New Orleans, New Orleans...hello again! It's been a week since my arrival, and herein lies the trip. For your convenience, a cast of characters, so to speak:
Kat - You know, me. I play oboe. Senior.
Ryu - You know who he is too. Plays alto saxophone. Stuck on the other bus. Senior.
Missy - Plays violin in the oboe section. For the competition, she's in percussion. One of my roommates. Sophomore.
Aaron - Plays alto saxophone. Boyfriend to Missy. Junior.
Shannon - Plays French horn. Very gullible, in her own words. One of my roommates. Sophomore.
Chelsea - Plays French horn and percussion My "little sister" and one of my roommates. Freshman.
Sophie - Plays bassoon, but is just starting out so she didn't play at the festival. Sophomore.
Sarah - One of many Sarahs, plays trumpet and French horn. Freshman.
Andy - A chorale kid. Eternally has an '8D' expression. Sophomore.
Cara - Another chorale kid. A bit hyperactive. Sophomore.
Lauren - My oboe buddy for a very long time. Junior.
Wednesday
Get to school around 12:30 to do luggage check-in. Supposed to have a rehearsal at 1pm and ship off at 2pm. Uh, well, shift those all back an hour.
Also, this is where the extreme hate of chorale begins. 'cause they're annoying and intruding upon the proper space of a band trip. We're not quite sure why they were there, as I'm pretty sure only we, the band, we were invited to the festival, not them. But they have a way of doing these types of things.
Turns out that Ryu is about the only friend-person not on Bus 1. We try to swap him out, we fail. My bus buddy ended up being Missy, and we had a grand ol' time just chatting and joking around. I whipped out the laptop for a little bit and we watched two MST3K shorts - "Keeping Clean and Neat" and "The Chicken of Tomorrow". Two catchphrases for the trip are born: "Hey guys, it's God!" and "To be killed / To be killed / To be killed".
We watch "Finding Nemo" before a kid throws up. Twenty minutes at a reststop later, we're on the road again, with the chorale chunk on our bus being disruptive as we try and watch the movie. Jazz and I chew them out, they shut up, we watch in peace. All is well with the world.
Stop for dinner, with our group heading to KFC [omnomnomchicken]. This is the "test video" footage Ryu shot, which is amusing to see. Theeeeen we're back on the bus and - oh God, oh God no, please tell me -
On the bitching insistence whining bitching of the chorale kids, we watch High School Musical 3. No joke.
So Missy and I did what any normal person would do - we riffed it. We did good.
Lights out came around 11pm, and um...well...yeah. Sleep and me? We didn't happen. I even got two seats to spread out in...nothing. I wasn't the only one, and whisper-chatted to a few people (mainly Sarah) throughout the night. I might've slept for ten minutes...or that might've just been a ten minute lapse in my memory. I saw this because I was listening to "The Final Sacrifice" to try and doze off, and there's one scene I don't remember...
Thursday
Me, Ryu, Sarah, and Michelle grab a table at Cracker Barrel and chow down on breakfast. Ryu and I binge on coffee. We're in Louisiana at this point, but the accents aren't too thick, so we Chicagoans are fine. At this point, we also change into our crummy work clothes and set out for a day of volunteering.
The group I'm in ends up at a charter elementary school in a "bad neighborhood". The coach bus tried to get onto a narrow sidestreet, but failed miserably. The kids on the third floor saw and jeered. We jeered with them.
At first, I was painting, with Ryu and Missy going off to tutor second graders in the library. My experience in tech meant that I somehow held more knowledge about paint rollers than the rest. About an hour in, the lady in charge needs three people to go pull staples out a wall. Me, Sarah, and Alecia volunteer, so we go into the library to wash our hands. Mine contained about 10x less paint than theirs, so as I wait, this little boy comes up to me and asks if I can help him with his math. I pause, dart back into the bathroom, tell them I have to help a small child, and get roped into tutoring.
Antonio was his name, and I spent the rest of the school day with him, helping him on his math and writing. There were a couple of other kids that popped up, but not consistently. at one point, I was tickle-attacked by four boys, and let me just saw I'm glad they're way shorter than me.
When school is dismissed, the tutor kids go off and read books to another group. This somehow ends in piggy back rides and hugs. We were loved.
When all is said and done, it's the end of the afternoon and, tired, sweaty, and a little sunburned, we pile onto the buses and finally get to go to our hotel. First dibs on the shower is mine.
The Mariott we stayed at was quite ritzy. So ritzy, in fact, that the wi-fi was most definitely not free. There was an awesome hook-up in the wall where you could plug in your laptop with provided cords and work with your laptop on the very nice LCD TV. I took advantage of that.
After lounging around the hotel room and scarfing down pizza, it's time for our Camp Hope concert. Camp Hope is the base site for Habitats for Humanity, and the band and chorale decided to do our thing and perform. Unloading a truck full of equipment surprisingly doesn't take that long when you have sixty people doing it.
The chorale was up first, and they...sang songs about...um, depressing things. And there were like, eight people in the room for them. We were all dying slowly. The band goes up, tons more people come in. The chorale dies slowly. At the end of the concert, the chorale director looks mildly pissed.
Get back on the buses, find out Lauren scraped off a nice chunk of her big toe. I am very tired, having been awake for 40 hours straight by this point. Upon making it back to the hotel, we change into our PJs and have pillow fights with the...awkwardly shaped pillows. Missy and Shannon were the ones doing most if the fighting, Chelsea and I just watched. Jokes about me sleeping with Plushie Forrester are made. We turn off the lights and continue talking before it suddenly stops and we go to sleep.
Aaaand I'm suddenly burnt out. Will be continued in a post...coming...um, soon.
