What a (long) day!
We left Blue Lake about 9:30 am. Lots of teary-eye parents as we sang "The Lord Bless You and Keep you" and then boarded the bus. Shirley decided we had to stop at our house as the first stop on the tour since we were driving very close to it on US31. She gave them a tour of the yard and we were off again. Next stop was at Warren State Dunes where we let the kids fool around for an hour or so on the beach in the blazing sun in here traveling uniforms. But first we ate lunch at a picnic area in the park which had only one pit toilet. As it turns out, this was a precursor to our time in France where they don't seem to believe in public toilets!
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| Picnic Lunch |
A few more hours on the bus and we arrived at O'Hare airport in Chicago!
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| On The Bus! |
Both Shirley and I slept pretty good on the flight and it seemed to go by pretty quickly. We landed in Paris Monday morning where we had an hour to get through customs and get to our gate for our connecting flight, all fifty four of us! We took off again and landed a few hours later in Barcelona Spain where we picked up our luggage and boarded the bus for Thuir, France.
Our bus driver Sven, took us on a bus tour of Barcelona and took us up to a look out over the city. We got off the bus for a few minutes to see the view and sang of course. Then it was about 4 hours on the bus from Barcelona to Thuir where the host families met us in a little square in town and had a young choir sing Rock-A-My Soul (with French accents!) and our choir reciprocated with Viva La Musica.
The host families whisked off their charges to a late dinner and badly needed nights sleep.
Shirl and I took a short ride with Josie and Marcel, parents of Alex, the organizer and the only ones there older than Shirley and I! I'm guessing they are in their late 70s or early 80s. We are staying in the first floor of their home which is a separate apartment. We are just across the street from Alex and her husband Phillip who are hosting two of our boys. Their good friend Bruno is hosting one of our counselors and one of the soloists and they had us all and several friends over for dinner. It started with cherry tomatoes and olives stuffed with anchovies on their patio and then moved indoors for fresh melon followed by a popular local dish that was meatballs in a tomato sauce, then the cheese course and finally desert.
