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Dear Blog,

It was a surprisingly reasonable time in the morning, the sun was shining through the palm trees, and Georgie "don't leave anything in the church" Gulliver dashed into the church to retrieve her concert dress from the evening before.

On the coach, we listened intently to Aaron "not A-A-Ron" the driver, who gave us an extensive safety briefing. Shortly after departure, we all listened *very* intently to the WiFi password. Only twenty of us could connect to the WiFi at any time and there were thirty of us – so you can guess what happened. To Harriet "Happy Feet 2 can't be that bad" Caisley's disappointment, we did not have a god-awful film on this coach journey, so we instead looked out of the window towards the wonderful scenery of the Californian desert and the San Andreas fault along the Interstate 10 into Los Angeles.

We had been in a variety of buildings on the tour so far, from new churches to slightly-older new churches, even to a small concert hall and a library; but the Bradbury building was a pleasant surprise: five floors of Romanesque atrium, with an iron cage lift on either side. It was rather a sight to behold, and the fact that there were staff simply for operating the lifts and more to open each dressing room door (Julia "the guy with the cool hair is cute" Morris spent most of lunch flirting with them) just made it more surreal. After a short rehearsal (mostly Grahamography™) to get used to the venue, we had a quick lunch in the building. Much to the choir’s delight, we were offered salad and other vaguely healthy food items which we all happily devoured – #mostbasicchoirincambridge.

With temperatures soaring to 22°C, the men in black tie and women in dresses alike emptied their cans of deodorants for the 2pm performance whilst the sun shone strongly through the transparent roof. Unlike previous days, we actually had three concerts back-to-back in the Bradbury building, which were filled with some interesting moments to keep ourselves entertained, with rumours of soloists cramming syllables into the start of each verse of the “Twelve Days of Christmas”; the first altos substituting the words "Gremio" and "Curia" with "Graham Ross" and "Waffle House" respectively; and Tom Ashton disappearing off to the loo during “Santa Baby” before making an entrance to his solo in “Twelve Days of Christmas”. Despite these antics, the concerts were quite successful, with the choir singing on every floor and staircase of the atrium, as well as Toby "muted trumpet" Hession performing from the lift.

As soon as the final concert finished, we all hastily changed and packed as the final few CDs were sold. We headed to LAX for our journey back home via Washington Dulles to conclude what has been an incredible and memorable tour to the United States.

Ashley and Liam