Aloha! The staff is
just settling into our hotel here in Seguin, Texas and the first thing I’m sure
any of us are doing is cranking the AC and enjoying it for a few minutes. My goodness it is hot down here! It hit triple digits again and it’s not
looking like we have any relief tomorrow with the forecast saying it should hit
104 degrees where we are at. It’s
alright though – these boys are tough and the temperatures really don’t faze
them as much as you’d think.
This entire day was pretty good. Probably not as much fun as yesterday, but it
was still a good time. We woke the boys
up around 7:45 and made our way back to the Texas-shaped waffles. Afterwards, we packed-up our belongings and
loaded the bus. We made it out of there
a few minutes later than we wanted, but it wasn’t too bad. (The perfectionist in me pouted about it for
a good 20 minutes, but I’m over it now.)
Our first order of the day was to retrieve Ben from the San
Antonio International Airport where he was scheduled to meet-up with us. His plane landed good and early in the
morning, but we weren’t going to be able to be there until noon or so. On the way there, we decided it would be more
fun to play a little joke on Ben. Josiah
fired-up the printer and each boy gave the name of an individual they wanted to
pretend they were waiting for at the airport.
The boys got fairly creative with it.
The plan was to have Ben go through all of them and find his name at the
end of the line. Watch the video to see
if we picked him up or not. J
After the airport, it was off to The Alamo. We tried to find some good authentic Mexican
food down here, but all of the restaurants were too small and the wait would’ve
been too long. We found a fun Fuddruckers
on the San Antonio Riverwalk that could accommodate us at a reasonable
speed. With the temperatures exceeding
100, the longer it took for our food to come, the happier the staff secretly
was to sit in that AC and wait for it.
They had one of the new Coke machines that lets you pick from about a
million different combinations. The boys
get such a kick out of those things. I
was pretty fascinated to see them change the syrup inside. It comes in cartridges that look almost
exactly like an ink cartridge you would find in a copy machine and they change
almost as easily. Quite interesting!
After lunch it was off to The Alamo. We elected not to have a guided tour since we
had already watched a video on the events that took place there. It was also ridonculously hot outside. Believe it or not, but The Alamo was not an
air conditioned structure back in the day, and it still isn’t today. We took some time and made our way through
all of the exhibits, including Davey Crockett’s long rifle. The history in there is remarkable, but it’s
importance probably changes depending on which side of the border you reside.
After our trip through the mission portion, it was off to
the gift store, which was full air conditioned.
I wanted to keep the boys in there as long as I could, but we also had a
timeline to contend with that required us to get on the road sooner rather than
later. The boys all had a chance to go
around and buy wonderful trinkets. I was
a little disappointed to only see one coonskin hat. Oh well.
The hot items of the store were these little Alamo pocket knives. Being that they were from the Alamo, fairly
priced, and engraved with their names, I gave them the opportunity to buy them
on the condition they stayed with me for the remainder of the trip. Only five of the boys took the offer up and
their parents will be receiving a nice pocket knife in about seven days to hold
on to.
Once we single-handedly helped pay for the restoration of
the roof, we made our 4 block walk back to the bus. Rodney shut the bus off to come to lunch with
us and peek in The Alamo since he had never seen it. He is big into Louis L ‘Amour and apparently
The Alamo is featured in his writings.
He ducked-out early to get the bus ready for us and said it was 98
degrees in there when he got into it.
Thank Heavens for the AC! He had
it down to 77 by the time we got there.
With only a short 45-minute ride to Seguin, we put the boys
down for an abbreviated rest period.
They used it very well. (This
group does quite well with rest period, but I am sure some of that can be attributed
to the busy schedules and the heat.)
Once in Sequin, we were greeted with some great signs. They were obviously quite excited to have us
in town for the night.
We woke the boys up and brought them inside. We were a little on the early side and we had
one more deadline yet to deal with today:
The Choirboy of the Year voting.
With the holiday weekend looming, we needed to send in the names for the
awards today in order to have them done by the Homecoming Concert. We conducted our first round of balloting
several days ago. From that, we produced
the following list of nominees that received at least one vote: Eli Nelson, Aaron Otten, Joey Leibig, Ben
Couch, Arteom Katkov, Grant Schumacher, Chi Asangwe, Jacob Rud, Thor Klein,
Jeremiah Shoemaker, Noah Carpenter & Jacob Gordon.
Today, the boys voted from the Top Five vote recipients on
the first ballot. Those were: Jeremiah
Shoemaker, Noah Carpenter, Jacob Rud, Jacob Gordon & Joey Leibig. From there, the selected their final
three: Jacob Rud, Jacob Gordon &
Noah Carpenter. Congratulations to all
of the nominees! I don’t think I am out
of line saying this, but I was very impressed that not a single one of the guys
nominated voted for themselves this year, even though they had the opportunity. I have never seen this before and it is very
telling of the character all of these guys posses.
The concert was great and these people were so
appreciative. Four times tonight they
stood and applauded for the boys. The
boys sounded pretty good to boot. The audience
asked during the Q&A session to here one of the songs again, so we did at
the end. Afterwards, there were some of
the most amazing cookies I have ever had.
The boys met their host families and headed-out for the night.
Tomorrow we are at the Schlitterbahn most of the day, so I
will try to take a lot of pictures for ya’ll. Sorry there were so few today.
Time for bed.
-P.J.
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