Pictures

Apparently google took all the pictures that I put on my blogs and automatically created google plus albums for them, and when I was like, "Google, no, I don't want google plus." and deleted my account, all the pictures went away.  So I re-instated the albums, but now google doesn't remember which pictures went to which blog posts.  And because I am too lazy to re-upload all of them, here is a link to the album that I never wanted to create:
https://plus.google.com/photos/106742111618884146942/albums/5591411212599254833?authkey=CK2XzJqmuK7Kaw

Barcelona Day 8: Home again, home again, eventually

We'd packed the night before, which was good, because we had a really early morning call. We had to be on the bus by 5:30AM, and from there it was just hours and hours of traveling. We said good-bye to our tour guide Erich at the airport, checked in luggage, and did some duty-free shopping before getting on our 9:45 AM flight to Madrid. It was a relatively short flight and then we had a planned 5-hour layover in the airport. We spent the time napping, shopping a little, I did some blog-writing, Bobby did some picture-organizing, we chatted with our fellow choir members for a while. We got some expensive airport candy, including a giant Kinder Egg dude with seven Kinder Eggs inside. Bobby had a kind of lame toy for his first one opened. Finally it was time to board. The weather was really bad at that point, and the wind blew a luggage cart into the side of the plane after we had boarded it, so they had to keep us on the runway for an extra two hours while they made emergency repairs. I opened a Kinder Egg and it was actually pretty cool. I would have let Bobby put it together if I knew it was going to be the only cool toy in the whole batch.

Anyway, we spent the flight and pre-flight watching movies, reading, trying to sleep, playing games, etc. The on-board entertainment was actually pretty sophisticated. My guess is because they wanted to distract you from their awful food. I've been on over 20 planes in my lifetime, and this was by far the worst airline food we had. Their "lasagna" was over-cooked noodles with a horrendous amount of pesto in the middle and a clumpy, greasy cream sauce on top. I almost wish we'd chosen the chicken, but from how much of it was left on our neighbors' plates, it couldn't have been much better. We were supposed to arrive in JFK at 6:35, but we were two hours late. Then we had to all go through customs and wait for the bus to take us back to SCSU. It was after 11:00PM by the time we got home. Also, it was freezing cold and raining/sleeting/snowing, and freaking awful. We were tired and hungry by the time we got home (Jim picked us up from school), so we just made some spaghettios and went to bed under our nice heated blanket (Christmas present from Bobby's mom) and slept for approximately a million hours.

Also, in case anyone wants pictures (besides what's posted on facebook) there was a professional photographer along for the trip to document it for Southern, and here's the website of her pictures:  http://scsubarcelona.tumblr.com/

Barcelona Day 7: Hiking and Parkour Barcelona

Today was mostly free time, which was a nice, relaxing thing after the big, busy day yesterday. After breakfast at the hotel we boarded the bus and went back to Manresa to see the famous Benedictine abbey, Monistrol de Montserrat, which was famous for its black-skinned Virgin Mary and its beautiful abbey built in a remote location at the top of a mountain. We took many lovely photographs of the views from up there, both on the way to and from the mountain by bus. After a relatively short tour of the abbey itself, we had a few hours to wander around, which we used to do a little bit of parkour, but mostly to hike around the mountain itself, which was both tiring and fun, and parts of it a little freaky when you could see how far down you'd fall if you slipped and fell off the cliff. I mean, there were rails at the highest parts, but not everywhere was overrun in precautionary installations, which I actually kind of liked because they seemed to trust people not to be idiots. It was a fun mountain to hike around, and we took a cable car to and from the start of the trails.

Back on the bus, we headed to Barcelona once more for lunch and free time in the city center again. Bobby and I used this time to do parkour. We never got a real response from parkour people in Barcelona, so we just wandered around on our own, and visited some spots we'd written down earlier from just driving around and noticing them, and also looking at hotspot maps online to figure out what there was around. We found quite a few nice spots for parkour and spent the afternoon jumping around and getting some decent footage, which Bobby plans on making into a video later. We had pizza and crepes for lunch at some point after training, and then met up with the group to have dinner at another seaside restaurant. We had the usual tuna/potatoe ball and bread with tomatoes on it for appetizers, and supper itself was chicken and something else I don't remember...I also don't remember dessert. We were in one of those outdoor tent things again, and there were people trying to get our attention through the clear walls to sell shit, like flowers and hats. They were relentless and rather annoying. There was also a guy singing and playing accordion, which some of the people at the other tables invited in to entertain them, but I'm not sure they realized that they had to give him money now. Our table largely ignored him, because we didn't ask for him to come by, and honestly didn't want to bother. After returning to the hotel, Bobby and I went out to do some parkour after dark in the areas surrounding the hotel and then went for a nice moonlit walk on the beach on our last day in Barcelona.

