I haven’t written for a while, I figure it’s probably about time for another blog. It will be a long one. Im trying SOOO hard to upload videos, but it takes HOURS. and it's not fair that i monopolize the internet. I try to set them up at night, but that isn't even always enough. I've tried shrinking them to 1/3 of their size, so that is what i am trying tonight. i'll try not to do blogs this size again. it's LONG.
I've still got tons of photos. I'll post a link to my video and my photobucket here on the blog when they are ready.
Rehearsals are going well. I’m still waiting to be put into the scenes with the kids, but in the meantime, I’m doing my best to keep swing rehearsals going at the same time off to the side. I’ve decided it’s too much to work on both girl roles at the same time, so I am concentrating on Louisa, and will then learn Liesl. So Maddy, don’t get sick!
My allergies are getting much better. I finally got to the point where taking benadril made my very sleepy, which is a good thing. I still have to go into my head voice for simple notes like Cs and Ds, but hey, I’m even getting as high as Fs and Gs now, so it’s all good for me. It was suggested that I stop the benadril, which is drying, and start taking an anti inflamatory (ie ibuprofen) to shrink the infected membranes that are keeping me sick. So i am going to try that for a few days. I don't want to open this show sick.
Viv and I stayed in for dinner a few nights ago. Apparently, we missed quite the dinner experience, but as the Chinese eat early, we may try to get over to the place sometime this week- our dinner breaks will be in the 5-6pm time frame. But they had incredible food and there was a show, apparently.
On Saturday, a huge group of us went to the Chinese opera. Of course, we had no idea what they were singing, but it was quite the entertaining experience! I am hoping to get the videos online, but they are taking forever to upload (literally, it's been 3 hrs for one, and it's only 40% so far). We got there very early, and wandered around. It was outdoors, but had a solid roof. Each few chairs had their own small table, and on the tables were teacups - tea is served at basically every meal, free. It’s like getting bread at American restaurants. I guess they need the green tea to help wash out all of the salt. Anyway, so we did some shopping, and took tons of pictures. Some of us wore these traditional jackets, those were cool. I was swimming in mine.
They also had an open dressing room, it had no walls, so we were invited right in to watch them apply their make-up and put on their costumes. It was really cool! I keep saying that, “cool”, but this was really just a fun and once-in-a-lifetime experience here.
I can’t remember which night this was, but for dinner one night, we decided to brave the mall food court. They are all service restaurants, so we picked one and sat down, and attempted to order. I had tried to order noodles, broth, and chicken. What came out was not that. Ketner and I switched plates, so I ended up picking at what everyone else was picking at. It was chopped up meat (everyone had ordered chicken) and bone in a brown sauce, and rice. There was really no decent pieces of quality meat on any of our dishes, so I started attempting to pick at my meal. It didn’t taste like chicken, the two bites I was able to get. About halfway through picking, I saw a bunch of full ducks being hung in the food preparation area, and then a dude came by and started poking what looked like chopsticks through their eyes! It was then we realized we were eating duck. Except Maddy, I am pretty sure no one ate much of this dinner.
Yesterday, after rehearsal, the kids got an easter surprise. Our stage manager dressed like the easter bunny and brought the kids baskets of candy. It was so cute. Me, maddy, and vivian
Then, a pretty large group of us went out for the day. One had discovered an Italian restaurant, so we went there for lunch. I got shrimp and risotto in a pineapple, along with a mango smoothie. This lunch cost me about $3US. It was pretty good! I wouldn’t call it Italian, but… good nonetheless.
Then we walked over (on what seemed like a forever long walk) to what was supposed to be an historic shopping area. It clearly turned out to be a tourist area (complete with Starbucks), but once you got past some of the junk, most of the items there were handmade!
There were handmade paintings, handmade silk items (and we watched them make the silk!) that were hand painted (and we watched the guy paint them!), hand painted bamboo pictures, name rice engraving, all kinds of things. I got some good pictures of the lake, and there were some rare fish in the lake apparently.
We ran into an American who’d been living there for 5 years, he wished us a happy easter.
I definitely bought some souvenirs here, and I may go back to get some more! I made sure everything I got had some level of authenticity to it, hand made in some way.
