Day 6!

Day 6!

Day 6, March 17, 2011… We went to a Christian school, where we performed during their chapel. Afterwards, we went to the beach!

Ok, I have to complain. It was the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t the ocean. Not to me. And it seriously threw me off that the beach was towards the West. I felt silly, but it was confusing because there weren’t even waves. Not real waves. Not waves that you could ride back to shore if you wanted to. Sure it was wonderful to feel… a fabulous temperature… but not a real, true beach in my perspective.

But it was fabulous all the same. I went in 3 times. Some people didn’t even go in once. I didn’t understand.

My favorite thing was that I did not get even a spot of burn from the sun. The UV rays were 9 out of 10, meaning that intense. And I loved my Italian skin yesterday, when I used spf 30 once before basically washing it off in the water within seconds. It’s really sad though actually, because half the choir became lobsters. Like, some people are legitimately sick because of it.

Speaking of sickness… Olivia and I apparently ate gluten at some point in the day… the gluten intolerant ones… when we were on the bus, I started feeling heartburn really badly. I kept holding my breath… breathing deep, and trying to beat the waves that seemed paralyzing. It was so stupid. I didn’t understand it. Then Olivia, sitting behind me, I asked her if she felt ok. She told me she was having trouble breathing. She told me she thought it was her allergies. But then we connected the dots. We had eaten the same things for the most part that day and the previous evening. Her host home had made her and I some bread and muffins, which they said were gluten free. Well, that was all I had eaten that day at that point. We came to the possible conclusion that maybe they used gluten free mixes, and nongluten free ingredients along with it. Something like that anyway.

So we suffered a while, and we both felt awful. We both took 5 tums each by the time we just started drinking a freaking ton of water to try to flush it out of our systems. We drank tea, and didn’t warm up with the choir… I mean, breathing was not an easy thing at the moment…

We felt better by the time of the concert.

That night, without even showering, we performed a concert back in St. Petersburg, where we were the day before for breakfast.

Our host from the other day, “Sally,” actually came to the concert. She was really sweet. She was really sweet to us, and we were really happy to see her.

I still had heartburn, but I felt so much better by the end of the concert.
After the concert we headed to Jacksonville, where we stayed in a hotel. It was so wonderful. We showered finally, getting the Gulf water out of our hair at last!

And so was day 6!