End of day 3

As I sit here watching “Big Brother” in German- or maybe their version of “Big Brother”, I thought I’d write an update about the rest of today.

Tonight, I had my final practice time for the competition.  Instead of 25 minutes like they originally said, it was only 20 minutes.  Anyway, I’ll come back to that in a second.  Simon and I had to take a bus to the philharmonic hall (which, is an old church that is now where their orchestra plays..).  We got on the right bus, and got off at the right point, but were soon confused.  We went the way our assistant told us, but weren’t seeing it.. we decided that we needed to ask for help.  Luckily a lady looked at me and wanted to know what time it was, so we asked her.  She spoke a little English- hooray! That was really nice so we didn’t have to play the usual game of charades with someone for them to figure out what we want.  She walked us to the corner where we could see where the philharmonic hall is.  Anyway, we made it through our practice time, and I guess we’ll just see what happens when I play on Wednesday or Thursday. 

When we were done practicing, Simon, Nicole and I went out to eat at the hotel restaurant.  Their menu is only in Russian, but has pictures… so, basically, you just hope for the best.  I had a delicious pina colata, and Nicole and I shared mushroom pizza.  We also got dessert- mine was a huge delicious piece of chocolate cake, which they had me eat with a small fork.  I’ll have to post pictures of that later, it’s really quite funny.

Tomorrow things for the competition officially start! Yay- this means structure! In the afternoon there is a press conference, followed by an opening concert, and then we’re all going out to eat.  I think we even get our own bus now, and just maybe, we’ll be treated like royalty?  Stay tuned for tomorrow evening to see how this all turns out!