For dinner, we went to “the 5th floor restaurant.” We are coming to know places around here by their location as opposed to their names. This was a very nice place. We got dressed up, sort of, and headed over. They sat us in kind of a weird table, and even though there were only 10 of us, they didn’t seem to know how to handle us. We must have had 7 or 8 people serving us at all times. They brought the wrong drinks to the wrong people, dinner was served minutes after appetizers, it was weird how bad the service was. They were extremely nice and accommodating, and definitely do NOT take your napkin off your lap, or someone will be there seconds later to place it back on your lap. They served us boiling hot water (which Emily got personal with when an entire glass was spilled on her lap). The menus were ginormous. There were 3 of them- Chinese, Japanese, and “regular”.
Vivian was the only one who ordered Japanese (one roll, mind you, 6 pieces), but the servers were kind enough to bring the entire table our own individual cups of soy sauce and wasabi.
Against my type, I ordered a steak. Garlic steak. I had found the Chinese phrase to say “well done.” Once food was served and we had each gotten the meals we’d ordered, which took a bit of switching plates, we began to dig in. Well, my steak was still bleeding, so again, I found the Chinese to say “this food is undercooked” and again pointed to “well-done.” It came back to me about 5 minutes later, a NEW steak (as I’d cut the other one). The outside was charred to blackness, and the inside was still bleeding. What can you do? Clearly, even a nice place like this one had no idea how to cook a steak.
Then for whatever reason, they brought us out plates of watermelon and pear, with kiwi sauce, berry sauce, and chocolate sauce, along with plates of bread. Mind you, Vivian got this free for some reason with her sushi order.
My steak dinner was 88Y with a 10% service charge. So I paid 98Y, which is about $15. Not bad for a steak. It was 8ounces, so I suppose that’s good. And oh yea, they never gave me the garlic crumble.
We then came back to the hotel. We’d been planning to go to karaoke, but ended up sitting in maddy and Rebecca’s room for a while, until the room became a massage parlor. I was tired and didn’t partake, so I went to bed. I tried to read, but no such luck.
Today starts our rehearsals in the rehearsal space with the set and mics. That should be interesting. But I am not hopeful that this theatre will be any better than our rehearsal space. Dal mentioned that the theatre was supposed to be ripped down before we got there, but I guess they are keeping it open for us, then will tear it down. So I’m anticipating it being just as gross. But we shall see!
Laundry is very expensive, so I haven’t done it yet. I did hand wash a pair of jeans and a tshirt last night, just to see what happened. Vivian has been doing some of her own wash, it’s taken DAYS to dry. So that has me worried. After Chengdu, we aren’t in any city longer than a week. So it may be a game of washing clothes on the first day of every new city and calling it done. It’s expensive though, it really is. It’ll come out to $15-20 for a load. Just one load. And I though NY was expensive! My jeans had so much crud in them, the water was brown for about 5 or 6 rinses. I’ve switched out my pants, so this is just one pair. Gross….
As a general note, also take a look at the Chinese-English translations. Some are pretty funny!
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Today, I also went shopping and bought a purse, because I needed one. Looking back, it wasn't a greta purchase. price was fine, rebecca negotiated from 85Y to 50Y (about $7), but i dont think i like the purse. i tried to dress shop, but everything was made for skinny chinese girls, and it was ALL the same, every shop we went in.
After a LONG day of rehearsal, we all went to McDonalds next to the theatre. I got an ice cream cone (for my throat, 25cents, btw), and we chilled for a while. But clearly we were still wired, because we left the McDs, and right on the dark but empty street corner, we started playing Red Rover! There were about 10 of us doing so. Mind you, we were doing this directly next to 4 parked police cars, one was standing on the street holding a machine gun... yea... but it was fun!
Got down to me and vivian, but then rebecca plowed us down, literally, we hit the ground! rebecca skinned her leg, vivian fell in water, ifell on a finger but am fine now... called it a night.
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Just wanted to share these:
2 comments:
Looks like an amazing time!
Jen, i wouldn't expect you to miss us yet! your whole life has changed, every minute of it. but we miss you! sounds like you are having an awsome time! love it while you can!
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