Four Jolly Ex-Pats, Three Days of Rain, Two Holidays, and a Partridge in a Pear Treeeeeeeee.....

Christmas and Boxing Day have come and gone, and now that the dust has settled, I can say that despite the obvious bummer that I am 5,000 miles away from my family, our little foursome of ex-patriots did pretty darn well for ourselves.

Chris, Annabel, and Meredith have family in England, so they left us on Christmas Eve after a blissfully shortened rehearsal day (out at 1pm!). We missed having them here, but we still had a nice Christmas.

We woke up late (!) on Christmas morning, then mosied on down to the kitchen for some freshly brewed coffee and Bailey's--both of which were luxuries. I finally broke down and just ordered a 10-cup coffee maker from Amazon because I just could NOT deal any longer with the terrible instant coffee here, nor with the substitution of tea. The American in me dies hard! While we caffeinated ourselves, I made Scotch eggs, Anthony and Heather made blueberry pancakes, and Dima cheered us on from the table. We settled upstairs with our breakfast and some Christmas tunes, then opened up the small gifties we'd gotten for each other. I continuted the Linberg tradition of putting lottery tickets in the stockings, and two of my castmates won £2 each!

After some family Skype time, we reunited in the early evening for an etravaganza of appetizers...crudites, roulades, homemade spanakopita, a bounty of cheese, and many a bottle of wine. We finished off the night with mince pies and chocolate yule log, tea, and Love Actually on DVD. It was a wonderfully relaing day all around, and we were grateful for it.

We were also grateful for the novelty of waking up late TWO days in a row! We spent the afternoon lazing about and doing a bit of post-Christmas shopping, then we got all dolled up to have a feast at the home our boss, Belinda King herself! She had invited us over about a week ago, and we were all a bit nervous about the whole situation, but it turned out be a delightful evening.

Plus, we clean up pretty good.

...some old habits die hard. You can put lipstick on a pig...

BK cooked us a full-on spread, with turkey, gravy, roasted veggies, stuffing, mince pies, cakes, cheeses, wine, champagne, the whole nine yards. Her home was lovely, her children were wonderful company, and it was just such a kind gesture to essentially adopt the four of us for the night. We came home with full bellies and happy hearts.

We had our final vocal rehearsal today with our MD (Musical Director) Andy, and we were all sad to leave the building with him for the last time. He has been an absolute treasure ever since Day One, and we have been trying to devise wily plans to get him a paid visit out to the Odyssey. Unfortunately, the only way that would happen is if our vocals became horrendously awful all of a sudden, and I think the repercussions for that might not include a trip for our beloved Andy...

From here on out, we are very lucky to have work weeks that are broken up into no more than three consecutive days, due to New Year's Day and our usual Sundays off. It's mental to think that we will be flying out in just 11 short days!!! We still have a couple of numbers to learn, but for the most part our days will consist of cleaning and tweaking our shows until they sparkle and shine, ready to put in front of our audiences on the Odyssey. It's also crazy to think we'll be in the dead of summer in 11 days as well...so long, winter coat, helloooooooo sorely-missed tan!!!

Toodles for now!