Barcelona Day 6: Concerts Galore!

Today is the big day. Two concerts and a tour of Sagrada Familia. We got up early and were looking sharp in our concert dress: Bobby in a tuxedo and I in a long black dress and black fringed shawl. (The shawls were bought for the girls after we were all freezing our butts off during the first concert earlier in the week.) We went straight to Sagrada Familia, which is a famous church designed by Goudi, who was a very out-of-the-box thinking architect. The church is still unfinished over a hundred years after it was begun. The tour guide gave 2026 as an estimated completion date, a hundred years after the architect's death. While the original plans for the cathedral were stolen during one of the world wars, there remained enough notes and sketches for people to figure out what the architect wanted. There's a miniature church sitting outside the big one to give people an idea of what it will be like when it's finished. This is probably where I took the most pictures, because it was just that amazing.

We arrived on time, but had to wait outside for like 20 minutes before they let us in, and then of course after we dropped our bags in a back room and got out onto the main floor, we started the concert late, without any warm-up or practice in the space. This was probably our worst concert because it was so rushed and unorganized. I mean, it was supposed to be a casual concert, with people walking around touring the church having some nice background music, and stopping to watch if they wanted, but still, it just felt so unprofessional for nobody to know what was going on. The director cut out a piece without telling anyone beforehand, and then jumped into the next piece before half the people had their music out. There were no risers in this place, so when you get 60+ people on a flat floor together to sing, most of them won't be able to see the conductor, and therefore, entrances, exits, and dynamic cues will be missed. We really were not at our peak. However, the people watching didn't seem to notice our frustrations or lackluster performance, which is fine by me.

A funny thing happened with Bobby before the concert. We were walking from the dressing room to the "stage" area (it was really just a roped-off section of floor in the back), and a French woman walks up to Bobby and says, "Ganbate, it's Japanese, it means 'be brave' or 'good luck' before a performance." And Bobby of course answers in Japanese, "Arigatogosaimasu". I mean, really, of all the performers to randomly walk up to (and Bobby was the only one she did this to), she picks the one who's been to Japan several times and speaks a bit of Japanese to give a Japanese "good luck" greeting to...because speaking Japanese makes a lot of sense coming from a French person who's visiting Spain. Only in Europe. These languages, my goodness! Haha.

Anyway, after the performance, we got lots of applause and "congratulations" from the crowd, and headed off to grab cameras from the back room and break into groups for our guided tours of the church. They handed out headphones that were all tuned to the frequency of the guide's microphone, and we walked through the inside, outside front, and outside back of the church, where the guide pointed out the different statues and carvings and what they meant. The inside of the church might have been my favorite part, because Goudi designed it to look like a forest. The columns were slightly tilted the way trees are, and the ceiling too looked like a canopy of leaves. The stained glass windows, instead of having saints and other things in them, were just bits of color placed so that when the sun shone through, it looked like the dappled light that comes through the leaves in a forest when it landed on the "trunks" of the "trees" inside the church and made the floor look a bit like a forest floor. It was absolutely beautiful. The carvings on the outside were cool too. One side was all nature, and realistic people who were carved from local models at the time Goudi was alive, and the the other side was more modern and abstracted versions of people and bible stories. The doors were all covered in bas-relief carvings of holy words in many languages. It was so beautiful. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to go up any of the several spiral staircases leading to balconies and such, nor down to the workshops where things are still being carved out for the church's exterior decorations, but the tour was still great.

After, we went to the area of the next church we were to sing at and had less than an hour to get lunch on our own. After walking around the block and finding nothing, we ended up at a Chinese place just across from where we started. We both got duck, which was in some kind of Spanish sauce. They really do tailor it to whatever country they're in. Then it was time to go into the still-cold-but-not-as-bad-as-before-because-it-is-a-warm-day church for our dress rehearsal (not in concert dress, though, as we'd changed out of that at the other church after our tours).

