NYC Choir Trip 2015

As some of you may already know, my High School choir was on a trip to NYC Saturday through Tuesday. I have pictures and I said I'd blog about it, so here's the blog!

Day/Night 1 Saturday
We had to be there at 4:15am and I don't remember anything from that time. All I remember is my friends talking about something and me going "what" and then one of them asking if I agreed with them and I said "yes". I have a feeling I talked about some really strange things, but it was so early my brain wasn't working and I don't remember anything. We got on our bus at 5:30am. Seniors got on first because senior privilege.
I needed up falling asleep from about 6:30-7:30. Unfortunately, at 6:30, which is when a lot of the kids usually wake up, the bus got somewhat loud, even though we were having "quiet time". I have no idea how I managed to fall asleep when I usually need it completely quiet to sleep. After a while on the bus, we ended up watching Grease on the bus's TV system. I had no interest in watching Grease, so I just watched Harry Potter 1 on my iPad. A ton of people brought their 3D's and I was mad I didn't because my iPad only works on wifi, and the hotel only had free wifi in the lobby. After Grease we watched Mulan, and when the song "I'll make a man out of you" came on, the whole bus started singing.
We got into NY about when the movie ended, and saw the skyline. It was really nice.
We got to the hotel and loaded everything off the bus. Our groups had 8 people in them, each room had 4 people. The other girls didn't have their room yet, so they stored all their stuff in our room.

I don't remember much of what happened after that, but we got dinner at Bubba Gump's. They started out with Forrest Gump trivia questions. If you knew the answer, you had to raise your hand and yell "STOP FORREST STOP!"
We had to have dinner at 3pm, because the choir had rehearsal at 6pm-9pm, and apparently our director couldn't get us in anywhere else closer to that time with a group as big as us. Our choir was preforming with about 3 other choirs in what was called the "National Festival Chorus" which is why we had to have rehearsal. We ended up signing "Don't stop believing" randomly at the restaurant. That's what the choir does, sing songs randomly.

It took them over 20 minutes to get my salad. All I asked for was the Chicken Caesar Salad without the chicken. The other guys at my table (my group had to split up, there weren't any seats together) got their fried shrimp way before I did. The waitress had to come by and ask me what I ordered again. Thank god the tip was included, because for one, I'm bad at math, and two, there wouldn't be a huge tip from me because I had to wait so long for a salad. All they had to do was throw stuff in a bowl. They didn't even need to cook anything. It should not have taken that long.

After Bubba Gump's we took a group photo by the red steps in Times Square. There were tons of people walking around as characters, like Mickey Mouse. I wanted to see a Loki. All I got was a Thor on one of the days, I don't remember which. I never got my Loki.

It was really fun to see them though (except the Thor of course). We went to the disney store after that because a couple of the girls in our group wanted to go. I asked if they had Mulan stuff. The girl said yes, it was on the second floor. The store had ONE Mulan doll. Nothing else from Mulan. That is not "we have Mulan stuff". One Mulan doll is not "stuff". Stuff is plural, one doll is not a plural object.
When I asked if they had Mulan stuff, I expected more than one tiny doll of Mulan.

We had rehearsal from 6-9pm with Dr. Jonathan Reed, who is the best directors I have ever worked with. After that we took a walk to "Top of the Rock" and got some great pictures of the NYC skyline. After that it was time for bed.

Day 2 Sunday
I had Starbucks for breakfast that morning. We had rehearsal that morning too, but he let us out early though because he said we were so well prepared with the music.

We walked to one of NY's parks (Bryant Park), and got lunch, which for me happened to be a $5 subway salad. We first went to a pizza place that advertised that they had salad. They guy working said that they only had pizza. Why are you advertising salad if you don't have salad?
The park was really nice. They had a number of statues, and a couple bands played by the waterfall in the middle. One of them was Scottish.

We then saw Matilda at the Schubert theater on Broadway. It was a really fun musical. The father character, after intermission, started singing a song that went: "All I know I learned from TELLY!".
My group found the word "TELLY" hilarious. After Matilda, we went to Madame Tussauds and saw all the awesome wax people/figures/statues (whatever they are). They had an Avengers exhibit, so I've got some pictures of me glaring at Avengers characters. I was also disappointed they had Benedict Cumberbatch, but not Tom Hiddleston. It was still pretty awesome though.
Sadly, we only got about an hour or so there, so we missed a large part of the exhibit. This was due to the fact that we had to wait a long time after seeing Matilda before we could go to Madame Tussauds, since we have to make sure we've got everyone before we go anywhere.

After that we went back to the hotel and my group sat in our room yelling the word "TELLY", from the song "All I know I learned from TELLY!". Vanessa, one of the girls I shared a room with, actually shouted it out the window. We spent at least 15 minutes laughing at that word. I have no idea why it's so funny.

