Jacob wrote...
g-money wrote...
Have fun on your vacation! I know I will, since I'm doing a concert tour in Europe with the rest of the gang starting tomorrow and lasting 2 weeks.
Concert tour? I want some more details
Well, I'll be happy to oblige. I got back yesterday back in the states of America. I'm glad to be back, omoi-ra. I'm already missing the hentai material and the forums. I also like the changes I see to the forum, though I wish a quick post reply function was available.
A little background info, I'm part of an organization called BLYCO, which stands for Buddhist Light Youth Chinese Orchestra. (Most people in it are Taiwanese, but whatev.) As described, I'm part of this orchestra where we play traditional chinese music using traditional chinese instruments. I'm the number #2 player er-hu player (er-hu = chinese violin with two strings if yall can visualize it) as well as being the second most senior member in the group of 20+ orchestra members. The group started out as a summer camp in New Jersey, USA where me and a couple of others started out. Eventually, we gained more members and started doing community services by performing at senior citizen's hospitals and the like. We built our repetoire and skills that way, and in the summer of 2006, we did a concert tour in Taiwan. We were nominated and recognized by the many branches of BLIA (Buddhist Light International Association) and were invited to a European concert tour this summer, which just ended.
Enough of history and background, let'z get to the trip itself. We landed in Budapest, Hungary and traveled our way through Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and finally Paris, France during the 12 day's vacation tour. We performed four times, once at Germany, twice in Switzerland, and once in Paris that had an audience of over 200. Mind you, we performed at BLIA temples, so you can imagine that the audience isn't too big since they consisted of few outsiders and the BLIA staff and venerable nuns at each location. Along the way, we visited many places and sites, like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc of France, Titlis Mountain, various castles in Austria and Germany, and general shopping areas and other little places and cafe's. For those of yall who drink alcohol, (I don't drink much, but...) once you've had the taste of European beer, you'll never want anything else because every other beer out there is crap. German beer, however, beats everything out there.
Now, as for the trip itself, from a scale of 1-10, 6 being average, I gave this trip a 4.5. Reasons? I can go on and on and never list them all, but least to say is that the tour guide ripped us off of money again and again, and we ate CHINESE FOOD in friggin EUROPE. WTF? But never mind that, as long you're with your friends, it makes everything better. A lesson to be learned from this is to be not cheap when going on an international tour because if you pay cheap, you get cheap. The Hotel Ibis at the French town of Dijonne was the sketchiest town ever... every window on the ground level either had bars or shutters, like New York City.
Anyways, how was your vacation Jacob? Or anybody else's?