Sing Sing Sing

The past few days have been a flurry of competitions, rehearsals and evening concerts. The highlights have been listening to the European singing styles (so dramatic!), spending some time with Lara and meeting up with our previous au pair Maria! The poor girls and teachers are obviously tired with evening concerts often not starting until 9pm (assuming they start on time) meaning late finishes and early starts with little down time. The girls just scraped into the finals in 9th position out of 12. Yay! Well done for making it as there were no separation between all the various categories which made me wonder why have them at all in the first place?

The chaos that is an Italian organised rehearsal for the gala concert

The beautiful costumes from all around the world. The Taiwanese! I suppose they have an indigenous population?

The Hungarians

The Bulgarians who sang very strong and dark pieces

The finals and gala concert were held at the historic Teatro Verdi. I am glad to be able to report that the Filipinos won! The final concert of Opera arias and choruses performed by the contestants together would have been a lot more enjoyable if the theatre had been cooled by more than 2 lonely fans above the orchestra!!

Tomorrow we start our journey home and as I will be going straight to work...I will write some final thoughts now before this blog in most likelihood will be abandoned again for months before our next trip comes around. There were many blessings and opportunities to be grateful for this trip. First, simply the chance the girls have been given to perform at so many amazing venues. I do hope that they cherish these moments and realise the privilege. And as much as she drove me crazy at times, it was nice to spend some time with my mother and travel together while she is in relative good health. Despite her complaints, her joints held up well! The opportunity to enjoy Italy without crazy sightseeing cannot be undervalued. Wandering small streets at leisure, stopping for coffee and gelato and simply taking a nap when it got too hot was oh so nice! We were also blessed with good weather. Yes I know I complained about the heat but I only had to use my umbrella once the whole trip and that's not too bad at all! And with that, I end this chapter. Thank you Italy! Until next time!

Maria!

Picked up a second street urchin who was very happy to go shopping and eat gelato together

At the Disney Store

Getting ready for the gala concert at Teatro Verdi