Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

No pictures. I'll add them tomorrow. It's late here. Bed time.  Link. Plus, I haven't had my camera on hand for the past couple days, so I didn't get any good shots with the family or of today. But I'm on other cameras so I just have to wait to get the pictures from them.

All right. Time for another update after a long, semi-relaxing weekend in Bath and Bristol, shall we?

Well, Saturday morning, Shannyn and I said goodbye to our host family, and the bus departed for Bath . You'll recognize the name from several Jane Austen novels (as well as an Edgar Alan Poe horror story...) as a famous get-away.

Ok. I can see why people love this.

It was named for the Roman hot spring baths that are still standing today. In fact, we toured them. It was a VERY extensive tour, and by that time, I was all museumed out. It was nice to learn about, I suppose.

The Bath pavillion. Water from the sacred spring room dedicated to the goddess Minerva is channeled here.

People would right wishes or prayers on lead, roll/fold it up, and drop it into the spring so that Minerva could help them. Most of the time, they were pleas for her to punish someone who had wronged them.

It was a frigid day, so after the Baths, we shivered in the cold eating our lunches (by the way, chips are called crisps, and they come in all sorts of odd flavors- smoked bacon, roasted chicken, steak and onions, cheese and onions, etc.).

Random hooligans dressed up as super heroes watching a really untalented street magician.

To get out of the rain, a few of us went in to have a look at Bath Abbey. It was cool, but since we didn't really know anything about the history of it and weren't singing there, it sort of felt just like any big, old church. My favourite part was probably the man playing classical guitar outside in the square. I love that people do that here. Some of us were eager to see the Jane Austen Centre, so we took a bit of a stroll out of the more touristy parts.

Some people are really terrible at taking pictures. I asked for them to take one  with us and the sign. I'm slowly learning which people in choir to NOT hand my camera to. I mean, I'm not professional, but seriously. My 5 year old brother can take better shots.

Like I said though, I was museumed out, and I didn't want to pay to get in, so even though I love Jane Austen, I just had a peak inside and went in the gift shop. I did come out with a bottle of ink for my new/antique fountain pen as well as an "I <3 DARCY" pin though. :) To kill time, we kept walking a ways, went inside a bookshop, and then took a big loop through the town back to where the coach was parked. As cool of a place as Bath seems, I don't think I'd want to live there. It's too touristy. But maybe out in the nearby countryside.

After the Bath excursion, we drove into Bristol, and unloaded the luggage at Bristol cathedral. We were a bit behind schedule, so supper and changing was rushed, but the concert was absolutely fantastic. We had around 400 people there, but I still felt like we could each really connect with individuals in the audience who need to be lifted up. Lori, Elisa, and I got assigned to a host family together and got all settled there. We were told/warned that they had 4 extremely hyper children who would be so excited to meet us in the morning. 

