Back in Harbin, China

Dear Loyal Readers of My Blog-

I am pleased to announce that around midnight on Monday (meaning it was just about Tuesday) my luggage arrived from the Harbin Airport! They were in decent condition, though they still managed to look like they’d been to hell and back. My beautiful blue suitcase is nearly black on the front now, and there are tags all over. The insides were just a mess. I haven’t discovered anything missing, which is good, but everything was squished, out of order, it really looked like there had been a hurricane in my suitcases.

But they arrived nonetheless. I have never been so glad to see my suitcases. They are kind of a mess now, so I really need to reorganize them, but I am so glad to see them.

We have gotten settled here in Harbin. We had rehearsal for three days straight. We were in a rehearsal studio on the other side of town for the first two days. We found this excellent dumpling place next door. They didn’t know what to do with us the first day, so it was pretty much a disaster. But they were better prepared for us the second day. The first day I got shrimp and cucumber dumplings, though I’m not entirely sure that it was actually cucumber that was in it…The second day I got spicy tofu (which ended up being cold, so I didn’t eat much of it) and a side of spinach, which was excellent.

Rehearsals went well, as I mentioned. I got to go in several scenes for Liesl, which is great. I didn’t realize how much I actually knew despite never having had actual rehearsals for the Liesl track. My blocking rehearsals were always for Louisa’s track. I still have yet to do a few fairly important scenes in Act 2, including: 1)Captain and Maria return from their honeymoon, Rolf comes by as a full Nazi, and Maria/Liesl sing the “16” reprise, 2) the concert as either character, and 3) the finale as either character.

The only one of those I worry about is the Maria/Liesl/Rolf scene because it involves dialogue and solo singing. So I hope we get to do that one some day.

Yesterday we rehearsed in the theatre, which, by the way, is attached to the hotel (makes for an easy commute!). It went pretty well, I think, and then last night we did a full dress run-through. I liked my dresser here. And finally, Anika (wigs/hair) likes her local helper, enough that the local restyled my wigs! Anika never lets them touch “her hair” hehe So it’s great! They were great listeners, and it seems to be going really well here. The people are usually very nice (though I’ve had some sketchy dressers), but they are excellent here. And I met some of the translators, I hope we get to hang out with them at some point.

One of the translators is an 11 yr old girl! Hehe she must be very good at English.

Now we are planning things to do. I think Monday we will take a trip to see the Siberian Tiger Reserve, which should be interesting. It’s like the panda reserves, but much more open and wild. And the big draw there is watching the tigers kill live animals. For example, you can “buy” a cow, then watch the dump truck unload the live cow in the middle of an area and watch the tigers kill and eat it. Ew!

If you go to you tube, you can search for “harbin tiger park” and you can see tons of videos of live animals being dumped in the tiger pens, which aren’t really pens, the tigers seems to run wild! It’s a bit scary, but I’m still planning to go!

And I hope the same day we will visit the Sun Island Park, which has gardens, woodlands, and a water park.

Today we are going back in for a quick 2hr rehearsal, then we are off again for a while, until we open tonight!

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We opened tonight to a great audience and had a successful performance.