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.

Stockholm

So yesterday, we drove from Copenhagen to Stockholm, a 600 and some odd Km journey, taking about nine hours. It was our longest journey yet for this tour. Fortunately, we did not have a show last night for the first time in a week, which was nice. Instead we had a major snow fight. I was sopping wet by time I finally came inside. Anyhow, today, we had a ton of free time since we traveled yesterday, so we went on an awesome journey all around Stockholm. Bought a 24 hours bus/train/metro ticket and traipsed around the whole city. I'm pretty sure we walked up and down every single street in Stockholm, at least that's what it felt like.




The residential palace -- where the Royal family of Sweden lives.



After the show, we had the tough decision between hanging out backstage at the Black Label Society concert because somehow over the two days we were here, we became friends with this crazy heavy metal band (from California!) since they were staying in our hotel and we have the whole living on the road thing in common, or an ice bar. We chose the ice bar. Sounded a lot safer. So yeah, that's me and my fellow American - Kirsten!


And this is me and my adopted big bro - Barry, the tenor from Longford in Ireland.




A sweet medieval street in Stockholm with my lovely Lenister's Lord parter -- Jack from Scotland.

I love the snowwww!! ack!!

Love,
Laura

ps. I'm coming home Dec 2!! Cant wait to see the fam, the sun, and eat some In'n out burger!

Check It!

I'm in Denmark now and there's a sweet sweet hailstorm going on outside right now. I absolutely love Denmark. It's so beautiful and idyllic. I feel like I'm walking around a freaking tv set though, it's so perfect, it almost seems fake. Anyhow, for your viewing pleasures, I have a little video. It's a bit from the show. This was taken last week at a show in Malmo, Sweden.

Holland <3 <3 <3

I absolutely love Holland. Love love love it. Holland > Russia. We just got here yesterday and I am so excited for this tour!
Firstly, I am on the internet!! Our venue has free wifi! How amazing! So I don't have to disappear into nothingness for weeks like I did in Russia. Secondly, The stage is absolutely perfect. Flat, with some give and giant. The venue has working toilets that aren't holes in the ground, like one of our venues in Russia did. We're in a hotel with normal water that isn't rusty, yellow, and smell funny. We have HOT food -- salmon, pasta, veggies, rice, potatoes and a refrigerator full of cold drinks for catering. Everybody speaks english. And my favorite part, two physical therapists waiting to fix whatever ailment we might have. I had a gorgeous back massage before the matinée and I'm about to go get my shinsplints sorted out.
Ackk!! I LOVE Holland!!!!

Today was made even better by the fact that Damien's family surprised us by coming to the show! Nobody had any idea that they were coming, but then they showed up backstage after the show! It was so exciting to have someone you know watching the show. Their not even my parents, but I was elated! It's funny because I asked them at dinner when I was at their house if they were going to come see the show because Holland is so close, and they were like 'nah.' They're so tricky! I love it!

Also, the professional basketball team we met in Moscow is coming to tonight's show, fingers crossed.

Holland is the best! Off to Denmark tomorrow, which should be equally awesome.

Love,
Laura