Hey guys! Sorry! I have been so incredibly busy! I haven’t had any time to type. My voice is starting to hurt from singing so much! Right now, it is 11:44pm and we just got back from bonfire dinner. It was so much fun! There was really good food, amazing music, and a huge bonfire. It was a celebration of St. John baptizing Jesus. The funny thing though was that there was a scarecrow with red hair on top of the huge bonfire and all the kids were joking that the the scarecrow was me. It was really funny!  

Anyway, right, the castles! Oh my goodness. It was magnificent! As I walked through the huge, stone doors, I could hardly breathe! We were in the court yard and it was stunning. The carvings had so much detail, it was breath taking! When we went inside, we went to the library. There were 500 books that were visible as you walked in. Then, we went into the queen’s corridor. One word, Wow! After we went into the king’s corridor and some other amazing rooms like the armory room! When I walked in, I sort of felt..... threatened. But it was really cool otherwise. Unfortunately, our tour was over and we were ready to head to our next castle.

This castle is in the process of being built.  It has taken about 20 years to build this much. They are planning to have a finished castle in 2024. There are white stains on the sides of the stones and it is the lyme that is in the mortar in between the stones of the castle.  

   
The second day, we had a very small rehearsal for an upcoming concert at an elementary school. After that we drove to a town. We went to go look inside of a humongous cathedral. We got a guided tour around the place and took so many pictures. Then, after the mind blowing day we went back to Morvan to get a good night sleep, which was kind of hard because of the time change. Right now it is 12:13pm, but at home it is 6:13am. That’s just one of the many things that I have to get used to. Another thing is the pink toilet paper. Every public bathroom that I have been in since we got here has had pink toilet paper.

On the third day, we went back to the school and we put on a concert with them. Then, that night, we were going to put on a concert for all the whole community. After the concert for kids, I went with my amazing friend Sidney. We started talking to some French girls and became really great friends. We ate French lunch with them. Then, we were split up into groups with the French girls and we went into a classroom in the school and created a silhouette music poster for the background of the concert. When our time was up, we went outside and hung out waiting for directions from the teachers and adults. We taught them words like sky, sun, night, moon, and cloud was the hardest word for them in English. Then, they taught us words in French. We went to the music room and learned a song called “Mad World” the only different thing about it was that it was in French. It was really fun to learn it. The music teacher there was really nice and he spoke some English so we didn’t have to play charades like we did with the kids. We finally had our first concert and we sounded amazing! The sound and the pitch was incredible! Wish you guys could have heard us! After the concert there was a very short get together. I got two of the girl’s contact info. Then it was time for us to leave. Just about everyone in the chorus cried. I was very sad myself. But I knew that I had to say bye at some point and I knew that this was a good time. Like my amazing friend Sidney said, “ Friends were made, hearts were broken, but in the end, we were all okay.” 

Sorry there aren’t any pictures. I can’t figure out how to get them on here. I’ll keep trying! Love and miss you guys so much! Got to explore some more crazy places!

Love, 

     Wrennie ♥️ 

The Plane Ride

Hey everybody! Wow! It was a rough trip! 

When we got to the airport after the really long four hour bus ride, we walked through the doors of the airport and when I looked to my left, all I could see was the color peach. All of the choristers have a peach shirt and a blue shirt. The first day at the airport we had to wear the peach ones.

Anyway, I looked to my left and then in my front. Cora Sanchez, Roy Duffy, Siobhan Duffy, and Ellis Sanchez were coming at me full speed for a huge hug. Weird thing was, was that they gave me a hug as if they hadn’t seen me in like a year or so. But, the truth is that we had just seen each other a few days ago.

After all the greetings, we started to make our way to the “Check your bag here” station. My back was so sore from carrying my backpack that weighed 37lbs ( more than both Riley’s and Mom’s). I was so excited! We were flying alone, just the four of us, for the first flight, because it was a whole lot cheaper for some reason. The first flight was over and we were safely flown to Reykjavik, Iceland. I honestly had no idea what I was in for when I looked to the ground. I was expecting a nice smooth sheet of ice across the whole ground layer, instead it was a tundra. 

I wasn’t disappointed, but what I had in mind would have been really cool also!

When we got off the plane, we were really hungry. We met up with the rest of the choristers and  ordered some food. I got an Icelandic blueberry yogurt, a double chocolate muffin, and a pesto, tomato, and mozzarella panini. I was so excited about eating the panini.

When I took my first bite, the juice of the sweet tomato and creamy mozzarella cheese combined with the delicious pesto made it very hard to resist another bite. Before I knew it, I had devoured almost all of it in a very short period of time. But I stopped because I could feel my throat quickly becoming scratchy as I swallowed each bite. The first thought that had come to mind was that there was something that I was allergic to in the panini. 

Suddenly, over the intercom, I could hear a voice saying “Next flight to France is in ten minutes.” “Oh crap” I thought to myself. I went over to mom and when I told her what happened she told me that, normally pine nuts are in pesto but some people put pistachios in it because pine nuts are really expensive. I knew that I was going to throw up sometime on the flight and I did. 

After the rough ride, we were finally in France! We walked to the baggage claim to get our bags. Then, we walked into the fresh, French air to our huge bus. Two of the cool things that I realized were that everyone around us were speaking French and that it was broad daylight outside. We had gone through so many time zones. It was so crazy! 

The ride to the house that we were staying in was so beautiful! The farmlands as far as an eye can see. Cows and sheep in the fields. The cloudless, blue sky. The beautiful green meadows. Can you picture it? Well, if you can’t, just picture the most beautiful thing that you have ever seen and let that joy fill you up and you’ve got it!

The house was huge! It was beautiful! They served us dinner after we got in our rooms and found our roommates. They gave a small speech and then we able to dig in! I was famished! They said something about going and visiting two castles! “Castles?”, I thought. “Did those even exist?” Well, guess I’ll find out tomorrow!

Hope everyone is enjoying reading up on our adventures here in this beautiful place called France! If you have any questions I will try to get back to you as soon as possible on the comments! Love you all♥️😊

Our Trip Starts Here

Hey everybody! Hope everything is going well at home! Right now I am sitting in the car in the car and we are driving to the bus station to get on our 1:00 bus ride to Boston! I can’t wait! It’s one thing saying that you are going to Europe for five weeks and another actually doing so. It feels weird saying that tomorrow we are going to be in France!

I think that the top three things that I will miss while I’m gone are, first would be my violin. It’s going to be weird not practicing every day. The second thing that I will miss is Blue. I miss my Puppa boy already and I’m not even out of the United States yet! the last thing that I am going to miss is all my friends and family back home. This trip sort of feels like a shorter version of the Bahamas trip. 

Anyway, Dad is driving and talking to my grandfather about something. My mom is sitting next to me in the car, looking at her phone. My sister is behind me in the way back of the car listening to music and also looking at her phone. Then, there’s me. I am listening to music and typing, trying of think of things to write about. We are turning into the SuperShoes store in Bangor, looking for some new dress shoes for France. 

Well, I got to go! Hope everything is going very well at home! The bestest of wishes to Steve Ftorek! ♥️😘