Rehearsal seemed a bit frantic to me. We spent most of the time in formation at the front of the church going over pieces that were practically perfect anyway. We did eventually get to the other ones, ran them through once a piece, and spent some time rehearsing the Catalonian Carol piece that we were doing with a local choir (the region of Spain that we're in is Catalonia). This was actually one of our best pieces. This version of their carol was in English and arranged by an American composer, and so it was a really nice mixing of the cultures. The conductor of their choir was really energetic and bubbly. Funny how most of them didn't speak much English, but we all figured out what Craig was trying to conduct after a little bit of practice. He still spoke in English with his directions in rehearsal, but aggrandized his movements (even more than they already are) to get the message across. One of the things I really love about music is how universal it is. Here we are, Americans, singing with a foreign chorus in a foreign land, us not understanding what they're saying, they not understanding what they're singing, except from knowing the original Catalonian piece, and together we produce one unified musical experience.

After all of this rehearsal and then sound check, I was beginning to worry over dinner that my voice would be all sung out, like some people's had already gotten to on the trip, and just stop working from fatigue. When you sing for more than six hours in a day for almost a week straight, it takes a toll, especially if you're not used to it. Your voice can crack, you can't project as much, pitch can even suffer, and there's nothing you can physically do about it. I can't think of anything more frustrating or scary as a singer to just up and happen with no warning in the middle of singing. Anyway, after rehearsal we walked to a nearby restaurant for supper. They had the usual bread-and-tomatoes tapas plus a salad, and the main course was roast beef and vegetables. The meat was okay, but the veggies were overdone, as they seem to do a lot here, to the point where I wonder if it's not a coincidence but a cultural thing. I don't remember what dessert was...cake of some kind, probably chocolate...maybe mousse? I vaguely recall it being good, and probably not something they should be feeding us right before our biggest concert of the trip. Dairy and chocolate are terrible for the voice right before singing. We did drink a lot of water, though, probably at least six 1.5 litre bottles at our table of 8 or 10 (I can't really remember). I do remember Bobby and I having difficulty finding a place to sit at first, because the table we went to was commandeered by the important people (conductors, tour guides, etc.). I also remember that it was three people's birthdays and they brought out cake with sparklers on them for those people, and gave one of them to the wrong person. Whoops. Oh well. After dinner it was time to go back to the church for the concert.

We got ready for the concert, and I was actually feeling a bit nervous, which is unusual for me before a concert. I guess it's because despite the hours of singing, I didn't feel like we were cohesive enough of a group or knew the materials well enough. Anyway, on to the concert.

The high school group went first. They were a much smaller group, maybe 10 of them? They messed up a little bit at first, starting an a cappella piece in the wrong key and then having to start over, but the conductor lead them through it like a pro and once they recovered, they sounded quite beautiful. They did American folk and gospel-ish songs if I recall. The audience didn't seem to notice the flub at all, probably thinking it was an intentional artistic break in the music. The Catalonian group (which had been an active choir for over 100 years) then came on and did some of their own songs, all in languages I couldn't understand, some Latin, some what I presume to be Catalonian, some in Welsh, I believe. It was all quite pretty. Then it was our turn. We did a few of our American gospel pieces, which sounded great in the space and the audience really seemed to appreciate. Then, the rest of the American choirs came up and joined us for the big gala concert group.

First up was a men's piece, Rorate Coeli, which was very Gregorian chant-like, which led straight into the traditional hymn, How Brightly Shines the Morning Star, except that we sang it without words, and the two pieces together sounded very beautiful. We switched gears from there to Verbum Caro Factum Est, which is one of those awesome, explosive Latin church choir pieces, and by far my favorite. Very powerful. We then went into three of the Lux Aeterna pieces, managing not to fuck any of them up very badly. I think it was in the middle of this piece, though, that my voice finally broke. It cracked in the middle of a note, as if to say, "Nope, too much singing, I give up." For the rest of the concert, I sang quietly in case my voice cracked again, which thankfully it didn't, because I didn't want to mess up the rest of the group. One of my other favorites was up next, The Water of Tyne, a traditional old English folk song which was about a pair of lovers who were separated by a river. It's very flowing and soft and lovely.

After this, the Catalonian choir came up to sing the Catalonian Carol with us. One could say this was a major part of why we were here in the first place. Cultural exchange through music. The piece went over well with the audience and I think we sounded great together. The other choir left and then it was on to the finale pieces, American gospels No Mirrors In My Nana's House and Walk Together Children, with a softer but inspiring song in between, a choral arrangement of Light of Clear Blue Morning.

