Balance.

ENGLAND. WAS. AMAZING. :D

I don't know where to start, there are so many good stories! I'll try and go day by day but I doubt I'll be able to remember everything.

(Pictures of that day come before the description, all photos are by me (or Eddie) unless otherwise indicated.)

The first day at the airport was pretty sureal. It was my first time on a plane ever so I was pretty nervous about that. I loved it. It was so much fun and not really scary at all. Sure a big hunk of metal shouldn't be able to stay afloat in the air but if you don't think about that part, you're fine. :) :P

The next day, technicaly, was a sightseeing day. All we did was take a sightseeing tour from the bus and traverse around Edinburgh Castle :) We hadn't slept on the plane, though. So in reality June 27 and 28 were smushed together for us into a 30 hour day. Fun, huh? One of the best things about this day was seeing Fettes College, the building J.K. Rowling based Hogwarts on. :) Me and a few friends also ate lunch at The Elephant House, which is the birthplace of Harry Potter. :) It was the silver lining of the day.

(Obviously, this wasn't taken by me. I think Patti took it.) The next day we had our first concert. We were pretty bad. It was a little discouraging but we had fun anyways. After that we went to Loch Leven, a lake in Scotland. Some people took a boat to Loch Leven Castle which was on an island but a lot of us just stayed on the main land. I took a walk with Jenny, Patti, and Jessica. I took this photo on the walk. It was GORGEOUS. I've never seen a more spectacular view. :) In this little park area they had the most amazing playground EVER. It had a zipline and the coolest climbing thing I've ever seen. I think you can imagine where I spent most of my time. :P

June 30th we visited the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Honestly, it was pretty darn creepy (as you can see from the photo). But because I like creepy (Edgar Allan Poe FTW), I was happy. :P It was really interesting, and one of the best museums I've ever been to (in my oppinion). We had an informal concert there that was outstanding. We had a phinominal organist play in our concert to and it was just beautiful. After the concert, one of the listeners came up to me and my friend and says "You are the best choir I have ever heard." It was really encouraging to hear that because one of the things we were most intimidated about going into England was the fact that they have a very prestigious and high quality choir background. To know we were the best choir he had ever heard was a really high statement. After the musuem we went to St. Bride's Episcopal Church to perform with Depot Arts. Basicly, Depot Arts helps disadvantaged kids have a voice. We sang Rolling in the Deep by Adele with them which was amazing. We really bonded with them. We were singing to our hearts content with them backstage even. It's something I'll never forget.

(Photo by Jennifer Cox.) This day we went to the Roman Army Museum. It was a lot of fun. There was a little movie to watch about Roman times and then after we had a presintation from a worker at the musuem. The presintation was a lot of fun. He had us make a formation the Romans would have used in battle and there was a lot of hands-on stuff. After that we got into the bus to leave and almost left someone at the musuem. It was close but Eddie made it into the bus right before we pulled out of the parking lot. :P After that I'm pretty sure we went to Hadrians Wall. It's cool for the people in PC and YME who went to Jordan two years ago and got to see Hadrians Gate because this way they get to see two ends of the Roman Empire. However, I, having not gone to Jordan, wasn't all that impressed and was more sick of musuems. :P So I listened to the initial presintation but then hung out and had lunch with Eddie instead of going to the musuem.

(Picture by Eddie Dodson) We didn't do much this day because of our very important concert that night at The Sage, Gateshead. BCC forgot to feed us so the entire choir except for me was dieing of hunger. I wasn't hungry because I couldn't eat anyway on account of my stomache being in protest to eating out. Yay trailmix. Anyway, we sang with the Quay (pronounced "key") Voices, Lads, and Lasses. It was a very good but tiring concert. After we were done (and even before hand) we were going crazy with energy (at least I was). After the concert we took TOO MANY group photo's outside. :P

We had another site seeing day, and they took us to Fountains Abby. Like many of the places we saw, it was breathtaking. I spent most my time with Eddie, Drew, and Jen. It was nice to just relax. Though we lost Drew for a bit, it was a fun day with little stress. :) After Fountains Abby we checked in at our last hotel and got a LOT of leisure time which was cool. It was a lot of fun to be able to walk the town by ourselves away from the whole group of 60+ people.

