Choir Trip to DC

So about this time two months ago, my choir went on a trip to perform various concerts in Washington, D.C. I've been thinking a lot on how to narrow down the details of the trip to make it sound more interesting, but I eventually decided that maybe I should just go ahead and write it and see how it turns out. I don't consider myself one for proofreading, so hopefully no one is offended by my atrocious English.

We departed on Friday, May 24th at around 8 in the morning from Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, and luckily I didn't have to get up too early to be able to get there on time. My mom was one of the parent chaperones, so of course we were late to the pick-up spot. Once there, every chorister grabbed his or her (mostly her, the ratio of boys to girls is something like 8:1) robes, folders, and lunch and headed onto the bus. We got to travel in a really nice tour bus, which made the 5 hour trip somewhat bearable, despite the fact that I had to watch movies targeted towards the 10-year-olds. I wanted to sleep for the majority of the trip, but I had to finish writing an English paper that was due that day since I had been too excited to do it the night before/put it off for too long that I physically could not write it because my brain was unable to function at 3 in the morning (mostly the latter). That probably wasn't my best decision.

Immediately after arriving in D.C. we had our first concert: a performance at a veteran's home just outside of the city. All the veterans were super cute and seemed really excited to listen to us sing which made the whole experience so much more fun. I had a solo singing "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music but I definitely butchered it. The organizers at the home provided us with snacks at the end which made everything better, and I may or may not have taken a box of girl scout cookies to our hotel...

The veterans' home is located on Abraham Lincoln's property, so we got a tour of the premises and I was able to take a couple photos with his statue. I guess it's the closest I'll ever get to an actual picture with him.

We did a quick tour of the Jefferson Memorial with our tour guide whose name I forget, so I'll just call her Mary Antoinette. I was sometimes unable to understand some of her English under her heavy French accent, but most of us weren't even listening to her because we were too excited not being in New York/singing.

The Prophet herself

After viewing the Jefferson Memorial, we got dinner at a terrible burger place called Hamburger Hamlet. I'm normally picky with with my food yet will also acknowledge if I'm being overly critical, but trust me when I say that this food was absolutely terrible. I was expecting a Shakespearean themed burger joint. My expectations were not met. Not even the cookies were good, and it's pretty hard to mess up cookies. We were very disappointed.

some mediocre Hamburger Hamlet salad

We then checked into the Sheraton Hotel at Pentagon City, just outside of DC. We were also there at the same time a huge Indian wedding was going on, so about one hundred women in saris were there to greet us in the lobby. I shared a room with two guys, who also happen to be the only other males in the whole high school choir. I had a lot of work to do but they were incredibly hyper and were excited by the whole experience so I got none of it got done. Of course, this led to a series of panic attacks, but needless to say, I survived the ordeal.

The hotel provided us with breakfast in the morning which was quite nice as I did not feel like putting on clothes to leave the hotel and eat at a restaurant. I made many people's mornings worse by taking photos of them as they ate.

We did a lot of stuff on this trip, and I'm afraid of boring you with boring stories of the touristy stuff we did. So, to give you a quick rundown of the 2nd day in DC, my choir visited the Arlington National Cemetery (which I skipped out on so I could do work on the bus) and the Capitol before performing at the Basilica of the National Shrine where we completely missed a measure of one of our songs because nobody decided to start singing. We then had dinner at the Kennedy Cafe which was quite good, and headed out on the balcony to take some pictures. Throughout the day, Mary Antoinette unsuccessfully tried to teach us random crap about DC but no one listened because it was incorrect random crap that no one cares about.

a pretty accurate depiction of my choir

The next day we performed at the Georgetown Presbyterian Church. We had to sit through the mass since we sang along to all the songs, but I actually listened to what the priest (a woman) had to say and found it quite interesting. I'm not a religious person at all but I think I felt more inclined to listen since I was forced to sit there anyway. We then drove to Georgetown University (my dad talked about the school while we drove there since Mary Antoinette was deemed incompetent at teaching us things) and sat around there for a bit. My mom and I ditched the choir afterwards so I could go back to the hotel and get some work done, as the trip was inconveniently taken just a week before finals.

On our last day we visited various attractions like the Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials before returning home around 3 pm. After another 5 hour bus ride I got dinner with my mom and crashed once I got home.

I'm sorry this was not the most enlightening of posts but I had to write it simply because it's been in the works for 3 months. I will try to make things interesting from now on. I think I'm starting to put all the pieces of the blogging puzzle together.