When all of our pieces were done, and our final chord was still resonating through the church, the audience started their applause, and eventually everyone was standing up and applauding, and they kept clapping until the last person was off the stage and out of the main part of the church. It's really touching how much they appreciated it. As we were walking back up the aisle on our way out, people were congratulating us earnestly as we passed, and it felt really good to know that we did a good job. You could tell the audience was actually moved by this performance, which is really why we sing as a choir in the first place. It's not about individual or even group recognition, but the act of bringing joy, something positive, to complete strangers, through music, that makes all the tiring hours of rehearsal and frustration worth it.

After people cleared out of the church, we went back to take some group photos and such. It was interesting to watch the piano taken apart and moved out of the church. I figured they must have had to rent the piano for the non-organ, non-a cappella pieces, but I have never actually seen a piano taken apart and put into a road box and moved like that, even in all my years as a stage hand. It was interesting, but probably only to me. After photos, we all changed into normal clothing and went back to the hotel for a well-deserved good night's sleep.

Barcelona Day 5: Lots of rehearsal

Today we slept in. Well, we got up for breakfast and promptly went back to bed, sleeping through lunch entirely, which was to be on our own anyway. We had a rehearsal at the hotel before going to the larger group rehearsal to work on the song that our conductor never bothered to spend any time on during the semester, and therefore we didn't know very well. After, we met with the group in the afternoon at about two o'clock and went to another 3+ hour rehearsal at the coldest church in the universe. They at least turned the little space heaters on this time, and I had on every sweater and coat I brought with me, so it wasn't as bad as yesterday. Craig never went over the fourth movement in Lux Aeterna, though, the one that we botched partially due to the super-loud organ yesterday. I'm kind of mad about that, because we have just one more rehearsal and he hasn't touched it.

After rehearsal we went to this seafood restaurant that had a large tent-enclosed patio. They had the same kind of bread with tomatoes crushed on it and also a tuna and potatoe ball for an appetizer. Dinner itself was salmon, which was really good, though the portions were kind of small. Bobby got stuck with the tail end of the fish, and got an even smaller portion. The other people at our table who couldn't finish theirs were offering their food to him, which he took, because he was hungry. While waiting for the bus, Bobby jumped around on things and impressed people, including a group of Asian tourists who happened to be just getting off their bus, and staff who kept looking on from inside the restaurant. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel, and rehearsed with just our chorus in the bar of the hotel which was closed for the night. I was tired and really grumpy during this rehearsal because we'd been singing all day and we have two concerts tomorrow, so I'd like to actually be able to sing during them. Anyway, after rehearsal, I grumpily went back up the to our room with Bobby and went to bed.

Barcelona Day 4: New Year's Eve

A relatively early day began with rehearsal with the other American choirs from around the country that we'd be performing whole repertoires with later in the week. The conductor was Craig Hella Johnson, a famous modern composer and conductor of choral music, and he's absolutely brilliant. The space we were in was another church, this one in Barcelona, and it was even colder than the last one, but it was much bigger, and the sound was even more resonant. This proved to be a problem when the organist was so overpowering that the choir couldn't hear itself at all, and got completely lost for a couple pieces because our eardrums were being blasted out. When the conductor asked him to turn it down, he barely did, and then turned it up again in the middle of the song. Craig decided at that point to just not do those pieces that day, which was kind of annoying, because they were the ones that needed the most work anyway. Instead, we did the regular piano-accompanied pieces. Craig Hella Johnson's conducting style is something we took a little while to get used to. He gestures so fluidly and circularly all the time that it's hard to tell when he's cuing us. However, he explains what he wants in really interesting and effective ways, like making actually useful analogies. He also does a lot of exercises to help us be musical and be one with the space rather than just singing in it, like mixing sections and walking around the church singing the same line in unison.

After the rehearsal, we had free time for lunch, during which Bobby and I went to the place we saw making pasta few days ago. You choose your sauce, toppings, and pasta type and they made it right there for you. It was really good. Funny that some of the best food we had in Spain was Italian food. It's also funny that I studied Spanish for several weeks before coming here only to discover they all speak a weird dialect that's like a mixture of Spanish, French, and Italian, called Catalan. The pasta bar was one of those places where they ask your name and call you up when it's done. I did the whole ordering with the cashier in Spanish (which they also speak, usually, in addition to Catalan, if they realize you're not Catalonian), and when the cook put the food up and called my name, we had a whole conversation in Italian. I mean, it makes sense, because Barcelona is right across the Mediterranean Sea from Italy, but still...I study Spanish because I'm going to Spain, find that they speak something else in this region, and have a conversation with a local in Italian. Europe is just such a small place relative to how many different languages are there. It's kind of impossible to get by if you don't know at least three of them, one of which has to be English, but still, I wasn't expecting something like that.

