Windhoek

So we made it to Windhoek on Sunday afternoon. It was a pretty uneventful trip but a really nice day for a drive! Windhoek's weather is WAY better than Swakop's right now. It's been beautiful here and yesterday was the first day of spring! Yay!
We've had some pretty long rehearsal days at the theatre already. There's a ballet studio in the theatre that we've been using quite a bit. (It's nice to have the wall of mirrors to help clean up movement.)
The stage looks quite neat - they have 5 big circles that are on different levels that the choir moves around and does movement on. It's been a bit of a challenge but they're adapting quite well!
On Sunday night we had an orchestral rehearsal. It was nice to finally hear all the strings/French horn. Karl Jenkins is kind of funny - he'll write incredibly easy stuff and then the last 8 bars of the song are ridiculously hard!! At least the string palyers seem to be able to handle it all right. (I wrote the horn parts so those are all pretty easy because I've never written for French horn before!)
Yesterday morning Garth phoned us bright and early to say that Afro Shine can go rehearse at the Warehouse (where their gig will be in Sunday night)
Scott and I dropped Joel off and just hung out for a bit before we thought we'd go to breakfast. They were just about to practice their new song, Everyone, but most of the band wasn't their yet. So they asked me quickly to come up and play with Joel and the bass player. I can't remember if I've said this before but it's an awesome song!! It was actually written by the same guy who writes for the Backstreet Boys!!
So, after we finished the boys all said they liked having me play and wanted me to play for the show as well. Garth went and talked to the manager then and came bakc and said that I was playing for the show. I said "cool. So I'm playing for Everyone." and he replied "no, everyTHING!"
So now I'm playing for the entire show (which is 5 songs, so not that bad) It was actually really fun though! We rehearsed when the whole band got there until noon. The show is actually going to be broadcast on NBC TV here! Crazy!!
Joel, Scott and I hit up a mall afterwards for some lunch and shopping before rehearsal at 3.
We got to the theatre at 3 but everything is so unorganized that we didn't start rehaersal until after 5! (And Mascato had been there since 1!!)
We did a full run through in the evening which was quite frustrating! From where I was i couldn't hear a thing! I'm supposed to be cueing the strings, percussionist and the marimba group but I really had no communication with ANYONE! We had no monitors so we couldn't hear the choir or the main characters or each other! I'm hoping today will be a little bit better! Apparently we're going to be spending a couple of hours tonight just on sound! That will be lovely!
I think that's about all to report right now! Tomorrow is our *cry* first performance! That's so scary!! It's just a preview matinee that high school students will be attending though... hopefully it goes well! Tonight is the first time they're trying a run-thru with the costumes!
Alrighty...I'm gonna go get some lunch! Thanks to everyone for posting wedding pictures! It looked like so much fun!!