Aloha!
We’re finally starting to get caught back up with the blog
after several days in a row of intense memory-making. Thank you for your patience! Whew! Right
now we are headed towards Niagara Falls for two more days of performances and
visiting some of the coolest places in the world. The boys are very wound-up right now. It’s a little annoying, but I am playing the “I
have to write the blog” card, complete with headphones. Headphones can be a Prefect’s best friend. (Sorry about the lack of photos on this post. There is limited internet, so uploading pictures would take forever. We'll make it up to you tomorrow.)
Yesterday was a turning point for these boys, I think. About this time every year, they finally
figure it out. The routine has set
in. The trust is developed between all
of them. Just about anything we can
teach them about their jobs, the concert, the music, or anything else we do on
this tour has been discussed at length. This
is where they decide to put it together and make it happen. It’s like this every year – just part of the
process.
We started Friday as late as we could to allow the boys
enough time to rest. Typically, when I
wake boys up in the morning, there are about 5-10 that are just lying in bed,
waiting for their permission to get up.
On this day, I don’t think any of them were awake before I got there at
8:00. They were tuckered-out!
The Best Western we were at was a very good one, as far as
Best Western’s go. When you stay at as
many different motels as we do in June/July, you can easily notice the small
differences. For example, motels with
automatic doors are a good start. The
second thing that you can look for is an on-site manager, which this one had,
and she was good! The third thing we
look for is if they are ready with our key cards and mail before we get there. The ones that are prepared are on their game.
The breakfast at this motel was well above average. The boys had all they wanted of bacon, eggs,
sausage, hash browns, waffles, fruit, yogurt – pretty much anything they would
want. If the boys left this area hungry,
it was their own fault. (I don’t think
any of them did.)
After eating, there was a little time to spend in their
outdoor pool, but first we needed to wash some of their uniform shirts so they
had something clean to wear. The hotel offered
to through their travel uniforms in their big washer/dryer instead of making us
stand at their single guest laundry with a stack of quarters. This was a HUGE help to us – probably one of
the highlights of my day. This saved us
about 2 hours in staff time and saved us from having to put uniform shirts over
the back of bus seats to dry them out.
Gets pretty humid on the bus when that happens, as I am sure you can
imagine. With temperatures well into the
90’s here, it was great to get this help.
The boys were pretty pumped to get into the pool, as you can
imagine. The water was nice and cool as
well. It was an outdoor pool, with
plenty of sunshine and the air wasn’t miserably hot yet, as it was only 10:00
in the morning. After about 35 minutes,
we put the boys back into their rooms and had them pack for the trip to Auburn,
New York. By 11:15, we were on the
road.
Since we were in a motel the night before, we didn’t have
bag lunches and needed to find some lunch on our own. The best option for us on a day like this was
to go to a buffet, where we could save some money and time. We tried to get into a KFC, but it didn’t
have a buffet, so we went down the road a little to a Pizza Hut. All the boys had their salad before eating a
truckload of pizza. We are down to just
one picky salad eater – yay! The wait
staff at Pizza Hut was apprehensive at first about having a group of 40 come
eat, but they warmed-up to the boys very quickly. By the end, they were extremely impressed. The manager even knocked an extra 10% off the
meal because they were so good.
After lunch, the traffic picked-up considerably. We were running about 20 minutes behind
schedule, but with traffic, that ballooned quickly. The amount of road construction on the route
did not help either. Since the church we
were performing in was so beautiful, it hosts several weddings each
weekend. We had a tight window schedule
to meet if we wanted to get some stage time in, as they had two wedding
rehearsals this evening as well. We missed
our early time slot unfortunately, but we still had plenty of time to relax,
eat dinner, and go through our normal concert routine, minus some stage
preparation time.
Everything at St. Mary’s in Auburn was terrific. They spoiled the boys with a wonderful
chicken dinner! The boys then warmed-up
in the amazing sanctuary before changing for the concert. The church routinely hosts boy’s choirs, so
the crowd was very nice with lots of knowledgeable audience members. The American Boychoir, the Rochester Boychoir,
and the Boston Boychoir all perform there.
During a lull in the action, I sat the boys down and had a
little chat about everything. It was a
great chat. I also had the privilege of
presenting Jacob Rud and Thomas Stewart with their level one leadership pins. They have been doing a fantastic job lately
and certainly deserved them. More pins
to come….
The concert went fairly well, musically. Considering they have been away from the singing
for a few days, they bounced back
nicely. During the concert, we had a
special feel-good moment. Aaron has a
part in the concert where he asks the audience members if they have any
questions, which they always do. It’s a
nice little break for the boys, and a great chance for the audience to ask
questions they are dying to have answers for.
There are always a number of really good questions. (It’s my new favorite part of the concert.)
On this particular day, we had many questions about their practice
schedule and other things from the adult members of the audience. Just before we were about to go on to “Minnesota
Morning”, seven year-old Xavier in the third row raises his hand and asks the
boys what it is like to sing on a stage.
Aaron really didn’t have a great thing to say, so he simply showed
him. For “Minnesota Morning”, we have
the boys actually sit on the stage in a casual fashion. Aaron brought little Xavier over and placed
him right next to Sam in the front row and started the song. It was so cool watching him sit there in the
middle of the boys. A lot of the
audience members were “ooing” and “awing” as well. It was pretty cute.
The end of the concert went very well, also. We finally broke the 15 minute clean-up
mark! (I had to bribe them with a
cookie, but it worked…) The boys met their host families and headed home for
the evening.
It was a great day!
P.J.
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