Is it bad that I forgot I had a blog?

Yeah, about that. I'm so neglectful!! My only excuse is that the adventures just keep getting crazier!


So, after Switzerland, we headed back to Germany. Our first two nights in Germany, we lucked out and stayed in resort apartments on this massive frozen over lake, because our other hotel was overbooked. Best place we have stayed yet. (Well, maybe a tie with the golf course in Denmark...can't decide). Anyhow, we even had a day off there so we had tons of time to explore and play in the snow! We went sledding both nights in the national park right next door. We attempted to star gaze on the lake and made snow angels too. The best part about the apartments was that we had full kitchens!! One night we were there was Gillian's birthday so Nicola and I made her and the cast dinner as well as a cake! I missed cooking and baking so much!

Our makeshift freezer. We had a freezer, but this was just way cooler.

Sitting on the lake. It spells ROTD! Quite a contrast to the beach in China.



Nicola and I on the lake. There were people skating too! Natalie, my roomate is building up a profile for hair and make-up school right now. So, she does awesome hair do's and makeup like this on all the girls.

She did a bow with my hair. I wish I had photos of her other work. We had to do pictures the last day in Munich for the new posters. This is Natalie and I waiting backstage. Because of this, I couldn't meet up with Kenneth who came to see the show until two hours later at the Hard Rock. By the time I got there, he had to go. :(
The boys posing for photos.


The last day of tour, Barry got me Mister Duck Man in the airport. He keeps giving me stuffed animals because he feels bad for losing George, the stuffed elephant I got him, in China. I also have Potato, the panda bear from China as well as Jerry, an stuffed Olympic mascot from Beijing.

Anyhow, my next post will entail the adventures of Laura, Kirsten, Nicole, and Gillian in France and Italy. :o)

So, for now, I'm home!

To prove that it actually happened

Raphael, my first ever fan, came to see the show in Bern! After the show, he took us to his house and back to Zurich to meet the cast. The next day, our day off, he took us around Zurich in his car and showed us the sights, as well as translating for us. Thanks so much Raph!! This picture is in Zurich.


ps. For those of you who don't know, Raph was an exhange student last year at Harker, and lives in Fribourg, Switzerland.

Germany

So, we've been in Germany for about a week now, and I am quite enjoying it! It's not as exciting nor as foreign as China, but it certainly has it charms. For one thing though, the show is way harder on this tour then on the last one because we are down five dancers thus eliminating most rotations, and there are two new dances! We moan about it a lot, but I guess it's not all that bad. My shin splints tell me otherwise though.

One of the highlights so far has been Kirsten's birthday bash. All the towns so far, bar Hamburg, have been rather small with not much to do, so we all got really excited at the prospect at going out. So a week before hand, Kirsten announced the theme on the bus. It was a party where you had to dress up as something that started with a K or S (for her initials). Everybody put a lot of effort and thought into their costumes, which is admirable considering the limited clothes we have on tour.

Oli as a Sheep!
Kirsten the birthday girl as a Scuba diver, and myself as a Southern belle.

Barry being absolutely disgusting as "Supersize Me" or my Southern beau. He acted his part the whole entire night. It was hilarious and disturbing to say the least.

Morgan as Ken, Michael as a Sheriff, and Kelly as a Sunflower!
Lauren and Dave as sailors.

So yeah, that was great craic.

Anyhow, today, we had our first day off. We are in this tiny town called Hirschaid, about a 40 minute train ride outside of Nurenberg, the coolest city evar! So after going to bed at 4 am last night, we rose early to go into town. (cause wer'e crazy!). We took the train into town and headed straight for the Nuremberg Rallies, or as Gillian calls it, Nazi World. It's on the outskirts of the town and was where all the Nazi rallies and annual conventions were held. The complex is absolute giant! 11 square km I believe. We spent about three hours there, mostly in the old Congress that had all the great historical information. It was so interesting hearing the story from the heart of where everything happened.




We were rather surprised by the state of the place. It was not really well kept at all. All the grandstands were overgrown and there was junk lying around everywhere. Now they use this field as a huge soccer pitch. Well, lots of soccer pitches. We stood right where Hitler is in that picture. Pretty surreal.



Back in the town, we walked through the medieval section enclosed by the walls. I was excited to see Albrecht Durer's house right across the street from the castle. He was probably the artist of the Northern Renaissance. If only I had got to see his artwork! Next time I s'pose?


Also in the old town, my personal favorite, was this beast of a High Gothic cathedral, St. Lawrence. I nearly cried when I walked inside, it was such a defining moment in my life. Wow, that sounds so cheesy. But, ever since AP art history last year, I've been dying to see a High Gothic cathedral in the flesh. Yeah, and what's better, is this wasn't the only one. But, it was definitely my favorite.

Afterwards, we made a trip out to the Nuremberg Courts, which was incredible too. It's where they tried the war criminals in a sort of international trial and a bunch of them got executed.

While we were running around like mad seeing the city, we missed the presidential innaguration, which I'm pretty sad about. I would have loved to seen that. Ironically, everybody else, like all the Irish kids were sitting back at the hotel watching it, and here we are, the crazy Americans missing it!

