Erin's trips

Tuesday morning we went on a tour of the ring of Kerry. Its about a 5 hour bus trip including all the stops in little towns or along the ocean/mountain range. It was really cool to see the mountains, they were a funny grey color but I guess thats because in August they will be all purple with heather. We also saw lots of sheep and dry stone walls. We also stopped at a little place with the old thatched roofs for a 10am Irish coffee. After the tour we went straight to rehearsal in Killarney and then had our concert. Unfortunately I seem to be sick and only sang about half of the night, there were two people sick before we came and now they have spread it to basically everyone.

Wednesday morning we head off to the cliffs of Moher and the Buren county. The buren is very rocky and basically the only thing they can do there is have sheep farms. The cliffs were pretty cool. We've been really lucky with the weather and it has only rained once and it was while we were singing and the days where we have had a lot of time outside have been really warm. After the cliffs we head off to the Aillwee caves. They were formed by an old underground river under the river aillwee, they were ok but the tour was not a long as we had expected but it was funny to watch the claustrophobic guy. Then off to Galway, we all went out to the pub for a little but but seeing as I am really feeling sick i went back pretty early.

This morning we were supposed to go bus to Bunratty castle at 8am, spend the day on the bus and then do our concert in a town outside of Galway. However seeing as we are all sick (largely due to the amount of time spent on the bus together) the whole choir opted out and spent the day sleeping and doing what we felt like in the city. We walked down to the ocean for a while today, then had lunch and went shopping for a bit. Tonight we are doing a benefit concert for some youth music project, it will be the last concert. And in the morning we are back to Dublin. Galway is very much a university town, the roads are really confusing too, trying to figure our if it actually a driving road or just walking but some of the seem to change at random times.

So couple things I've noticed, since I think this may be the last time before we get home
-no one here seems to work, it didn't matter where we were, at 2 in the afternoon on any the streets were packed
-also no matter what day it is at 1 in the morning the streets are still pretty full
-hotel rooms don't have alarm clocks, or any clocks at all really
-British tv is really horrible but they seem to have a thing for American Idol
-traditional irish breakfast is pretty gross and heavy and they like their meat (eggs, sausage, blood pudding, bacon, a whole tomato)
-a toastie is just a sandwich on toast
-everything costs the same as it does in Canada until you remember that the euro is worth over two and a half times as much as our dollar

So hopefully I'm feeling a little better tonight so I can go out, there are a few people leaving tomorrow morning to go off on their own travels so it will be last night with everyone here. We do still have the last night in Dublin though.

So ya didn't have much time to write while we were in Cork so I hope I remember everything, might just have to come back and edit later. (Some Irish guy that I did not understand in the slightest just talked to me)
So the concert in the non competitive part went well and meeting the mayor was good. After we were pretty tired so we just got a movie in one of the rooms.

On Saturday morning we had to go on another bus tour which was as annoying as the last one but at least this one was only an hour. Both my rommates are sick so they got to sleep through it. I spent the morning shopping with the boys and then went to rehearsal. This night was the compitition. We had a couple slips but overall didn't go to badly. That night there was the festival club, one room is kareke with live piano and the otehr room was a ball room. Every few songs they would play something traditional and teach everyone how to dance, it was so much fun. And, although it was not near as funny as Rio, I did seem to gain a couple underage Sweedish boys.

Sunday - Got to sleep in a bit then we walked over to St. Francis' church to sing in the 12:00 mass, the accousitcs were amazing and we had some crying choir members after the mass, it was just so amazing to sing in there.
The afternoon was the awards ceremony for the international compitition. Its weird cause we have no idea what our scores are before we go in there. There are a couple awards other than the trophys and Len won one for most creative and original programing. We found out our scores and placement after, we tied for 5th with the american choir (also from the U of A acctually, Alabama) with a 90.92 but the winning choir had a 91.8 so we are pretty happy about that considering we got that despite our slip ups. So tonight a bunch of us went out for dinner and then a samaller group went to the festival club again (I dieffinatly havn't been to bad before 2am yet)