Sure enough, Sunday morning dawned with a knock on our door and a chorus of children's voices chanting, "It's nearly nine o'clock. Church is at ten. It's time to get out of bed!" And that's how we met Kesheba (9, black, full Jamaican, was a foster child and was adopted at 3), Tia (almost 8, 1/4 Jamaican, fascinated by bloody things, wants to be a marine biologist), Theo (5, 1/4 Jamaican, holy hyper child, my favourite), and Jasmine (3, 1/4 Jamaican, thinks she knows everything, loves her big brother, absolutely adorable). I thought I was prepared for hyper children. I mean, I've known my share of energetic/aggressive children, but goodness gracious! These kids were everywhere! And I mean that in a nice way. :) I absolutely adore them. It was refreshing to be around children again. Kesheba and Tia loved playing with our hair. Theo was eager to show all his toys. Jasmine is so intelligent and follows along with everything going on around her. Church was a great meeting (granted, many of us Singers were so exhausted from the week that we had a hard time keeping our eyes open, but meeting were wonderful none-the-less). I met the Elders there, Elder Murphey who goes home to Idaho Falls in 2 weeks. Ah!!!! And Elder Martin from Heber City, UT and has a little less than a year left. Missionaries make me happy. :) After a large mid-afternoon supper and a quick 20 minute nap, it was time for the fireside. Right as we walked into the chapel, a girl my  age came out and gave me a huge hug. Her name is Sara, and a couple of weeks ago, she FB messaged me and said that she had read my blog and saw that I was coming to England and wanted to meet me if possible. Well, turns out this fireside was for the YSA in her stake, so we got to meet! She was nice enough to record the whole thing on my voice recorder too. I had the pleasure of giving a short talk and introducing our last piece, which just so happens to be my favourite arrangement of my favourite hymn, Come, Come, Ye Saints. I had people coming up to me afterwords telling me how wonderful it was, so I hope I did well. I have to admit, I was excited for it. :) The kids all promised to behave if they were allowed to come, so they got to here the whole thing, and sat and listened the whole time. That night, back at the house, I stayed up late getting my suitcase organized again and talking with the parents, Darren (half-Jamaican, just started his own estate business) and Louise (excellent cook). They are such a fantastic couple, and they are such incredible examples of kind, patient, loving, but firm parents who are raising their beautiful children in the gospel. That's what I love about the rare opportunities we get of staying in a family's house 2 nights in a row. We really get to know and love the family on a more personal level. Early this morning, we shoved things back in our bags, and said goodbye to the children. They were all quite sad, and Kesheba kept barricading the doorways so we wouldn't be able to leave the house. Then she chased the car all the way to the end of the street. :) Love those kids, and they promised  us a place to stay if we ever come back. What a fantastic experience it was to stay in their home.

Well, this morning, we drove through a drippy rainstorm across the bridge to Wales.

As soon as we arrived, the clouds parted, and the sun appeared. Our coach driver is Welsh, and he attributes that to the fact that we've crossed over into heaven. :) I must say, I love all the rolling green hills with the spray-painted sheep (seriously, instead of branding them or cutting their ears, they have numbers or just colored spots sprayed onto their heavy wool coats).

Our first stop was the Big Pit coal mine. It was shut down about 30 years ago and turned into a museum. We got to put on helmets and lights, go down in the cages, and follow Peter (a witty Welshman who worked in the mines whose father and grandfather, etc. also worked in the mines and who has a dream of someday travelling to America to see all the major music capitals there- New Orleans, Memphis, etc.) around in the dark. Very fascinating how much a part of the people the mining industry was, and still is. The way they talk about it, that it runs in their blood, makes it seem as comparable to those whose fathers have fought in the Army for generations back or something. I looked at a book in the gift shop and learned how to pronounce Welsh, so know I can read the signs, even if I have no idea what it's telling me. Luckily, almost everything is printed in English AND Welsh. After that, we were supposed to go to St. Faggan's, but we were tight on time, and our directors were concerned about how exhausted we've been. So an executive decision was made to go to the LDS chapel early and let us all have some rest time. A lot of us just zonked out on the chapel pews and all woke up a couple hours later with weird choir dreams. It was quite hilarious. :) Dinner was at The Hollyberry, and it was very delicious. I didn't especially love the steak and ale pie (we think the ale was cooked out?), but I have discovered on this trip that I really love cauliflower. Interesting. After dinner, we came back to the church were we had FHE with the local YSA.

Playing Never Have I Ever

It was actually a lot of fun. First, we did an activity with Preach My Gospel, and then we played some group games. Must be crazy for these people to suddenly have 6 times the number of people the usually have at these things.

Tonight, I'm with Cassandra and Julie. Love these girls. It's sort of a crazy situation though. The family has five kids (fun!), but his brother and family are also staying with them, plus us, so 8 kids, 4 parents, and us 3. Holy cow. So we're just stuck in a room together, but we each have a bed, so that's good. That's part of the rules. We each must have our own bed. Actually, technically speaking, we're pretty much supposed to be following missionary rules (no flirting, etc.), but I guess they're not very strict on that because no body knows about it. Oh well. Tomorrow, we stay here, do a workshop with some people, and then give a concert at the Royal Welsh Academy, which BBC Radio will be recording and airing next Sunday on a program called The Choir. No pressure, right?

Another fact: Street lanes are basically optional.