This is the only picture I could find from this day. :P In the morning we went to the Forest Arts Centre and sang with the choir there. We taught them a song we knew and then we sang it together. We were broken up into guys and girls so when both the groups had finished we performed for each other. When we were done with that we all jammed to "Goodmorning Baltimore" from the musical Hairspray. It was awesome. :) Then we went to the CBSO Centre and performed with the CBSO Youth Chorus. It was an amazing concert and very exciting to hear the other choir perform. They performed a song that we had been learning over the year called "The Snow" and it was cool to hear it completly finished because we had never gotten a chance to finish it ourselves. We also had an American style dinner, concidering it was the fourth. It was nice to be back home for a little while. :) When the day was over and we got back to our hotel rooms me and Regina (my roomate) had a little celebration in our room (as seen in the picture) with loud music and such. It was a lot of fun. :)

This day we went to Oxford. :) We had an informal concert in Merton College, which we were late for. Someone got sick in the middle of the concert and had to step out to. And, because we were late, some people went on stage with their flip flops on instead of our uniform shoes. It was a mess but the audience appreciated our concert. After we were done we went sightseeing on a tour. It was raining through most of it, but not too bad. During the tour we saw the lampost from the Narnia books, Mr. Tumnis who is also from the Narnia books, and a filming site of Harry Potter. It was pretty exciting. I bought a lot of souveniers here because they said it was probably the last time we would be able to buy anything. After the tour we had a lot of leisure time which was really nice. I tried to forget about how close to the end we were.

We went to a school this day and teached much like we had done before. It was really interesting to be on the other side of things where we were teaching instead of being taught. We had kind of been that way the time before but this was different because the kids were younger. Instead of hanging out with them and being more on their level we were really more like mentors than we had been before. After this we went to the Maida Vale Studios where we attended a rehearsal with the BBC Singers. They were crazy good! They hadn't practiced at all and could've recoded right off the page. It was absolutely amazing and inspiring. We got to ask questions after which was a huge plus. They really liked us, which is good too. :) We met our host familys this night and stayed with them. My host family took me and Audrey (a roomate :) on the London Eye which was SPECTACULAR. Unfortunately, Eddie had the camera we were sharing so I couldn't get any pictures. It was beautiful, though. And my host family was magnificent.

The next day was a guided sight seeing tour of London on the bus. It was awesome and I finally got some pictures. The sky was clear, we were all dressed up for the formal-ish farewell lunch, and everything looked up. Until they made us get out and walk for our walking tour; IN THE POURING RAIN. It hadn't been raining until the moment we had to walk out of the bus and then it came down in buckets. They canceled the walking tour but still made us walk to some museum to spend the time we woulda spent walking there. Our dresses and shoes were all soaking wet by the time we got to the museum. We were there for a while but not long enough to completly dry until we had to walk in the rain again to the site where lunch was. Even lunch was a little stressful, but we got through it. That night was epic and so sad but happy at the same time. We had the last concert and everything leading up to that was pretty normal except for the....anxiousness? of "Up to the Mountain", our song. Up to the Mountain is a song PC and YME does every year for the last concert. It means a lot to us. Before we had even started singing it during the last concert people were crying their eyes out on stage. Of course, we sounded horrible, but it was so beautiful. The people who sang the solos were singers and they were crying and just everyone was crying. It was, unreal. After the concert we went outside and cried some more. We still had one more day, that's all I tried to focus on.

This is a picture of me and my host family. :) From right to left it's Mrs. Turtelboom (AWESOME last name, I know :P), me, Audrey, and Emma. We met at the girls school and had our last day services. Superlatives were handed out (I got "Biggest Dr. Who fan" :P), the seniors sang the senior song, and we gave cards to the staff. They took us to Windsor Castle but I know at least I didn't go into the castle. Me, Drew, Jen, and Eddie went on a mad expensive ferris wheel. It was well worth it, in my oppinion. After that we went to the Londond airport and I got a call. Or rather, had been told to call home. I had been told to call home a few days before but it wasn't as bad as this time. Before I had just been told that my mom was some sicker, which is nothing new to me. But during this conversation my sister actualy said "They think she's waiting until you get home to die." I was in shock for a while. A few people asked me about it and I told them. Eddie helped me a lot with things, but it was still a pretty long plane ride. I don't like to dwell to much on this stuff, especially since it's what destroyed my last blog, but I'll still touch on it. I can't avoid it at all. I'll talk more about it in the next post, but for now, TOUR WAS AWESOME. :) I'll be putting videos up and most of my pictures up soon too, keep a look out. :)

lOVe,
Molly