After lunch we went on a bus tour of the Montjuic Hill area, where the 1992 Olympics were held. There were also a bunch of botanical gardens and some castle-type things and an awesome fountain. We got some pictures, but we didn't have time to get off the bus to get good ones of a lot of the things up on that hill. It was kind of a bummer. The sunset from the top of the hill overlooking the city was pretty nice, though. After the tour we had time at the hotel to clean up, nap, and get ready for our New Year's Eve celebration.

We went to a restaurant with a really funny name, "El Glop", for a full-course dinner and midnight celebration. The food was weird, but some of it was good. The salad was good, and they made a tuna and potatoe ball to go on this toasted bread with mushed tomatoes on it, which was also good. They also had a sausage slice platter. Some of them were ok, but a lot of them I really didn't like. Then they served uncooked salted cod, which looked really gross, and would have actually been alright if they didn't marinate the whole thing in peppers. Finally, the main course came, which was seafood paella. It was actually pretty good, but I was so full from all the other food that I couldn't eat most of the massive amount of rice. We had flan for dessert, and then someone brought in a keyboard, and several members of the choruses took turns coming up to it to play and lead the group in impromptu singing. Then, close to midnight, they passed out bags of 12 grapes. When the clock struck midnight, we put one grape in our mouth, when the bell tolled the second time, we added the second grape and chewed, still holding them all in our mouths. We continued like this with all 12 grapes, each on one toll of the bell, and on the twelfth dong, we swallowed, and as the Spanish tradition goes, we should now get good luck in the new year. Well, I couldn't fit all 12 in my mouth at once, the seeds took me by surprise, and in trying to keep up with the dongs of the bell, I nearly choked on a half-chewed grape, and so I wound up finishing about halfway through the first minute of 2014. I hope that failing in this tradition doesn't mean I get bad luck this year, because if it did, I'm pretty screwed. Good thing I'm not very superstitious. Anyway, after the grapes and a champagne toast, we promptly exited the restaurant and went back to the hotel to sleep.

Barcelona Day 3: Manresa Parkour & First Concert

We started the day waking up in the middle of the night because our bodies hadn't adjusted to the timezone shift, but we were tired enough to sleep again pretty quickly. This was apparently the same story with everyone. After groggily getting out of bed at 7 for breakfast, which was actually pretty good (I have discovered I like Spanish Omelets), we had a mini-rehearsal for the small group of people doing Lutebook Lullaby. This was one of the pieces the choir didn't spend much time on, and so the conductor decided it was going to be a quartet, and then an octet, and then a whoever-shows-up-to-audition-because-I'm-either-too-nice-or-too-tired-to-cut-the-people-who-don't-know-it-yet.

On the bus, the group started with some more city tours. I tried to stay awake during the bus parts, I really did, but I kept nodding off. The jet lag was still with me. We were told it would be warm again, but it wasn't. A sweatshirt was not enough for my tiny, cold self to stay warm during our walking parts. Bobby so gallantly gave me his second sweatshirt to wear under mine so at least I wouldn't be shivering even if I was still cold. We visited the beach and some cool monuments and parkour spots, which Bobby jumped around on. We wound up on one of our walking tours going almost the exact reverse of the meandering route Bobby and I went on yesterday. This time the guide explained some bits of history about the place, including that a good chunk of the old buildings had stones in them that were taken from Jewish buildings and cemeteries when the Jews were forced to leave Spain or else convert to Catholicism a few centuries ago. It's kind of creepy that you can see old writing on the sides of the buildings and knowing that someone stole a gravestone to put it to their own use.

After the tour we only had about an hour for lunch, and we spent half of it running around with the tour guide who kept insisting she knew where places were to exchange money. The tourist money-exchange place had an even higher rate than the airport, and all of the regular banks, which should be able to exchange money, had hastily-written signs up saying that they weren't changing money that day, for whatever reason. We wound up using an ATM and Bobby's card, because I'd taken most of the cash out of my account, thinking there'd be a better exchange rate here. So, that was kind of annoying. It also left us with almost no time to go eat. We wound up getting crepe and waffle things from a cart, which were more dessert than meal, because it was the fastest thing there was. Then, after being rushed back to the bus, we wound up waiting around for a while because the bus was late. I was kind of annoyed about that.

