There and Back Again

Ok, time for another pic update, not very many this time. But we will all be home fairly soon, and then everyone can see all the pictures that they could ever want to. The first two are from bulgaria, on a day we went on a crazy roundabout drive to find a lake to swim in, and on the way back we came face to face with a huge truck and no passing room, so the bus driver (bosco) had to back up for a long while until he found room to pull off into the woods. The rest are from Hungary, with the final pic being a shot of some of the people here at the Crescendo institute, who shared some music with us the one night, it was excellent.

That about raps it up for me, today is our second mostly free day in a row, which is a very welcome relief, so I think i may do some more interesting sight-seeing today, we shall see. I can’t wait to see some of you, and hope to hear from some of you as well. bye now.

Now that I have gotten your attention with that heading, I better start explaining. First with the phone calls. So far we have had two very interesting phone calls made by members of our choir, the first was by David Sauder, and then he shared his success story with the choir and convinced Heidi and Holli to give it a shot as well. The interesting part of the whole ordeal came the next day as we were checking out of the hotel from where they both made their calls.  They were both confronted with bills ranging from 40 to 70 us dollars, depending on the length of their calls and whether they got ripped off when exchanging money to cover the bill. I know David Sauder found the price worthwhile in being able to talk to his wife, but i am not sure how Heidi and Holli feel about the cost of their call

The castle we visited yesterday wasn’t really a castle at all, more of a mansion by my reconing, but we had a fairly successful concert there, we were the second half of the program that was being done by the crescendo institute. It was reasurring to get praise back from an audience that was mostly comprised of musicians, many of whom had perfect pitch. It has been interesting to see how much of a response we get back from the few spirituals in our repetoire, as someone from our choir mentioned, “spirituals are like rock and roll to them, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, everyone still loves it”. I think Kristofer said that…

And now to explain the pitfalls. I that had something to do with playing lots of rook yesterday. I enjoy being with several people on this trip that enjoy the game of rook, I have been trying to find people to play with for a long time. We had a very interesting time late last night playing, and I think by the time we decided to end, almost everyone had negative scores . We also had some fun teaching scum and mafia to a few new people during our bus trip from the boat to the castle yesterday, Thankfully Rosemary knew german, so she was able to translate and teach the games to the non-english speaking people we were playing with. All in all it was a great day.

After finding each place we went to be more comfortable than the last, it is a bit of a shock to find ourselves in old dorm rooms, lacking toilet paper and many other ‘modern’ conveniences. We are now part of the Crescendo institute, having meals with the other students here on a college campus, and being part of the classes in the morning, then having our own concerts in towns in the evening.

The mornings are pretty cool, we only had one practice so far, but it was fun to see how the various conducting students varied in their technique and ability to convey their thinking. For those that don’t know, we are the test choir for the conducting class, so for two hours every morning we sing parts of the Requiem over and over again as the student conductors have their way with us.

Wednesday is going to be a free day for us, in keeping with the European culture or something like that. There are some planned trips with Crescendo, one involves a boat trip to a nearby town with a castle, and the other one is for sightseeing here in sarospatak (heres a website of this town, i doubt you could read it, but there is a logo for Crescendo on the top right of the page, http://www.sarospatak.hu) I am a little iffy on the exact details of what we are doing weds, since I don’t think they have room for the entire choir to go along on the boat trip, but I would be happy to tour Sarospatak as long as I can still see a castle somewhere

Time for me to go, There are several others waiting to use the library here, since it is the only internet access we have found so far, and has limited hours. It is hard to believe that we are in our last week, but we still have many new things to see and do before we return to the states.

Sofia is a great city. It is nice to be back in a city that seems like it is in touch with the outside world The bathrooms are normal, and it seems like a more standard European city.

The weather is great, it had been raining all last night, which made for a wonderfully cool morning to walk around the city and do some shopping. and the internet cafe’s are the nicest we have seen thus far too. In response to some questions mel/megan asked. no, didn’t really see any princesses i think, but it is possible some of them were and i just didn’t understand it. We haven’t had turkey, but the one small village we visited cooked up some goats for us, that was interesting (but it was undercooked).

We visted some Alexander Nevsky cathedral the other day, and it was pretty cool, the only other real thing We have done in sofia is eat, catch up on our sleep, do a concert again last night, and do some walking around. The concert was a great one, and we felt like we got the best response back from the audience out of all the concerts so far.

Today we fly out and head to Hungary, the last part of the trip. so today is our last day being 7 hours ahead of time back home. I think hugary is only 6 hours ahead. Bye and ‘Slava Na Bogu’ (praise God).

Well, here we are, ready to embark on the third leg of our journey through Eastern Europe. It has been a fascinating trip thus far – and I hope to write a more detailed entry in the next few days to describe some of the things, places, and people we have encountered along the way.

Tomorrow morning, we take yet another bus ride. This time to Sofia, Bulgaria. We will have concert number 8 in one of the local churches, and then we leave early the next morning for a flight to Hungary. Tomorrow will come very early, I’m afraid, as we must wake up before 5 to get showered, packed, and on the road with the rest of the choir. That is why this entry won’t be quite as wordy as one of my usual entries =)

I’ll just list a few neat experiences before I sign off for tonight…
- learning two new languages in 6 days!
Thank you = faluminderit (Albanian)
Thank you = blagadarya (Bulgarian)
- coming within a few miles of the Greek border! i hope to go there some day…
- eating more meat than i ever hoped to for supper every night (usually at 10 pm)
- sweating, sweating, and sweating some more in every country we’ve been to so far, people have said, “it isn’t USUALLY this hot…” i think we brought the heat with us from lancaster
- seeing God’s Spirit speak through our words and gestures, despite the language barriers

- Written by Laura