Liz Jahan

Our final week on vacation (as the American’s say it) found us back in Florida. We spent the night after the cruise in Miami Beach. As we had already had the chance to look around there a little earlier in the week, we knew what we wanted to see. We picked up our rental car; a 2012 Mustang and drove to the zoo. It was extremely hot – they even have ‘cool down’ stations around the zoo for visitors to stand under and have a cold mist of water sprayed on them. We spent the evening back at Lincoln Road Mall, having our first taste of Japanese for the trip.. Note to self, do not order an appetizer in the US – meals are HUGE! The following day, we drove to Orlando via Gator Park. Gator ... read more

The second half of our stay in Houston seems to have gone so quickly, we can’t believe it’s over already! We are backtracking a little with this blog to go over what Jahan has been up to. During the weekend, Jahan had a friend; who lives in San Antonio, drive down to Houston to visit. They arranged for him to stay at the Crowne Plaza, so that made things nice and easy. On Saturday, the boys went to the NASA Centre which is about a 30 minute drive away. They saw the space control centre that was used for the Appollo missions, and the V5 Saturn rocket that was used to launch these missions including the Appollo 13 mission that landed on the moon. Check out the photos. Monday was a free day for the chorus, ... read more

It's been a very interesting year and a half since we found out we were heading to Houston for the International Sweet Adelines Competitions. There was no way were could have guessed we would go through what we have, but Houston has been a great goal to work towards and it's almost here! We have been rehearsing a lot recently, in fact I feel like I have seen my chorus buddies more than my family in the last few months! We have two more rehearsals before we all jet off, then it will be a whirlwind of international coaches, two shows, the semi's and hopefully the finals! We will be writing blog entries throughout our trip; Houston, Miami, The Bahamas and Orlando. If you would like to view our semi finals performance live; go to: http://www.sweetadelineintl.org/webcast.cfm ... read more

After Carnegie, (it seems so long ago already) we had a couple of days extra in NYC before heading up to Canada. We began the 17th of February with a brunch at a sort of salad bar - I hope this phenomenon comes to Christchurch, basically, you choose which type of lettuce you want and the bowl size, then you choose the ingredients you want in the salad. Each one is priced depending on what it is, so meat would be more expensive than tomato for example. Then you choose your dressing and pay for the salad. I guess it’s sort of like Subway, but there is much more choice. We headed off to the Museum of Natural History. I’m not a big fan of museums, so I was a little skeptical. We had a good ... read more

There are two pages of photos, be sure to click page two at the bottom of the text. For those of you who don’t know all of the details of why we are here, the Christchurch City Chorus was one of 12 chorus’s to be chosen from the 34 who competed in Calgary in 2007 to participate in a show in Carnegie Hall. Seven of the 12 chosen decided to participate. Christchurch is the only non American chorus to have been chosen, so we feel extremely privileged to have received the invitation. On the 14th of February we began our rehearsals for the show at Carnegie Hall. Mid afternoon the chorus got together for the first time in New York in a conference room at the hotel. It went well, but we decided to call an ... read more