Advertisement
Published: October 11th 2007
As the title says, it has been quite a stampede the last few days, so much has been happening, it's difficult to rememer what we have excatly been doing! (this is going to be a long one!)
As I left off, we arrived in Calgary at an un-godly hour of the morning Last Saturday, The hotel is fantastic! we are really enjoying staying here and would do again without any hesitations. We have a large room on the 9th floor (23 floors in total, which is small for Calgary) a lovely ensuite and nice view. The hotel is nice and quiet, we have free internet access in our room (especailly for the Sweet Adelines, of which there are three chorus's staying here). There is also an indoor pool, spa and sauna and a gym and restaurant.
Once, happily settled in to the hotel we finally got some sleep at around 2:30am!! I had a rehearsal from 9am - 5pm the next day so I hadn't had much of a chance to look around the city. The rehearsal went really well, they delivered us lunch and we are singing well, so eveyone was happy. The chorus had organised a group
The bus's
These are the bus's that take us to the rehearsalsdinner that night at a restaurant called "Mother Tuckers" It has similar decor to "Cobb n Co" in Chch, dark and wooden, but a really nice atmosphere and fantastic food. We had a buffet, which started with a 64 dish salad bar...including Jelly, not entirely sure why, but it's just something they do?! Then one to the hot food buffet, mainly meat but a few vegetables, I bypassed this bit as I had filled up on salad, and went straight to the dessert buffet of cakes and chocolate fondue with strawberries and melon. We sang a few songs in the restaurant, and one of the other diners overheard us. They were part of a wedding party and asked us to go into the room they were dining in to sing to the Bride and Groom!!
Afterwards Jahan and I decided, (with a couple of girls form the chorus) to head up the Calgary Tower. The view was amazing, it was great to get a persepctive of the City, it really is huge. It's a very clean city, and although it has the normal undesireable people here and there, it's feels relatively safe.
Sunday, we had a well needed
sleep in, rehearsal was from 1pm - 6pm so before that we had some brunch in the hotel restaurant (I had FlapJacks with Canadian Maple Sryup). The rehearsal went well again, but was extremly strenuous. We then had a costume check afterwards, so dinner didn't happen until about 9pm). We had heard about a Spagetti restaurant, so we found it and it was great! We had bread, salad, spagetti and Pistachio ice cream with drinks for under CA$15 each!! Unfortunetly I still hadn't got used to the time difference, and exhaustion had started to set in, but sleep patterns had not. 4 hours sleep was the most I was getting each night, which eventuated in me getting a bad cough and a cold the next day 😞
We went on an organised tour to Heritage Park with about 30 of the chorus members. I wasn't feeling fantastic (with my cough) but had a good time there. Somehow, I managed to be the organiser of checking everyone was there, so I had phone calls from early in the morning about where they needed to meet, wehn adn who couldn't go because they were sick or otherwise.
It was great to
understand more about the history of Calgary, we got to ride the steam train and we even saw how they used to make Beaver top hats. They put on a thanks giving lunch for us, which was amazing, with tradition North American food, like Sweet Potato mash and pumkin pie! I had a great time chatting with some Sweet Adelines form American Chorus's, it's great to get a new perspective on things, but I feel so new to this, all of the people I spoke with had been to many competitions before. One of them was facsinated by our coins, so I gave her an NZ 20 cent peice, she was so thrilled, I have also found out that some of the other American Sweer Adelines have been given some of the fridge magnets from our chorus members that I made, and they are all collecting them, to try to get each different picture! I was so excitied to hear that!
We had an afternoon rehearsal after the tour. I practically had no voice, so I sat out, it really helped as I have been feeling better and better ever since. That night was the Chch City Chorus's 20th
Celebration of belonging to Sweet Adelines International. We were so, incredibly lucky to have SALT and Rumours, two of the world's best quartet's perform for us as well as a Sweedish Chorus. We performed a few songs, and had a great night.
(Almost finished).. Yesterday we decided to head to the Zoo as we didn't have rehearsal until 3pm. The zoo was great! we spent most of our time in the Canadian area and got to see Grizzly and Brown and Black bears!! We went there ont he train, (it's really easy to get around via the train in Calgary), spent a few hours there, had lunch adn then went on to rehearsal. Poor Jahan offered to do our washing while I was at the rehearsal, so he found out where to go, caught a bus there...to find the place had closed down! So back he came to the hotel, and we found somewhere else that picks it up, wahses, dries and folds it all a has it delivered back to you a few hours later for CA$15. Which we thought was pretty good, especially compared to the hotel laundry prices. We actually haven't spent much money as yet,
really just on food so far, which ahs been relatively inexpensive. Things will probably change though once we venture to the more touristy areas in the Rockies.
Rehearsal went really well, we had two of our coaches there. Virginia (our director) seems to be happy with the way we are going, so i'm getting extremly excited about tomorrow. We ended last night with the Shwocase. This is a show at the Saddledome (where we will compete) of last years winning Chorus and Quartet as well as other invited men's quartets and the Young Women in Harmony Chorus from Calgary. It was a fantastic show and was really good to get an idea of what the Saddledome is like. It's not as scary as I had imagined, not as big as I had imagined either. There will not be a full house as many of the Chorus's will be in rehearsal rooms when we are on stage, so hopefully I won't be too nervous. It's now 5:20pm, and I have to start thinking about organising some dinner. Jahan is on a tour with the other men (partners and husbands who travelled to support us) to a Dinosaur Museum an hour
and a half away from Calgary. They all organised mini vans, which is great to give them something new to do.
The big day is looming, so a BIG REMINDER to all of you in New Zealand, we are contestant number 11 tomorrow. We will be perfoming at 8:10am on Friday 12th New Zealand time and you can see our live performance by cgoing to: http://www.sweetadelineintl.org/webcast.cfm
We will be striving to do our best and represent New Zealand the best we can. It has been a long time coming and a tough slog, but we are finally here, and we want to do you proud (i'll be listening for all your cheering!!!)
PS. I apologise for any spelling or grammar mistakes, i'm in a hurry so haven't had time to check it properly.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 57; dbt: 0.0511s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Deenie
non-member comment
Hi from the Lawsons:)
How cute is that grizzly! You can bring him and the white wolf home for me Jahanie. You may need to buy a new suitcase, though. Hope all went well this morning Liz. Good to hear your all having a fun and safe time. Take care, Deenie, Rob and the girls xxoo.