anne's Cathedral. There were lots of cool pictresque spots on the way as well and we took plenty of pictures, don't worry. We also saw an old traditional Irish pub with traditional Irish music playing nightly. Pubs aren't exactly the same as bars are in the States. People go to pubs for socializing and eating as well as for the ale, and Sister Hall said we're allowed to be there for the Irish music at 9:30 pm. We're considering it. :)

That's all for right now, and instead of posting every single picture/video we take on our blog, I'm planning on putting them in a Google web album accessible to all of you! So if you want to see everything, be patient, it's coming. We love and miss you all! :)

Easter Festivities

There was no Easter bunny, egg hunting or even any chocolate (gasp!) but we had a great time eating yummy food and dying eggs the nontraditional way. The whole family came (i.e. Dan, Ben and Trevor) and we highly recommend silk-dying Easter eggs. They turned out so awesome!!

We did have to sacrifice about 6 silk ties though. The boys felt a little guilty :)

And our favorites:

HAPPY EASTER!!

Oh Rats!

In my English class right now we're giving presentations of our latest persuasive essays. Mine's gonna be on the importance of fathers (of deaf children) learning sign language. But that's not for another week. Today, one of my fellow students gave a presentation persuading us (we represented middle-school age adolescents looking to buy a pet rodent) to turn to pet rats instead of hamsters. Then she described the various pros and cons of rats compared to hamsters.

Which, in my personal experience, is that hamsters are just fluffy, cute poof balls that really don't do anything except run in their annoying wheels from 12:43am to 5:14am. On school nights. And they don't really serve any purpose besides being cute to look at. And...uhh...being cute to look at. Yeah, that's about it. Oh, and they like to bite.

But rats are friendly and playful! Not only are they not nocturnal, but they like company and people. (Ahem, tame rats like people. Don't go picking up rats out by the gutter. They are wild. And they don't like you.) I began trying to tell Angie about them, but - miracle of miracles - Angie wants a pet rat TOO!!! (Enter Alleluia Chorus) So we decided a few things. First, we're getting a rat once we move out of this apartment. :) Second, we were going to look at cute rat pictures. Right. Now. So we did. And here's our spoils:

Notice the guy's tongue on the left, the overbearing grandma the top right rat
unfortunately posseses, and the adorable eyes of the white one.
::sniff::

Now come some of our favorites. Of. All. Time...

This is Bug. He's "the most adorable rat in the world." (Angie)
And where did he get those miniature teddy bears???

These were runner ups:

The cutest position a rat could stand in.

And this mama & baby rats were to die for

That's what we stayed up late doing. And we're happier for doing it. ;) Soon we'll have a rat. Any name suggestions??

New Toy

We got a webcam from my family so that we could have lovely conversations over the internet. Anthony was really excited to get it set up. :)

Chester

Last Saturday March 7 around 4pm, I received a call from my mom that our beloved dog Chester had passed away in the animal hospital. He was unexpectedly attacked by our neighbor's Rottweilers the day before but only suffered a few teeth marks and a broken leg. But when they put him under the anesthetic on Saturday morning, his lungs reacted to it and he died of a heart attack.

The news was extremely sudden so I had a hard time controlling my emotions. I pretty much didn't want to be (or pretend to be) happy all weekend. But thanks to my wonderful husband, I did have a little fun Saturday night and got my mind off of it for awhile. He was so supportive and very comforting. I'm very grateful to have him in m life :)

Chester was 8 years old and the best dog we've ever had. He was energetic, obsessed with playing fetch, slept with me in my bed, loved to cuddle on the couch and had the two biggest puppy eyes that no one could say no to. I will miss him very much and I'm not sure any other dog could hold such a dear place in my heart.

Reminisce

Awww...

I was just looking through some old family pictures and look what I found! Bekah and Jordy all snuggly. :) These two wouldn't be caught DEAD cuddling like that now. They grew out of that loving sibling stage years ago. So why are we so eager to become adults when we are young? Amidst adulthood, I often wish I could go back to those carefree days of playing Barbies and watching cartoons all day. Those were the good 'ole days.