So catching up a bit....
Summer in Dublin was a wonderful experience. We walked all over the city and saw sights we never would have thought to see on a short vacation trip. We spent many days hiking the cliffs of Howth or from Bray to Greystones and took two trips up to Belfast and Giant's Causeway. Haley was fabulous in Riverdance and she loved performing the show and the people she worked with. She loved playing the music and the spaces where she was able to improvise a bit. She enjoyed meeting and making friends with her co-workers. She had her first taste of a real social life with nights out, a few dates, and hanging with friends. I was glad to be there and meet the people she will be touring with for six months beginning in January. Our last week in Killarney was my favorite time. The beginning of the week was sunny and a bit warmer than Dublin. I am not a city-person so preferred the green and the mountains.
While in Dublin, Haley began her final semester of high school and, about halfway through the run, her dual enrollment courses started so she was working hard to meet school deadlines, go to work each evening, and have some time to enjoy the experiences Dublin had to offer. Once we got home from Ireland, eighteen hours later we were on a plane headed to California for a festival with accordion player John Whelan. When we got home from that a day later, we drove to Baltimore, MD for a weekend of music creativity with a new ensemble she is looking forward to working with. A week later, we spent three weeks on the road, driving from NC to Vermont for a tour with Quinn Bachand then south to Philadelphia to visit family, then New York and back to Philadelphia for two gigs with Mick Moloney and friends then home for the month of November.
All the while, she kept up with school on the road. She finished up her final two weeks of dual enrollment courses while putting together and touring A Christmas Celtic S*journ in Boston, MA. My hard-working girl graduated high school in December with a 4.0 GPA and 42 college credits.
She had planned to complete her Associates degree by the time she graduated high school (originally planned for May 2020) by taking the rest of the college courses in Spring 2020 but with the opportunity to tour for six months as fiddler for the 25th Anniversary North American Tour of Riverd*nce, we decided she would graduate early and enjoy tour without the additional pressure of college courses. This provided her the opportunity to determine how much free time she will have for coursework while touring as she transfers to University of North Carolina-Wilmington to earn a Bachelor's degree in International Studies with a concentration in Arts and Literature in the fall. The online degree program will allow her to continue doing what she loves--touring with her music--while completing a degree. All her community college credits will transfer so she is 1/3 through college.
Haley began the 25th Anniversary North American tour in Montreal in January right after New Years and everything was going amazingly well. The company flew her to Dublin, Ireland for a week in February to do their 25th Anniversary shows at the 3Arena, one of which they filmed for movie theaters. Mid-March had her performing at Radio City Music Hall when the coronavirus turned the world sideways. Her daddy and I had flown up for a week to be with her in NYC but by the 3rd day of shows, the company decided to cancel the rest of the tour and we brought her home to North Carolina where we've been quarantined since. (We did go out that first weekend to see Haley on the big screen for the Riverd*nce movie premier then returned to our solitary lives.)
Haley has been keeping herself busy learning Irish, coming up with music projects for herself, practicing, exercising, cooking/baking, blogging, reading, and drawing. Just waiting to see what is going to happen...
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