Saturday, May 22, 2010

Saturday, May 22, 2010

London day today. After a fairly sleepless night last night (eight of us in a hostel room), I slept most of the way to London and then hit the sack for a while before meeting up with my friend, Kim, from the singles ward here. We went to Camden, this huge street market, which actually reminded me a bit of 25 de Marco, for you people who know what that is in Sao Paulo. It was really a HUGE place with SO much STUFF. It had regular stores, but also had a ton of small street vendors and small shops in crazy warehouse building-like structures. Tons of people, tons of stuff.

Then off to a really awesome part of London whose name I totally forget. It reminded me a lot of Hyde Park in Cincinnati quite a bit, actually. It was just super classy and quaint. It took quite a while to get there, but we walked and were active, so we felt pretty good about ourselves. It was a pretty dang hot day yesterday, so I was sweating most of the day. That, combined with walking, made me feel like a missionary again. We went through a park from which we could see the entire city. It was pretty extraordinary; I want to go there one day for the sunset. Too bad that all my evenings are taken up with attending rehearsals, concerts, or some other show of my own choosing (there is so much I want to see here!). Anyway, because it was such a beautiful, sunny day, the park was PACKED. There were probably upwards of four or five thousand people at this park where we were, which was probably about the size of Julifs Park (for you Cincinnatians) or Kiwanas Park (for you Provites).

After seeing that for a while we walked for a LONG time to some tube station to go to Brick Lane for Indian food. On this one street in Brick Lane, there are about 20 or 30 Indian restaurants, so you simply walk down the street and see what kind of deal you can get, and eventually go with the best one. Pretty cool stuff. We ended up at some place that was pretty good. Not a super fancy venue, but good food. I got shrimp chichinga. Chichinga is a green, squash-like plant from India that is prepared in a pretty spicy way. I liked it a lot.

We then tried to go to a musical theater sheet music shop in Covent Garden, which was unfortunately closed by the time we got there, much to our dismay. But I looked in and they seemed to have anything and everything musical theater ever created. I'm excited to go back.

Then I went off and met up with our group at a concert by the Ealing Choral Society. It was...lackluster. They were simply a very unprofessional group and they were quite sloppy. I was amazed at how little they filled up the space, compared with how the Tallis Scholars did a couple weeks ago (it was in the same venue—Cadogan Hall). I really don't feel like writing about all the things that bugged me, so I don't think I will. I will say this though: when someone really uses their voice, it truly is arresting. One of the soloists was really quite good and she kept me awake during the second half pretty well. I attribute that in large part to the fact that she was singing on the breath and was really using all the voice she had in her. It was fantastically refreshing after listening to the choir behind her. Even the orchestra wasn't playing “on the breath.” I remember when I played the cello the day I learned how to really play the instrument and get the true, rich, beautiful sound out of the cello. It was thrilling. The same thing happened last year in my singing. All of the sudden, using those instruments was just so thrilling because of the beautiful sound I could produce.

Anway, then back to here for the rest of the evening. I'm tuckered.