We had dinner at the Stardust Dinner that night, where the wait staff sings to you. They sang "Shake it off", "For Good" from Wicked, some rock music, a ton of musical songs, and some other stuff. I didn't know the names of many of the songs. It was really fun, because we're a choir and when we heard a song we knew, we sang along really loudly. I had pasta for dinner that night, and I forgot to take a picture when I got it, so I have a picture of my mostly eaten pasta.

Day 3 Monday
This was it, performance day. The Orchestra, String Orchestra, and Wind Ensemble performed in the morning. Once again, I'm pretty sure we had bagels for breakfast. The Orchestra (not string) started out with selections from Phantom of the Opera. It was very good. Both the band and Orchestra were nice to hear. The string orchestra was ok.

After that we went back to the hotel for some rehearsal, but he let us out early again because we didn't have much else to do. Dr. Reed was really happy with our preparation and our performance during our rehearsals. We got ready for our concert afterwards, and we had pizza from some famous pizza place.
Remember how I said that my group found the word "TELLY" to be really funny? Well, we spent about 10 minutes yelling the word "TELLY" and laughing. Vanessa, one of the girls I shared a room with, yelled it out the window.

After we were ready we piled back onto our busses and headed to Carnegie Hall. The performance went really well. One time the guys did something so well, that Dr. Reed sort of punched the air, you know what you do when you're really happy, while he was conducting. I have never sung so well before. I have never had a director I wanted to sing really good for. Dr. Reed would tell us what we were doing wrong, and when he wanted certian vowel's to sound right, he would show us the correct mouth shape we needed to get the vowels right. I learned so much about singing from him in just the short time we had together. Our regular Choir director doesn't tell us what we do wrong, she'll just say "sing that again". She may be trying to be nice, but it would help us out so much if she would tell us exactly what she wants fixed. We don't really have too much of an urge to sing really well for her either. She doesn't give us that feeling.
Dr. Reed also fist bumped us before and after the performance.

Sadly, after that, we were watching the next choir group go on, and there was a group from another school talking so loud next to me that I couldn't hear the group signing, and I was right under a speaker. I asked them to be a bit quieter, and the girl called me a bitch and one of the guys went "yea, it's a party. You don't like it, go somewhere else". I told them I could hear them and the girl went "yeah, I know." That little turd called me a bitch when she knew I could hear her. She meant to be horribly mean. So all I said was, "I'm not telling you to stop, all I'm asking is that you be a bit quieter". She gave me this really awful look, and another girl had to tell her not to do anything. The director of that group was right next to me. And he did NOTHING.

After that, one of other directors told that girls director to ask his kids to be quiet because her's were trying to watch the group that was singing. After that, a boy from my school told that same director a girl was giving him and his group of friends weird looks. Now, you'll look at someone when they're taking while you're trying to watch a performance, and usually people don't have issues with that. Since the kid had to tell that director that he and his friends were getting weird looks, meant that the looks they were getting made him and his friends very uncomfortable. Uncomfrtoable enough that he had to tell their director about it.

When you're on a trip, you represent your school. Those two incidents made that school looks like a ton of hateful, rude, horrible, bullies. They represented their school horribly.
I have a sort of "evil revenge mode" and after we sat down in the house again after intermisison to watch the last peformance of the night (they snuck us back in after intermission. Before we were in a room on the 6th floor called "orchestra room 6"), my "evil revenge mode" turned on.
Their school was the only one with a male director, and their whole school's name was listed in the program. I had the huge to find their school districts twitter account, and the account of the director (if he had one), and tell them what a terrible job those kids did representing their school. I had the urge to post those incidents all over FB too.

That urge turned off after we got to Plannet Hollywood and had dinner, because my friends made me happy again.
I'm still very pissed at those kids though.

Day 4 Tuesday
Got back on the bus and went to Chelesa Market for breakfast. Got some kind of blood organge drink, and a cheese pastry from a great bakery for breakfast, and I bought a really awesome green and gold (Loki colored) hairband from another shop there.
After that we visited the 9/11 memorial, which made me really sad. It was even sadder to see white roses and American flags inserted into the names of people on the memorial, because those meant that someone who knew that person had place that rose/flag there.

Then was China Town. I got some Japanese Miso Soup from a store for lunch, and bought some Pocky and a Red Bean Mochi from there too. It was delicious. We were waking around and a store was selling something called a "Cable Take Pole", and I read that back of the package, and it had such bad grammar, it was an obviously fake version of the "Selfie Stick". It was a really bad fake version too.

Then we got back on the bus, but we had to stop about an hour into the ride because the two Orchestra busses were too far behind us, and we had to get back at the same time.
The bus didn't stop for 5 hours after that, and we got through Finding Nemo and Big Hero 6 during that time. We couldn't use the bathroom on the bus because someone peed all over the floor, so it was 5 hours without a bathroom break.

We got back around 10pm and then I went home.


I'll post links to the picture album later. For now, I have to go to bed.