THE COMPETITION

PHEW. What a day for everyone. After 16 hours on our feet, 6 tapes, two 32 GB cards, and all our camera batteries the first show / competition of the 34th Monte Carlo Festival was over. It seems like a massive amount of footage - well it is - but we have to remember we were following five different acts, five different stories. And two of the acts have troups of over 10 members. We need more cameras, more people, more feet and shoulders to replace our hurting ones, but I think we did it. Then we got home and had to transfer all the footage to storage so we can erase and start over again tomorrow. I love when my phone tells me "alarm will go off in 3hrs".

The next night -tonight - Friday -we were able to watch the show, because "program B" (there are 2 programs) doesn't have all of our acts in it. Quite an amazing show, about 3 acts got standing ovations and the crowed stood and clapped for almost 5min after the 4 1/2 hour show was over.

I also witnessed this event today as Ian and I stood by the lion cages chatting with Rob Torres, the American clown, he was in his street clothes-
A teenager with his mother walked up and interrupted "Mr. Torres, I just wanted to say hi and meet you, can I take your picture?" The boy was from Finland and was in town with his family for the Festival.