Anyhow, 1 30 am now, and I swore I would be in bed by 10 pm. (Which I was by the way, just couldn't sleep!

Peace.

More China

The Great Hall of the People --Beijing. 10,000 people! probably my favorite part of the tour.

Da Great Wall. There's a Starbucks about a 5 minute walk from the wall. it's rather sad.

Gillian and I waiting at the airport. We traveled mostly by plane.

Imperial palace in Shenyang.



our christmas present from the promoter was these sweet sweet hats!

China

So, my three and a half weeks in China have come to an end. Yesterday, we flew from Shanghai to Paris, spent the night in Paris and then landed in Dublin, where we drove to Waterford. I'm spending our 4 day break here at Gillian's house with Jack and Kirsten as well. Today we are going to go see sheep and horses! Can't wait!

Anyhow, here are some pictures from China.



We spent Christmas in Urumqi. It was definitely the most unique Christmas ever. On Christmas eve, we had our show at 9pm, (usually it's 7 or 8pm). Then after that, we heard our promoter was throwing a part for us, with singing and dancing. So, naturally, we were very excited. Unfortunately, what he had in mind was different -- we were to preform at some corporate Christmas party, and there was in fact no festivities planned for us. So at around midnight Christmas Eve, things weren't looking up. However, after a couple of us dancing at the party and getting paid extra (a nice Christmas bonus!) we had our own party on the top floor of the hotel that looked over the city. We didn't sit down to dinner until about 3 am! We exchanged our secret santa gifts and listened to Christmas music. I had Dean for secret santa, the tenor from Clare, so I got him a Hollister tshirt and other little bits and bobs. It was quite funny seeing this guy, who couldn't be any more Irish if he tried, with Laguna Beach emblazoned across his chest. Anyhow, this picture is Gillian and I with Jack in a full kilt!! It's pretty amazing he pulled this off considering our 20 kg luggage weight limit. He surprised us all! It was amazing.



This picture says a lot about our show in Hangzhou. This was at about 1 am after filming the DVD. It was probably the worst show and day on tour.We got there super early to maybe film a few numbers before the show, which we didn't get to do. During the show, the microphones for the tenors did not even work! It was a hot hot mess. Hopefully the DVD will turn out okay. We stayed after to film some more, and we didn't get to fix all the things we needed to. All in all, we're quite glad it's over.
Much to our surprise, Christmas is actually kind of a big deal in China, at leas commercially it is. So we saw tons of Asian santas and it was fun!



The Shanghai skyline. We spent nearly a week in Shanghai. It was probably my favorite city. Well, besides the tropical island. I have lots of fabulous stories from Shanghai to tell you!

More later!
Love,
Laura

PS

The city we were in yesterday, Jönköping, had a sign with all its sister cities. It's sole American sister city is none other than Palo Alto! How cool!

Last Day In Sweden

Molly - you are going to LOVE love love Sweden. Stockholm is possibly the coolest city we've visited yet!

Anyhow, today was our last day of this tour! I can't believe it's already here! It has flown by. It was a fairly normal day until the actual show, plus a little more excitement in the air at the thought of going home. Although, I did wake up at 6am to web cam with the kiddos at Poker night at Rohit's house which was the coolest experience ever! There I was sitting at 6 am in central Sweden chatting away with like a room of my bestest friends thousands of miles away at 9m in the evening at the annual poker night. It made my day! I can't wait to go home on TUESDAY! ahhh!!

Anyhow, then I ate some breakfast and went back to sleep. And then the usual 2 hour bus ride, (so much better than Russia!! ) and we were in Gothenburg. A couple of us explored the city and all that and went to the venue which was extremely awesome because it was in this giant amusement park called Liseberg all decorated for Christmas. It was magical! There was an ice rink and so many lights!




We also finished our new dance for China during rehearsals before the show. It's a ceili which is refreshing, because we don't have anything quite like it in the show right now. And the costumes are really pretty! I'll post picture when we get them in China.

The actual show was one of the most fun yet! Everybody had such a good laugh and it meant so much. Tonight was both Paul, a tenor, and Jemma's, a dancer headed for Riverdance, last show with us. Everybody sort of stepped back in their own way to give them the limelight. We tried to step out of certain dances so Jemma could dance every dance. And during her session, the part where four girls get to do a step about, we screamed like crazy for her. The best part though, was at the end bows, four girls do a step in a line. So the four girls, including Jemma did the first half of the step, but then three of the girls stopped and started clapping for her half way though so she was the only one dancing in this line. She had no idea and was crying with joy. It was so special! She did look a bit confused at first though. Other shenanigans that went down were people drawing smiley faces in their armpits, rubbing hair wax all over our hands to spread it to other people on stage, tons of silly faces, tripping each other, dancing in the wings trying to make the people on stage laugh, added gestures such a flick of the hair, a new pose....everybody felt a bit more adventurous tonight which lent to tons of laughs.

Then after the show, at about midnight, everybody kinda started hanging out in the lobby, and Paul played the guitar for a couple of hours and we just sang on our last night before our two week break. Tomorrow we're going home! I can't believe it's happening! I can't wait!!

Tons of love!




Jack, my partner for the dance called Lenister's Lord.