Anyway, the bus then took us on about an hour and a half ride to a small town called Manresa, where we were to perform later that evening. We only had about an hour to explore the town on our own. Also, everything was closed for siesta, so it wound up just being us wandering around taking pictures of interesting alleyways and jumping on the small things that could be found to jump on. There were a couple of interesting parkour spots, including the square we met up in at the end of our free time. There were these three guys there, just sitting on top of a wall. They were in sweats and sneakers, so I thought it feasible that they did parkour. Bobby and I started jumping around while waiting for the bus, to the great delight of all of the choir group who were also waiting. After a particularly impressive leap over a fountain by Bobby, one of the guys did a precision from the edge of the fountain to the top of a bench next to it. The way they were watching us and talking to themselves, I was wondering if they were ever going to join in. The waiting crowd went crazy when the local traceur did his jump. I thought it was pretty cool to run into some other parkour folks randomly in another country. They seemed really friendly, and there was a short conversation with them before we had to go get on the bus. I really wish we'd run into them at the beginning of our free time, or had time to exchange information. Regardless, it was nice to be doing parkour somewhere that everyone was cool with it. The locals all thought it was really impressive and cool, at one point a cop walked by and didn't bother us, and everyone on the tour with us were all excited about it, including the new Dean of SCSU. In various conversations with other adults on the trip, it appears that everyone actually gets what parkour should be from how we describe it. It's rather refreshing. I'm looking forward to our partial-day-free, which we've dedicated already to finding some fun places to train and hopefully meeting up with people in Barcelona. We haven't gotten any response from online parkour groups in Barcelona, so we're not sure if the latter was going to happen, but at least we got to meet some parkour people by luck in Manresa.

After the free time, we had rehearsal for a little over an hour in the church, which was built into a mountainside after a monk had spent some time in a cave on that mountain and felt divine inspiration. No pictures of the church or the cave, because it was dark by the time we got there and so nothing would have come out. The church was freaking freezing. Our rehearsal went pretty well, and we were told we sounded great in that space. The funny thing about resonance is that sometimes music sounds great to the audience, but you can't hear anything on stage. This place was like that. After rehearsal we went to a local restaurant for supper. The main course was alright, some kind of breaded turkey and rice with vegetables, which I didn't really eat because there were peppers in it. The vegetable cream soup we had before the meal was absolutely amazing, though. I wish we'd just had more of that. Then we went back to the church to meet with other choirs and rehearse our one group piece for the exchange concert that was happening that night.

Even with my street clothes on under my concert dress, I was still freezing in the church, as was everyone else. Who decided short sleeves were a good choir uniform? At least the guys in their tuxedos had jackets and long sleeves, though they were cold too. I don't know how people put up with this crap in the middle ages. Maybe they were just warmed by the love of God. Or maybe the preacher explained to them that it was so cold in church because by being in a holy place, they were as far away from the fires of Hell as they could possibly be, and thus the wicked heat of the devil could not reach them. But I digress.

I think it's really cool that music, choral music in particular, can be so universal. We'd never met these other groups in our lives, but after one short rehearsal, we were singing in perfect harmony. The song we were doing together was "Joy to the World" in 4-part harmony. The group from Catalonia (the region of the country Barcelona is in, like a state) sang a verse in their language and then we sang a verse in ours, and then we sang together, and it was really cool.

The concert itself was really entertaining and moving at different points. There were two youth choirs; one was a group of local school children, maybe 8 years old at most, and the other were middle/high schoolers from the area. They sang their own songs, classical songs, and also American Christmas carols. There was some adorable dancing to go along with these, and the whole thing was just precious. I was also really impressed by how well these kids sang. I mean, they certainly deserved to be performing a concert in a famous old church (Cova de Sant Ignasi). There were a few adult and older adult groups as well, and they were also amazingly talented, and the sound in the church was just phenomenal. Our group went on last, and the crowd loved us. I don't know how this company goes about promoting their shows, but there was standing room only in the audience, and every single person cheered, cried, or both at some point in our show. Our repertoire was a mix of classical European choral music, including some by a composer from Catalonia, which the crowd really loved. But their favorite parts were the gospels, spirituals, and very clearly American songs we sang. I never really thought about it before, but I guess these people came to see an American choir, and thus they were really excited about American songs. I have probably thought about this before, actually, when I went on the Italian concert tour with Pilgrim, but I'd forgotten about it until now. I mean, I guess it's similar to how I enjoy listening to music I can't understand, these people appreciate things which seem so mundane and regular and natural to us because we're native to our culture and they're not. The whole time, whether we were watching the others or performing ourselves, I really felt like I was part of something better than just a show. Like we were sharing ourselves, our countries, our cultures with each other and really getting an understanding that can only come through the sharing of music. I think there would be fewer wars in the world if people just had choral exchange concerts more often. No competition, no hostility, just coming together to create something bigger than any one person or nation.

