Last Friday I had to wake up about 5:45 am to go to school early, because I had to be at school at 7 am. My dad had “volunteered” to drive me, and 4 other 7th grade girls up to Athens for Honors chorus. On the way up, Dad decided that he needed some coffee, so we stopped at Quicktrip. Of course, we all wanted to get out and get something, so my dad let us out. We crowded into the Quicktrip with a bunch of hispanic builders to go get soda at 7:30 in the morning.
We arrived at the Classic Center about 8:50 to check in, which was actually walking into your room and sitting in the seat with your name on it. I was in a room with nearly 200 other 8th grade girls. Fortunately, I was with all the other altos at my school I knew. They split us up into altos, sopranos, and 2nd sopranos. Each group worked separately with a chorus director on their parts. We did that for 2 hours, and then we all came together again before lunch, and they looked around to see if any people looked out of place, because of their height. I was moved to the front because the lady thought that I was too short. I got moved between these two girls who were best friends with the girl I had got switched with. (They spent most the time trying to talk to their friend and ignoring me).
After that, we got our lunch break. This one girl’s mother had ordered sandwiches for the people at Crews while other schools went out to eat. We ate, goofed off, and still had some time to spare. My dad wound up taking all 30 kids from Crews (7th grade people and 8th graders) to smoothie planet… single handedly. I think he did pretty well though. We got back on time to rehearse more too. That was good, because if you were late twice they would kick you out. Our conductor was late though, so we worked on our pieces with this other guy. It was pretty confusing since we had pretty much just learned our parts a couple days ago, and then we had other parts we had never practiced with singing too.
20 minutes late, our conductor, Mrs. Whicker, showed up. She was really great to work with. We all thought she was funny, and she had fiery red hair to match her personality. We had to learn another song that day too… it was alot of hard work. We rehearsed from about 12 to 4 (?) with only one 1minute bathroom break (sections got their bathroom breaks at different times. Naturally, we all took 10 minutes to ride up and down the escalators, and go to the vending machines until other people working for the honors chorus told us to go back to our rooms.
From 4 to 6:30 was our dinner break. I got to see Michael, Fiona, and Aunt Jami. We went to the campus, and I got to play with Fiona on her 4th birthday!! Afterwards, my dad went with Aunt Jami, and I went with another chaperone and got to hang out with some other kids that I had never talked to before around Athens. we headed back to the Classic Center early, and I hung out with the 7th grade girls I had met in our car earlier. They were really funny. Then we had to go back and rehearse until 9:10. It started to get annoying towards the end because we were tired of just sitting around.
The drive back was great because of our bottled up energy. I think we screeched the songs on the radio all the way home… bad idea for our voices, but it was fine. I didn’t get home until 11.
The next day we had to wake up at the same time as the day before, my mom came up, and we didn’t have anyone to drive up. That girl and I switched back so she could be with her friends and I could be with mine. It was pretty much the same, rehearsal, shorter lunch this time. We only had time to eat and the go back for rehearsals. We rehearsed only a little, and then we went up on the stage, went back to our rooms, practiced our songs one more time before we got an hour break to change and go do what we wanted, Nicole came over, and she mom and I went to Smoothie Planet. It was empty this time. we had enough time to walk back.
I met up with Rachel and we accidentally caused a little mischief and wound up being late to returning to the rehearsal room because I needed to go to the bathroom ,and rachel didn’t want to come with me, so I had to get Ashtyn to come with me. Rachel wound up going to the vending machines (‘) right as we were about to start to go back to the room. We were late, but nobody noticed. we warmed up our voices, fixed a few mistakes in our songs, and filed out to the theater. By that time, I had to go to the bathroom again, of course. We were last to perform, so I had to get up on stage about to pee in my pants. I’m sure I looked quite strange.
We sang REALLY well though. We sounded like 10th and 11th graders. Overall, we were the best of the 7th grade girls, and the boys. (the highschool performance was after ours). I had to hop over chairs to get to the bathroom because the isles were so crowded. I”s a good thing I am so skinny, because there were small spaces between the chairs and the wall I managed to squeeze through. After I relieved myself, my family and I went out to this good coffee place where I got (Irish Cream flavored) French Soda and Pumpkin Bread. This was a great experience overall, and I really hope to get the opportunity to do it next year!