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New Zealand Summer Holiday Time

Dear Singers,

The World Choral Tour is over and we’ve returned to settle in New Zealand. Christmas and New Year celebrations are added to summer holiday activities here so it has been a rather busy time re-establishing ourselves and beginning to play our part again in the New Zealand scene. Just at the moment schools are closed and people are away on holiday. I’ve been swimming in the surf again and it is lovely.

We saw about twenty choirs on the tour, in Australia, Europe and the US. Almost all responded very positively and many of them expressed an intention to come to our festival sooner or, probably, later. It takes a long while considering such a big venture, and longer again to organise a group of 30-40 singers to travel to New Zealand. So we don’t expect the earth to move overnight.

But it was very gratifying that people were so positive. And you can be sure that others around the world are beginning to make closer or further plans to come to New Zealand. We are planning to make it a wonderful time for you when you come.

Owen

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Over & Out

Well, this time next week we will be home! We are so lucky to have had this amazing three month odyssey, but home & hearth are calling. As I write, Owen is out having his last meeting with a choral director at his home which happens to be a boat in Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco. Choirs AND boats. He will be in heaven. It is another beautiful warm, blue California day here.

Since I last wrote in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have sung our way through the country roads of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia & West Virginia & met a mountain man in a truck stop who spoke to us in a dialect we could barely understand. We have taken an architectural walk around Chicago to learn about the rise of the skyscraper & loved the whole buzz of the place. While Owen was in a meeting at the Latin School, I went to a free lunchtime jazz concert at the Culture Center. The audience was an interesting mix, from nicely dressed middle class ladies who lunch, to the homeless seeking a warm place to sit for a couple of hours.

In San Francisco we picked up a car at the airport & drove north across the Golden Gate Bridge & on to lovely Mendecino on the Pacific coast. We drove on through the redwoods & into Oregon. We tried to go up Mt St Helens but the rain had set in [as it tends to as soon as you hit the northern Pacific coast states] & there was fresh snow on the ground. Instead we pressed on to Tacoma on the southern end of Puget Sound and full of wonderful glass courtesy of Dale Chihuly. Then two nights across the border in Vancouver. There are lots of little things that make Canada feel different from the States. Architecture more English, more British television…Our first two days were rainy, as we were told to expect in November, but the day we left the leaden sky turned to blue & all around snowy peaks miraculously appeared. We have a friend in HK who had worked at the Anthropology museum, & because I too am an anthropology graduate, we thought we should spend some time there & very interesting it was too.

Our drive down the Washington & Oregon coasts was more leisurely. So many stunning vistas, so many warming cups of seafood chowder. Then back into California. It is uncanny how warm & dry the weather becomes just a few miles from the coast & over the hills. We stayed with friends in Kelseyville on Clear Lake then drove through the beautiful Napa Valley & then through the not-so-lovely feed lots of the San Joaquin Valley. Poor sad cows! After a night in historic gold-rush Jamestown, it was into Yosemite for two perfect days of R & R. What a heavenly place!

And now San Francisco. We love it. We have caught the ferry to Sausalito & walked back over the Golden Gate Bridge in the sunshine with the Bay studded with white sails. We have enjoyed the musical “Wicked” because someone on the bridge said it is what one did in SF. We have caught up with friends. But… I don’t find myself sleeping easy here. Maybe it is because the homeless can be seen & heard right outside our window, pricking the conscience, leaving us wondering why the world is so unfair. Well, it IS a lovely warm California day for the homeless too, & that is something we can all be thankful for. Tomorrow we fly to Honolulu for Thanksgiving with more old friends & then in mid-air Friday will become Saturday & we will be home!

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Greetings from the USA

We have travelled to many places but it has taken us way too long to make it to the U.S. of A. After two weeks we are feeling right at home, singing our way ‘from Stockbridge to Boston’, via ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ several Woodstocks [but not the real one], spotting the turn-off to Sagamore – this place is inside us already. It was lovely to see a friendly face at JFK & to be whisked up to New Haven, home of Yale with its Oxbridge look-alike buildings & squirrels hopping though the fallen leaves on the square. We had a good rest & became seriously addicted to the US version of ‘The Office’ before picking up a car, more confident thanks to our shiny new satnav but anxious all the same about driving on the wrong side of the road.

