the power of two

Well.  Let me start out by saying, we have the most awesome homestay ever.  The house is REALLY old and has all of these cool back stair cases and a laundry shoot.  I am sure there are secret passages somewhere, but I've yet to discover them.  All of the wallpaper looks like it came out of the 1800s.  I feel like I am in a Jane Austen novel, but with a modern kitchen, bathroom and wireless internet.  Plus my room has a poster from a Tacoma 1985 production of "The Merry Widow" in which my homestay mom played a Grisette!

The kids this week rock.  But apparently the parents here can be, uh, a little high maintenance.  Such is the report of our contact who is DEFINITELY high maintenance.  Brendan and I were pretty much terrified into casting certain kids on her request.  Well after receiving a list of no less than 10 kids who needed to be cast (I've never had so much political casting going on...) we went into the audition, sans parent letters because all email is blocked at the school and their PCs would not read my mac files on my scan disk (again, this is has NEVER happened before) the principal and our contact proceeded to give a TWENTY minute opening speech.  Well then it was go time.

I have never had such a fabulously efficient audition.  Of course we didn't finish at 5:00 because, well, we lost TWENTY minutes, but everyone was out of there by probably 5:13, which means Brendan and I managed to get 8 minutes back.  Truthfully, when it's not a cast all, you need all two hours to make your decisions.  Especially when all of the kids are quite good and none of them are standing out as "definitely needs to be cast" or "definitely needs to be booted".  Though there was definitely one little girl who didn't even need to bother showing up for auditions since she continually stepped out of line, couldn't follow directions and kept throwing herself on the floor.  But she was an exception.

Well we've got another X factor going on this week: the pre-show chorus.  This is the ensemble for the kids who didn't get cast.  Fortunately the high school girl who is directing it seems fabulous, had letters with their rehearsal schedule ready to go and took them away to talk to them right after we announced who they were.  The funny this is that our contact came and talked to Brendan at the end of auditions saying "don't forget to announce the Coral Reef (that's what Brendan called them) and send them away with the director" when, uh, that was our idea to send them off and deflect angry parents in the first place.

So in short, this is gonna be a crazy week.  Our contact just REALLY wants things to go well and she's stressing herself out big time.  I am glad that Brendan and I are going through this week together.  We definitely have to be super reliant on each other and REALLY work together to keep things in calm, working order.

And so far: we're doing great!