Sunday, July 20 – First Edition

By Anna Sharpe

Immediately after my alarm clock (Rachel Periera) woke me up this morning, I became part of a minor shower crisis. We were a whole person and 15 minutes behind schedule! Although it may not seem very terrible to an outsider, in the morning sleepiness it was a fairly major problem. All was well, in the end, and we all had our showers by the time Mrs. Harvey came into the cabin.

She brought gifts for Catherine Roberge’s birthday and we all had a laugh watching them being opened. Mrs. Harvey first produced an All Bran bar, which had been meant to outrage Catherine, but instead she thought that it was wonderful. I think Mrs. Harvey was a little disappointed that her gag had failed but she took it in her stride.

After breakfast (which was, as always, a collection of cereals, toast, and Havarti cheese), all four choirs headed to the Black Hall to rehearse the Songbridge project. The songs are going quite well, though I am not sure that anyone feels ready for the Gala Concert quite yet. (UPDATE: Mrs. Aylward just came into the cabin (its 1015 p.m.) and bribed us with an extra hour and a half of shopping in Copenhagen if our rehearsals go well tomorrow).


Shallaway had an impromptu rehearsal after lunch to work on the Chinese Songbridge son. We had not done very well with this song in the earlier rehearsal, so we tried to fix a few things. The practice only lasted about 15 minutes, however, because it was time for all four choirs to head to the North Sea.

All 250 of us piled onto 4 double decker buses and proceeded to play a strange game of "bus leap-frog" in which the buses pulled to the side of the road, turned around, stopped, passed each other multiple times and drove slowly down very bumpy roads. I believe that we may have been slightly last. We did find our way there in the end and we also found out that parts of Denmark are very windy. Before we could explore (the Lighthouse), each choir performed two songs for a small audience in the courtyard of the Lighthouse building. We did “Exultate” and “Come and I Will Sing You”. We were soon released to do as we pleased and most of us headed up to explore the Lighthouse. The view from the top must have been spectacular (I wouldn’t know as I could barely see through my wind tears). Also, whoever wrote the packing list for the choir and told us to only bring one pair of pants was clearly not in the know.

Next, I walked down the long, tippy staircase to the beach. The waves were high and the tide was coming in. Predictably many of our choristers were singing lines from the opera – “The whole ocean is on the boil!” After about an hour of taking pictures, looking for pretty beach rocks, and avoiding the rising tide, we all trooped back up the stairs and enjoyed a smooth trip back to the school.

Supper was a little weird – not bad, just different. It was some kind of meat and gravy dish that tasted good but had the consistency of jello.

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We had yet another rehearsal after supper. For the first hour and one half it was just Shallaway which I found really nice. We did good work on our Songbridge piece “Water”, but not so much on “Best in the House”.

We were then joined by the other choirs and we ran through all four folk songs. All in all it was a really good rehearsal. WE also tried to make the room into a mini stage so that we could figure out where we have to go and when tomorrow. A great deal of shuffling, confused looks, and “what’s?” ensued. I am sure it will be much smoother in the dress rehearsal.

Okay, Melissa just got mad at me because I forgot to mention the frog. When we woke up this morning there was a baby frog hopping around the floor of the cabin. Andrea Major picked it up and put him outside, far away from the dangers of tramping feet.

That’s all from me. Shallaway fans.

Anna