AMA Post 1! (Wednesday-ish July 1st)

Hi!! I've had such a busy time since Saturday, it completely slipped my mind to write about it! But now I'm writing this on the plane from Zurich to Paris, which will only be about an hour, so I figured it's the perfect time for a recap of the last...3? 4? days. 

On Saturday, mom dad and I got up very early to drive down to Pennsylvania. Check in at East Stroudsbourg University was at 1. Once there, everyone's bags had to be weighed and lugged up to the third floor dorms, where I roomed with my friend Daniah (pronounced Dan-yah) for the weekend. At the college was all the kids participating in our tour, some from other Massachusetts towns, some from upstate New York (right by Rochester!) and some from Virginia. We had 3 hours of rehearsal and an informational meeting that first day, and got to bed around 11:30 😴

(Asia, Daniah, me, forcing smiles and falling asleep at breakfast)

On Sunday we had to wake up for 7:30 breakfast at the cafeteria down the street, and then a total of about 10 hours of rehearsal that day, broken up with lunch and dinner. Again, that night we had an information session that was basically "don't do drugs, don't get kicked off the trip" etc etc. It was a lot of non helpful information to attempt to listen to at nearly 11pm. 

Monday brought more of the same, around 6 hours of rehearsal including a run through of the concert we were going to preform for our parents that evening. It was very stressful and exhausting. My friends in band said their lips hurt from playing so much, and I could feel my high notes not being as comfortable to hit as they had been. The good thing however, the one thought that kept all of us going, was that after that nights concert and the next day's intensive travel, we would be in Europe. 

Our concert went fairly well, they took recordings of each song as we played them, and on Tuesday we re recorded anything that didn't go as well as they wanted it to. The band had to redo lots of their songs, but only due to an unfortunate crying baby and a mistimed cellphone call that went off right in the middle of their performance. Choir didn't have to re record anything other than the songs we sing which the band, yay!

(Me, Asia, our new friend Alex, Daniah suffering through the orchestras re recording session)

Tuesday we woke up bright and early to pack and have breakfast. All our stuff had to be out to the athletic building so we could pack the bus to the airport quickly and efficiently. That's a really important part of doing things here, everything that we are asked to do is always required to be quick and efficient. We count off for roll call and they time us. To see how long it takes. They said their record is like 60 people in under 20 seconds.

(Daniah and I being cute at the airport 😉)

Our flight didn't leave til 9 though, so we didn't have to get on the bus until around 1. I was in a bus with Daniah, our friend Asia, and all the kids from WA and New York. It was a really good group of people, we played games and actually got to talk to one another. Even though I've been here almost 5 days now, I still hardly know people since we have only been in rehearsal or asleep for the whole time. I have gotten to know some of the chorus people, but there's only so much time we had for breaks and only so many things you can talk about. So it was really fun to talk to new people and a great way to kick off our traveling. 

Our flight to Zurich was uneventful really, though several of our group were motion sick :/   We hustled to another terminal to catch our flight to Paris, and had lunch on the plane there. It was like noon and none of us could tell what time zone we were in.

(Daniahs snapchat had this sticker thing you could put on, and we were so tired and bored that this photo came into existence)

We're all caught up now, it's been really stressful but I'm hoping it'll be more fun soon, only a plane ride and a bus trip left til were there! 

~Taylor