London

We've been back in the country for a week now, and I finally have time to post about our trip to London! We left on December 28th with 23 of my high school students and 3 chaperones on a direct flight to London, arriving in the morning of the 29th. They forced us to stay awake all day, and even sit through an Evensong (choral church service) at Westminster Abbey that evening. It was quite a long day to start off the trip, especially since I hardly slept on the plane!

On Day 3 we took a bus tour of London and Tony's new videocamera broke out of it's case. We joked throughout the trip about how attached he is to his new toy, sometimes to the point of annoyance. But, I'm sure it will still be fun to look back through the footage. I can guarantee for sure that Tony will be trying to capture every moment on his camera when our baby arrives!

On subsequent days, we enjoyed more touring, shopping and dining. We visited Canterbury to tour the cathedral and town, Leeds Castle (which I found less than spectacular, though we did see what appeared to be a pregnant duck!!), Windsor Castle, and the Tower of London. We dined in good Italian, Indian, and Fish and Chips restaurants and ate plenty every morning at the hotel buffet!

For sure the greatest part of the whole trip was seeing "Wicked" on New Year's Eve. This was not part of the original plan for this trip. In fact, we were already slated to see "The Sound of Music" later on in the week. But, one of my students happened to see that Wicked was playing and was persistent about finding out about tickets. Unfortunately, they were fairly expensive, so not everyone was able to go. But, we took 6 students and 4 of us adults, and the others went to the hotel New Year's Eve party. The show was amazing!! Absolutely fabulous!! I don't think I can see another live musical without comparing it to this show.

Below, you see my awesome students dancing the night away on New Year's Eve. Only at DSA will you find students doing unified choreography to pop songs at a teen dance! Tony also got quite an awakening on New Year's Eve as he witnessed one of my young, supposedly-innocent students macking on a band kid from another school that night. Afterwards he kept praying that we will have a boy so he doesn't have to deal with that scenario again!

The original purpose of this trip, of course, was the London International Choral Festival. So, below are some photos of the kids in rehearsal and right before performance. They rehearsed and performed with Thomas Wilson and Robert Quinney of Westminster Cathedral. It was certainly an experience for them. Probably the best part was being able to sing with the phenomenal London Youth Orchestra, which was far and away better than the Durham Symphony!

A few miscellaneous pictures to follow... This one features Tony and me in Windsor. Poor Tony was fighting a cold and sinus infection with major fever at this time, but he was quite a trooper. After sleeping for a day, he did his best to keep up with us on the rest of the tour.

I took this picture because I thought it looked like an upgrade on Tara's halloween costume from a couple years ago. What do you think, Tara? Should we have stolen it from the castle?? :)

This is me with my favorite European drink, Lemon Fanta. Seriously, the Atlanta Coca-Cola company could take a clue from the European makers of Fanta. It is WAY better! Less syrup-y, more fizzy, and with real juice in it! MMMMM

So we're back to normal life again. Last week was like playing catch-up and just trying to tread above water. This week is exam week at school, and a more normal business week for Tony. We enjoyed celebrating Megan's birthday this weekend with Pat and my mom, and endured a rather dull performance of "A Chorus Line" last night. Now we're counting down to the big day that we find out the sex of our baby!! Just 16 days left!! :)