Saturday April 13

Hi families and friends! We arrived safely at Heathrow this morning, and we were met by our wonderful tour escort, Almar. He'll spend the whole week with us.

We even crossed Abbey Road!

Fred was today's bus driver, and we had to get on the 'wrong' side of the bus. Fred did a great job navigating the city traffic.

Free time and lunch in the Covent Garden area - where we'll be singing tomorrow - and now we've just checked in to the hotel. We welcome some free time to freshen up before tonight's rehearsal and welcome dinner at our hotel.

We picked up local London guide Shaughan ("we'll go through this light as soon as Fred runs over these pedestrians..."), and though we all felt pretty sleepy, we had a great tour of the major sites - Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, etc.

Today we arrived at Heathrow Airport! I was lucky enough to be able to fall asleep on the 6 hour flight, so when I woke up in London I was ready to take on the city. We met our driver Fred and tour guides Almar and Sean who took us on a bus tour of the city. The first stop we made was to Buckingham palace, which was absolutely beautiful. We got really lucky with the weather in the morning; it was sunny and breezy (basically not raining which is all we don’t want). We took tons of pictures of the palace, the guards, and the statues surrounding them. From the bus we saw other sights too, like the Tower of London, London Bridge, Big Ben, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Kings Cross Station, and others too. We took another small stop to take pictures at Abbey Road. For a few hours in the afternoon we had free time to explore a part of the city and eat lunch. By this time we were all stuggling to stay awake because the jetlag was REALLY setting in. Now we are in the hotel relaxing before dinner at 6 and a rehearsal after that. Now I have to go so I can watch this really intense game of Go Fish. - Rohini

I’m too tired to write something too insightful. More to come later - Andrew

Today I was able to run on two hours of sleep, and still have an unbelievable time. To me it was incredibly interesting to see how the cars were on the opposite side of the road, and how people walked on the opposite side of the street. Although I got lost today walking around London, watching a street performer, I was still able to make it back to the bus. - Zach

Here's a clip of our first rehearsal in England! Everyone was exhausted beyond belief, but there's no doubt that they brought their musicality along.