And then the angels sang

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I told you the other day that I'd had a really special experience on my Abu Ghosh photowalk, one that made the whole gloomy rainy day worthwhile - and here it is. These few photos are the only ones I was able to grab after the whole "left on manual focus" debacle, but the story itself shines through as the highlight of my day.
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After leaving our first stop we headed for the nearby Crusader-era Benedictine Monastery. This beautiful building, restored by the French in the 19th century, has beautiful 12th century frescoes, lovely grounds, and more relevant to my story (especially since with the rapidly approaching dusk we could barely see the frescoes) some of the most magnificent acoustics you can possibly imagine. So lovely that the church (and Notre-Dame as well) are used as venues for the semiannual (that's the one that means twice a year, right? I can never remember.) Abu Ghosh music festival.
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I walked around the church's exterior, growing more and more frustrated that we'd missed the light completely and it was too dark to shoot. Another frustrated photographer and I decided to look into the interior of the church and see if anything more promising was on offer there. When we stepped inside, to our surprise and utter delight, we heard the most magnificent singing imagineable, but where was it coming from? The chamber we were in was completely empty. We went down a set of stairs, up another set and around a corner in pursuit of the music. At one point we even heard a guitar of all things, but where on earth was it coming from?
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And then we found it. These magical, angelic sounds were coming from a large group of Philippine Catholic pilgrims. We snuck in on tiptoe, not wanting to disturb or break the spell, not daring to lift our cameras.
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That lasted as long as it took us to realize that EVERYONE in the group, and by that I mean everyone, including the 37(!) white-robed priests in the group all had their own cameras out and were shooting at a speed that would make a papparazzi pale! It was an utter free-for-all. At that point we figured it was acceptable (practically required) to immortalize the moment and raced for those cameras. I caught some GREAT shots of clergymen taking pictures from right in the middle of the choir, leaning over, under, around and in front of anyone in view. Unfortunately, that was also exactly when I forgot to put my camera back on automatic focus and not a one of those images turned out, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was quite a scene.
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I did get these few just afterwards though - by invitation no less. They were all so excited to be there that they were actually asking to have their pictures taken, handing us their cameras to use, and even inviting us into their pictures (I lost count after being asked to pose with five different groups of people). I was trying not to use my flash because by then the nun in charge of the church was getting (rightfully) agitated so they're not the greatest photos, but what wonderful memories they hold. (And they even hold a bit of red too, enough to sneak them in as my Ruby Tuesday post - did you find it?)
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