Okay, that's enough philosophising for now. It's late, and we've got another full day tomorrow.

Barcelona Day 1 & 2: Traveling and introductory tours.

Barcelona SCSU Chorus Trip - December 28th, 2013 to January 4th, 2014

After marathon packing/laundry the night before, and a little more in the morning, Bobby and I got to SCSU a smidge late for rehearsal. There were several people later than we were, and nobody noticed anyway. We went over all the music we'd need to know for our first concert, which was good, because the repertoire we were performing first was the one we'd had the least amount of practice with. I don't know about anybody else, but I felt better about it after that. After rehearsal, we got boxed lunches from Panera bread and boarded the bus. I was a little disappointed in their cookie quality, but I was starving (Bobby and I missed breakfast in our fit of last-minute packing), so I was just glad about the sandwich. I napped uncomfortably for most of the bus ride, because we'd gone to bed really late the night before. We got to the airport and checked in. Bobby didn't open a can of iced tea I'd gotten him for the bus ride, and knowing they'd make him throw it out in security, one of us (I can't remember who) suggested he put it in his checked luggage, along with my water bottle, so we'd have drinks when we got there. I suggested putting it in the plastic CVS bag in case it leaked, since there were no holes in the bag, and with the tie facing up, any liquid should stay where it was.

We made it through security easily enough, though Bobby forgot to take his belt off and beeped in the metal detector. I really think that the whole "no liquids on a plane" thing is a plot to get you to buy their over-priced water bottles. There's a simple test to see if that water bottle I'm carrying is actually something deadly. If I've got it open while I'm in line and I'm drinking from it, it's probably not a bomb. And if it was a bomb, or toxic gas or whatever, one big enough to bring down a plane, that open plastic garbage can they're having people throw their water bottles into isn't going to save anybody. But I digress. Bobby and I didn't buy any of their stupid, over-priced drinks for the plane. I honestly would have, though, if they'd had something I liked. In our terminal, they only had one shop, with really bad selection, and nothing was worth it. So it was that we wound up on an international flight with nothing to drink. After our meal, when I was still thirsty, I realized that we're passengers, not prisoners, and they aren't allowed to deny us drink if we ask for it, even if they never get around to serving us. So, I repeatedly got up and asked for water (after they didn't respond to the little light which is supposed to summon them), which half of the stewardesses looked annoyed about having to get for me (sorry, but, it's your job), and they never got the hint to come around with the cart. Iberia is apparently an annoying airline. We flew through the night and five or six timezones and wound up in Madrid at like 6 in the morning, their time, with a three-hour layover.

The flight felt both really long, because sleeping was uncomfortable and inconsistent, and really short, because the last flights I was on were to places halfway around the world and were twice as long. The airport was under construction, and there was a lot of annoying walking around stuff to get to places. It was also freaking huge, so huge that they had airport shuttles to take you from one part of the airport to another, and signs all over the place with estimated minutes it would take to get there. The good parts about it were the architecture, with its cool wavy ceilings and diagonal supports that went through the colors of the rainbow as you walked from one end of the place to the other, and the bathrooms which were relatively clean and had bubblers outside of them with built-in bottle-filling faucets. It also had glass floors in parts of it that were kind of unnerving because they were translucent and you could partially see that you were three floors up. Anyway, during the layover, we wandered around the airport looking for drink places that were open and a place to exchange a little bit of cash to hold us over until we found a bank with a better rate in Barcelona. Then I napped on a portion of slightly cushy floor with about half the rest of the chorus while Bobby used airport wifi and such. It's kind of strange when you've been through enough airports to be able to start ranking features of them.

