First trip to New York

I had never been more excited than when I discovered that for our choir class trip we were going to go to New York City! I was my last year in high school and my teacher told our class that we had the privilege of going to New York to sing at Carnage Hall. When we found out more of the details we immediately started to fund raise. We also had the difficult task of learning and memorizing the words to the creation, the longest, most boring song ever written. It took our class about five months or so to learn it well enough to be able to perform with the other choirs at the hall.

As we started preparation to leave, you could just feel the excitement in the air. Even though all fifty-two of us were going to be stuck on a Blue Lakes charter bus together for thirteen hours straight. Yes, we did make three pit stops before actually entering New York, but let’s face it, we were all pretty sick of be crammed in a small space together, we needed fifteen minutes of space. When the long drive was over, and we had made it in to New Jersey, you could just start to see the sky line of New York. Everyone was pulling out your cameras trying to take pictures. Of course, I was sitting on the side everyone was trying to get to. I was pretty sure I was about to smack the cameras out of the hands of any one who got close to me. After that mess was through we approached the Lincoln Tunnel, one of the many way to enter the city. I won’t lie, it was very interesting experience.         

After having to battle to crazy cab drivers and the insanely congested traffic into the city, we had finally made it to the Crowne Plaza, our hotel. Once we were checked in, my teacher had to go over all of the rules that no one was going to follow anyway. He said things like “don’t leave the hotel without a chaperone” and “try not to get lost in the city.” It was so awesome because our hotel was right in the middle of Time Square, and our room had a view overlooking the square below. When we were finished unpacking, we were all excited to start exploring the city.

 

Unfortunately, that was put on hold for our first four-hour singing rehearsals we had to attend once a day until our curtain call, that was the worst part about the whole trip. But right when the conductor ended the session everyone was up and running. Once we were out in the city we got to do so many different things such as; go and walk around central park, going shopping at one of the many stores in the area, and being able to visit Chinatown. It was all a great entertaining and educational learning experience. We also had the chance to go to two Broadway Plays: Catch Me If You Can, and Newsies. It was an awesome experience, but was poorly planned because we had to go and see it the day we first got to New York, and by that point we were all pretty exhausted.  

 

On the day of our concert, not to many of us where excited to perform, yes it was a once in a life time chance to perform at the hall, but the fact that we had to stand for two hours just to sing the creation wasn’t all to exciting. Still it was an experience I will hold with me for a life time. After our performance was over all the choirs headed to the buses to be transported to the harbor to enjoy the remainder of our night on a private yacht. We cruised around Liberty Island, where we got the chance to see the Statue of Liberty, about two hours later we started heading back to port.      

I have traveled to many different places, but I would have to say that New York is my favorite place to go. The city almost feels never ending, there is something different to see every day you spend there. I would absolutely recommend everyone to try to visit New York City at least once in their life time. It has such a rich history and a ton of interesting activities for everyone. If you ever have the opportunity to go just go, I promise you will have the time of your life.