Seattle -- Days Four through Seven

I guess I have been slacking off a bit on the blog postings!!! What can I say? We've been busy!!! I am now back in Vancouver after a VERY uneventful bus ride here!!! It only took ten minutes at the border instead of 10 hours which was a great improvement! The rest of the week in Seattle basically consisted of a lot of singing, some beer, some karaoke, some more singing, a concert, a few Compline services for the soul, some more beer and finally some more karaoke!!! Royal hats were given out (to Patrick whom I would have packed and brought home with me if I could have...) and ships captain and ship mate hats were also given out to the whole gang in honour of the purchase of Peter's giant staffed boat!!!! Karaoke was sung....I think every ABBA song ever written....Malcolm and I tried to do Canada proud by singing the Privateer's song but we may have imbibed a little too much and we were also trying to dance so it was hard to read the lyrics on his cell phone!!!

One of my favourite parts of the day was right at the beginning of each day. Jan would do some fantastic warm-ups with us (good breathing exercises, vowel practice etc.) and then we would do a little dance!! My particular favourite dance was to a tune by the Scissor Sisters....if you don't know them I recommend that you find out who they are and enjoy!!!! You might just have to dance to them at my wedding...!!!

We also got to know the tutors quite well (and Philip in a revealing "radio" broadcast)...this knowing often came after the night at the bar. For instance, David who is the quintessential English man (who went to the dive, gay karaoke bar in a tweed jacket...) turned out to be potentially the funniest person on earth. Sadly the memories we have of David's humour turn out only to be funny to those who were there or knew him (I've tried to repeat the stories but they just don't seem to speak to others...). Needless to say we found out the the English don't stop for red lights for fear of getting "themselves stolen" and a raccoon was involved.

All in all it was a great week and I have made some fantastic contacts in the Renaissance scholarship world which is going to serve me quite well in the coming years....more on those plans later....

I also made some great friends and it is only starting to sink in now as I realize I don't have a rehearsal to go to in 15mins that I quite possibly will never see these folks again. However, I think we shared a great bond over the week and our love of Renaissance polyphony will undoubtedly bring us back together again somewhere, somehow.....I hear the karaoke machine calling.....