Connecticut & Massachusetts put on a brilliant show of fall colours for us. We stayed outside Boston in the woods at the Friendly Crossways Hostel & while Owen ran around after his choirs, I walked the Freedom Trail. We met cousins from Australia in picture-perfect Lexington, ate lobster by the sea in Rockport & spent a fascinating day at the Canterbury Shaker Village. We crossed from the lakes district in New Hampshire to Vermont but the season for ‘leaf peepers’ was over so we shifted our focus to finding covered bridges in the country lanes & then headed back south to meet more cousins on Martha’s Vineyard. That was another treat. After driving south in driving rain, Martha’s Vineyard was glorious & we walked from the ‘gingerbread houses’ of Oak Bluffs along the causeway with the shimmering sea on both sides of the road the whole six miles to the perfect white painted quintessentially New England Edgartown.

And then New York! Our arrival was a damp one, dragging our silly suitcases though the rain & the puddles of Harlem to find that no-one knew of our online booking, & our room, not yet made up, had got more expensive. A compromise was reached & we whiled away the wet afternoon very happily in the Museum of Modern Art. By closing time, the rain had eased to a drizzle & we sloshed through the wet leaves on 5th Avenue, across Central Park to Broadway & all the way to the Apollo Theatre on 125th Street, the heart of Harlem. The Apollo was where James Brown & others were discovered & we came hoping to discover an up-and-coming new one but the sign on the door said ‘Amateur Night Cancel’.

The waitress at our local coffee shop promised, the rain stopped overnight & we burst out to do the sights along with all the other stir-crazy tourists. We queued for the boat to the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island. We enjoyed some fabulous street theatre & walked past Wall Street & Ground Zero & over the lovely Brooklyn Bridge in the afternoon sun. Then we made a big mistake. We joined the queue outside the Empire State Building. We queued outside & inside, for a full airport-style security inspection, for the tickets, for the elevator to the 80th floor where the windows were frosted & we could not see the view, then for the lift to the 86th floor where the crowds on the observation deck were so thick it was a struggle to get anywhere near the edge & then we had to queue again to take the two lifts down to escape back into the street. Now the night view was pretty but I’d have to say that the Hong Kong Peak tram experience wins hands down any day. Feeling like two suckers among many we downed some pizza & went in search of the real bright lights of New York & found them around Times Square.

Since then, we have enjoyed the real down-home American experience of Halloween down south in North Carolina in the home of old friends. We carved pumpkins with the kids, made peanut butter & jelly ghost sandwiches, set up the Clifford the Big Red Dog bouncy castle, donned costumes & partied with the friends & neighbours. It was some party! Then we sat on the front porch on the rockers enjoying a drink or two, watching the trick or treaters come & go late into the night.

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In Bella Italia

In the middle of 2006 when Owen was busy in NZ with his Japanese groups, I took myself off to Italy on an Intrepid trip & loved every minute of it. The arrangements for this World Choral Tour had us meeting my sister & her husband in Siena on Monday, but it just did not seem right that Owen did not get to see Florence, given that we now have a granddaughter called Florence. Our flight was changed & we said goodbye to our London family & raced off with high expectations. Florence/Firenze seemed rather worn down after a long hot summer & too many tourists & the aroma in the narrow lanes was far from romantic but we set off with enthusiasm to show Owen the sights. The Ponte Vecchio was seething with humanity & we were entranced by a busker. I pulled out my wallet to slip him a couple of Euros, slipped it back into the bag I wear across my front to be safe & within minutes, while I was snapping photos I was relieved of that wallet & more cash than I should have been carrying. Luckily my passport & a back-up credit card were safely elsewhere or this would have been a sorrier tale. Why are we always so angry with ourselves when people do these things to us?

Happily, after that bad start, it has been all up since. What did we find in Siena’s Piazza del Campo but a choir from Sweden – St. Gorans - who invited us to their stunning concert. Later, over supper, Owen got a chance to talk about the festival. We did a day trip to San Giminiano with a side trip to Montereggioni (& that is another story). We had 3 nights in our own little house clinging to the cliffs over the sea in Vernazza where we walked the Cinque Terre & cooled off in the clear blue sea. Now we are under a benign looking Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii. We did a nine hour day at the archeological site & then happened upon a parade for Saint Bartollo Longo. The saint himself was paraded around the town in a glass coffin with great pageantry – brass band, fireworks & all. A fascinating look at local life!

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