Sunrise comes really late in Madrid. It was about 8AM before any light started to come into the sky. I guess it's on a really western end of the time zone, and I've never really experienced or thought much about that before, so that was kind of neat.

Anyway, it was a really short flight from Madrid to Barcelona, and I napped uncomfortably and read for most of it. We arrived in Barcelona a little after 9AM their time, tired as all get-out, and proceeded to baggage claim. Thankfully, all of mine and Bobby's luggage both made it to Barcelona. I think this is the first flight I've been on with a connection that my luggage didn't get lost. Well, maybe that one other time I shared luggage with my sister on our group trip to Italy with the Pilgrim Chorus, and it made it there on time. But since it was a shared suitcase I think my luggage luck was canceled out that time. Anyway, this time, my luggage luck rubbed off on other people. The microphones and other equipment never left Madrid. Because three hours is apparently not enough time for airport workers to transfer luggage to another plane. But they said they'd deliver it to the hotel that day, and we didn't need it for a couple days anyway. All fine and dandy. Bobby also got some bad luggage luck, of a different kind. They were apparently rough with his bag, because when we opened it to get the drinks out after a very thirsty couple of flights, we found that the can had been crushed, the plastic bag torn open, and iced tea had leaked through a good portion of his clothing. Thankfully his concert tuxedo was spared.

So, after hours of traveling, for some reason, the people organizing the tour thought we'd be able to stay awake for a tour of the city by bus. It was probably 11:00 or so when we got on the bus, and we had free time for lunch at about 12:45. In between, we had nearly two hours of trying desperately to stay awake and pay attention to what a heavily-accented tour guide was telling us about the Goudi-designed buildings and such. I kind of felt bad for dozing off between stops to get out and take pictures of stuff, but I'm not sure what they were expecting us to be like after getting off of a plane. After the tours we had about three hours to walk around Barcelona on our own. Bobby and I wound up going down to the harbor (which was apparently completely redesigned to include beaches for the 1992 Olympics) and exploring what is known as the Gothic Quarter, because it has all these old buildings from the Gothic era. The architecture was pretty cool, and we took some pictures. We had lunch in the first place that looked edible on the main strip, which wound up being this deli-type thing. The food was okay, but there was not nearly a high enough filling-to-bread ratio for my liking. We were hungry and tired, though, so it was fine. In our explorations, we came across a pasta bar where they were actually making pasta in the window. We stopped and watched for a little while and took a menu so we could find the place again later. We also came across a guy with a little Pinocchio setup in one of the squares. He wasn't putting on a show or anything, just had this puppet sitting in this miniature scenery. The guy kind of looked like an old Mr. Gepetto should look, too. We also found a weird nativity scene with the three kings climbing up houses with ladders to deliver sacks of goods. There was something kind of weird about the whole semi-modern nativity scene and its little people that I can't quite put my finger on.

Finally we get back on the warm bus to go to our hotel. We'd been told 50-degree weather by several reliable sources, and packed for such, and have since found it to be much colder than that. We had some time to nap in the room before supper at the hotel, where the other choral groups from around the country were joining us for the first time. The food was pretty good, probably because we were starving again at this point, our bodies had been burning extra calories all day just to stay awake. We had veal, made up in a kind of beef-stew-type thing, and salad, bread, fruit, and cheesecake. Their cheesecake was interesting, lighter, fluffier, made with more egg and less cream cheese, and with what tasted like an angel-food-cake crust. I'll have to try and replicate this at home later. Even Bobby liked it, the man who hates cheesecake.

It is now Sunday night, at some ungodly hour, and after over 24 hours of being awake (since Saturday morning), it is time to sleep.

Notes from Japan

So, I never actually finished writing up my adventures in Japan, and it's been so long that I can't really write any details.  So, here are my notes about what happened each day.  Pictures are on Bobby's facebook page.

Day 8 - Slept, Bobby came home from classes, search for scrolls, find nice boards, adorable cakes, soke's class, paintings, cute little restaurant, some morning tremors and a few throughout the day

Day 9 - Slept, did homework, walked around, found a shrine, offended someone, earthquake in there somewhere, cookies with chocolate inside

Day 10 - Imperial gardens, boat on a moat, sweet potato ice cream, mcdonald's -ish, tokyo tower -ish

Day 11 - Zoo, lack of bath house, watched class, food, ice cream, honey lemonade, shopping

Day 12 - Candy shopping, onsen, temple, shopping, food, ice cream mochi, more food, packing