I went to sleep alright, but I woke up
in the middle of the night with a coughing fit. It was so bad that
it woke Bobby up. He got a steam shower going for me and helped me
breathe almost normally again, and eventually I went back to sleep.
Bobby got up early to try and find me some more cold medicine, but
was unsuccessful. The pharmacies were all closed, because it was
early, and then he found one that was supposed to open right before
we got on the bus and he waited outside until 15 minutes after the
posted time and nobody came. I'm not sure if it was because it's
still Christmas here until January 6th and lots of things
are closed, or if they're all permanently closed due to the tanked
economy here, or if they're just super-lazy and open stores whenever
they damn-well feel like it (I know some other European countries do
that). Any way you slice it, it's annoying. I got up, ate, got into
my fancy concert attire, and hung out in the lobby for over half an
hour with the chorus for some unknown reason while our conductor went
over some notes that she's already given us a hundred times. I'm
usually very dedicated, but we were supposed to have an actual
rehearsal/sound check in the concert space, and this mish-mash
huddling and talking through stuff over and over was just not working
for me. I think Dr. Gemme was just nervous, but given how we always
step up our game for actual concerts, and have been on point this
whole trip despite being cold and tired all the time, she really
should have just trusted us to put our game faces on when it actually
mattered. I was so not about faking my “joyful” face in the damn
lobby at ass o'clock in the morning when I should have been napping
on the bus on my way to the real rehearsal. I'd taken my last
sudafed at breakfast and it hadn't kicked in yet, so that was
certainly not helping my mood.
By the time we got to the theater, my
medicine had started working, and I was only coughing occasionally,
so I thought it would be okay. Despite feeling the worst I'd felt so
far on the trip, I wasn't going to miss this. I didn't come to
Greece to stay in my hotel room and sleep; I came here to sing. The
sound checks were delayed and had to be shortened, because there was
some issue with the risers not being set up yet. This may have been
why we didn't leave on time. Regardless, I think she should have
just told us there was a problem with the risers, and we should have
just gone to the concert hall and had rehearsal in the green room
while they set up the stage. There was a place that was big enough
for everyone where we could have worked through musical stuff so when
the stage was ready we were just testing for the sound techs. But,
whatever, above my paygrade.
When the individual choirs went on
stage, everyone sounded lovely. When we went on as the big group, we
sounded nice too. However, in the middle of one of our quiet pieces,
I feel a coughing fit coming on. I start trying to quietly clear my
throat; it doesn't work. I try to just mouth the words instead of
singing to avoid agitating it until we get to a loud part where I can
cough unnoticed; opening my mouth and putting air on my throat makes
it worse. I close my mouth and try to just overcome it, but I can't.
My eyes are watering, I can't breathe, my chest is seizing, and I
feel like I'm going to throw up or faint. Of course I'm in the
middle of the middle of 100 singers and there's no easy way for me to
casually sneak off stage, and I feel like ducking behind the people
in front of me and hacking away on the floor would be even more
distracting to the singers around me than the coughing. When I can't
hold it anymore, I cough loudly several times, and we're still in the
quiet part of the piece, and the world-famous conductor is looking
right at me. I can't tell if he's mad or concerned, but he
definitely notices. I cough as little as possible, but it sounds as
loud as cannon fire to my own ears. I manage to hold the rest of the
fit in until the piece ends and the audience applauses, but I'm not
done coughing by the time they're done clapping, and he just goes
right into the next piece, which starts off quietly. So, great. I
feel like I've single-handedly fucked up the whole concert.
Eventually I get my lungs under control and I'm able to go on and
sing through the rest of the music in the concert, and for most of
it, I'm perfectly fine. There were a few sustained notes I had to
drop out early from, but that didn't really matter as much. I think
the only person who fucked up worse than me was an alto from another
choir who came in too early at the start of a section after a silent
pause. So embarrassing. At least mine was involuntary, not due to
lack of paying attention (though his conducting style is weird and I
could see how a person would make that mistake). After all the
applause, and thank-yous, etc. we're filing off stage and Simon
Carrington is giving all the chorus members a hug as they file off
past him back stage, and I swear he hesitated and almost didn't hug
me. It might be germophobia (I'm not too keen on hugging sick people
either), it might be my imagination, or it might be that he was
really pissed off at me. I just have to remember that I did all I
could and if that's not good enough, it's not like I'll ever see this
person again or he'll have any sway over my life from here on out.
We take our group pictures inside and
outside the beautiful 100-year-old theater, and get on the bus back
to the hotel. I'm wrecked by this point, physically and mentally, so
I sleep during our free time and Bobby and I grab quick sandwiches
and a shop a couple blocks away from the hotel before getting back on
the bus.
We go to the Acropolis Museum, which
has many original remains from the Parthenon and surrounding temples
that make up the Acropolis that we'd toured earlier. The columns and
such are there, but they've recreated much of the statuary and carved
art to protect the originals from weather. One of the floors was a
scaled reproduction of the temple that you could walk through and see
where the various statues and such should have been. It was sadly
very incomplete because much of the original work was destroyed in
various wars. I think the coolest part of the museum was the part
where they showed what the statues used to look like and how they
made the various colored paints that they used. I actually didn't
know before that all these white marble statues were all brightly
painted when they were made, but were just terribly faded from sun,
wind, and rain over the centuries. They also had a Lego-replica of
the Acropolis, which was neat, because I'm a child and I like Legos. Also, outside, and on the lower floor, parts of it were clear so you could see through to the archaeological dig site where some of the pieces from the museum came from.
After the museum, we finally got free
time in Plaka. Bobby and I bought souvenirs for all the people,
including ourselves, which we often forget to do when we travel; we
get stuff for all our family members but not us. This time there
were some tasty local things we'd sampled that we couldn't pass up.
We met the group back at the museum and walked together to a nearby
restaurant for our big group farewell dinner. By this time, the sun
had gone down, my medicine had worn off, and so I was back to being
cold and sick. I was quieter than I otherwise would have been, but I
still enjoyed the dinner. All of the choirs were there, and although
we weren't the only ones in the restaurant, we were in a separate
banquet room, so hopefully the noise didn't carry too badly.
Thankfully, nobody got up and sang unbeckoned, but there were a
couple of birthdays and the wait staff brought out guitars and a cake
slice with a candle on it. When we all sang the Happy Birthday song,
there were all sorts of harmonies, and it was actually pretty fun.
This dinner was also about a million courses. Bread, Greek Salad
(which actually doesn't have lettuce in it), veggie fritter things
with cheese, baked feta bowl of cheese, pasta with meat and cheese,
and then the main course was a pork leg. The whole drumstick. Three
people cold have shared that much meat, but each person got their
own. It was crazy. Then baklava for dessert. I was stuffed. We
went out in groups to separate busses, and went back to our hotels.
I crashed pretty much immediately.
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