So now we come to today which was fantastic, we had the whole day off singing. We started out this morning by driveing to the blarney castle it was fantasic lots of good pictures and yes I even flipped upside down and kissed the stone and have pictures to prove it. It was acctually really freaky its way farther down than you would think and you are in that hole quite a bit. Then we went for lunch, we still had 2 hours before the bus was to leave so we just sat there and relaxed. Now we are in Killarny. It is 1:30am and there are a bunch of crazy old irish men that i don't understand in the loby next to me. When we got here we went for a walk which turned out to be well over 2 hours. The entrace to the nataion park is right around the corner from the hotel so we thought we would check it out. Took a while becuase we found a castle on a lake and a field of deer that you could basicly walk right up to. We went for dinner and then to a movie. Now we are in the pool lounge of the hotel. We brought down a kettle and a bunch of mugs and are sitting around with tea. But I think I'm going to go to sleep now, I'm really sore from the walking/dancing.

I forgot to say about the fantastic dinner in Greystone, yet again on the choir, wow good food! So yesterday we walked around Cork for a while, looked at some very cool churches and since Thursday is basilcy universal church choir rehearsal we got to listen to a few of them as we snuck into the churches that let their doors open. We also found a little shop called Ginos that has fantastic gelato. There is also a river that runs though the city and some beautiful buildings that line it. I diddn't bring my usb cord so I will have to put pictures up when I get home.
Today we had a concert in a little library in a residential area, it acctually went really well and the audience was great, bunch of old people and a couple elementary school groups. Then in a couple hours the executive (Me!) gets to meet the mayor before we all sing again. This one will be for the National School Choirs Compitition, we are not acctually competeing tonight (just the Ireland choirs) but it is a chance for us to try out the space for the international compitition tomorrow.
Its really interesting how different it is here from Dublin and we were downtown in both places. but I will explain that later, I think we are going to wat soon before the next gig.

So today we left Dublin and are in Cork. It may be kinda tricky to update now, the internet cafe is hard to find. The rock of Cashel was amazing, its an old ruined church on a hill, there used to be a fortress there as well but it was wood so its gone now. I have a video of us singing in the old chapel but I wont know if the sound worked till I get home.
Now we are in Cork, its kind of like Banf but big and super classy. We looked up the hotel in the guidebook and it costs 150£ per person so ya good deal for us.
Going to go find some food.

So I've been able to write on here a lot more than I had thought so far, fortunately there is a really cheap internet cafe across the street from the hotel, but tomorrow we go to Cork so we'll see.
So yesterday after I got back after writing, a couple of us decided we should go find a little Irish pub and have some real Guinness. So we asked the desk at the hotel where was good and in walking distance. The place he sent us was called Bleu Note and supposibly has good live jazz (which sure doesn't sure Irish spelt that way and didn't have jazz but it was a Tuesday night) and once we found it, it had half its signs in Chinese and only 2 people were sitting in it. So we walked a little further down the street and found Slatterys. It was amazing, we got upstairs and it was Portuguese night or something. But every other Tuesday they go there with drums and cowbells and shakers and sing and jam around a big table. I tired videoing it on my camera but i wont know if it worked till I get it on to the computer with the sound. Also the Manchester game had just finished so it was the Portuguese, the hippy's jamming with them, the guys watching the game and the table of Canadians. We were sitting with the guys who had just finished watching the game and learned some stuff. They taught us if the pub is two floors always get your Guinness from the bottom floor because it gets shaken up on the way up to the second and doesn't taste as good. And we told them our story of the other pub we got sent too so they wrote us a list of places in Dublin and another list for Cork. There is a really really old one in Dublin that we are going to go to on the last night before we leave and then there is another in Cork that they said was great because they guy that runs it is crazy, everyone sits around a tells stories, and when it rains it leaks through the roof.
So today we had a three hour bus tour of the city which was ridiculous, everywhere we went was in walking distance and we never even got off the bus. Thankfully we had a couple hours free so we got up to the river and the Christ Church Cathedral. Hopefully on the last day we can get to the St. Patrick's cathedral.
Then we had a concert in a little coastal town called Greystones. beautiful little town.
I'm going to go back and play cards in the lobby!