England England England, that's the (singing) Country for me!

Monday Monday.

So, if there ever was a place where a musical would actually happen in real life, it would be the UK. Now, you folks out in the Midwest might argue, no we have the best concert choirs. Or the kids in the South might try to imply that their uncanny ability to sing and dance and have big hair puts them as winners in the “Most Likely To Be Troy and Gabriella” category, but they are mistaken. It is the folks on this island. The people here sing for everything, and they sing well. The other day when we watched the football game on TV, the fans sang the entire time. And they actually sang, it wasn’t like yelling with rhythm. Of course, the fans in the pub watching those fans sang too. Every time I’ve gone out, the people in all the bars and pubs sing to almost every song (specifically Lady Gaga. La la oo la la…). In church, most of the service was worship, and the congregants sang responses. And of course today, in choir, naturally, singing occurred.

Choir was so much fun. Well, it was more like a release actually. Singing is such an outlet for me, and I never really realized that until college. There are about forty people it seems, but it’s way more age integrated than any choir I’ve been in before. There are at least 8 uni staff, and two children. I definitely am going to commit to going every week. I was especially excited to hear that at the end of February they are going to Canterbury to sing at a conference of all the university choirs in the UK! And, what’s more, we get to sing at the Cathedral! And they're singing Rutter! It’ll be just like Chaucer, only on a Greyhound. I’m quite excited. To answer Ellie’s question, they warm up almost the exact same as the US choirs I’ve been in. We even did “My Bonny”. I got a good chuckle out of that.

Church was wonderful. We went to Northgate, which is a non-denom church about 5 minutes away, housed of course in a building older than our country. It turns out to be the church that a lot of students from school attend, and the worship and people were almost a weird mirror image, slash British version of New Com. The people were so nice and welcoming. Before I left, we had Dr. K. over to our house for dinner, and we were talking about living in another country and how he couldn’t see his family for a while, and his almost immediate response was “the church is my family.” It was so true. Walking in Sunday morning and worshipping and having communion was both being with all the people I love in spirit and being with other brother and sisters in Christ who were at hand. Kind of a cool thing. The other girls and I planned on going back for sure.

I also had a lovely lunch with all of Tammy’s friends. I tried Yorkshire pudding, which is delicious and had lots of good coffee. Her friends were really fun and easy to hang out with, I hope I get to do more stuff with them J

Tomorrow I actually have class, which is sort of a rare thing for me. Today, like my other non-class days consisted of biking a bajillion miles at the gym, reading a book (on architecture, it was fascinating. Now I know the difference between Victorian, Georgian, Norman, Saxon, and Elizabethan), taking a nap, fighting with megavideo, and trying to decide between soup or stew for dinner. How exotic. At any rate, the point of that was that I am excited to have class tomorrow. It’s Shakespeare, and we’re talking about Henry IV Part One. I’m also excited to go this famous museum with Morgan (the roommate). It has artifacts and displays about the history of Chester, Cheshire, Northern Wales and England and Southern Scotland. Should be quite grand J

And the best news of all. I discovered yesterday that American Starbucks gift cards work in the UK. God bless globalization.