On Sunday Feb. 5, our music class at NWSS went on a trip to Seattle to perform in a music festival. We stayed there for two days. Here’s what happened. We loaded our instruments into the luggage compartment of the bus and got on at around 9:45. It wasn’t a school bus, but a tour bus with bathroom, TV, reclining seats, and so on. We passed the time in the bus by watching a video brought by one of my classmates. After a few hours, we stopped for a lunch break at a group of fast-food restaurants. 45 minutes later, we were on our way again. All this time I didn’t have a clue where we are. I thought we must have been getting close but it took another few hours. Finally, we got to our hotel. It was just outside downtown Seattle near the Space Needle. We got settled into our rooms of four or three people. Bogden left the room, and Harrison and I watched TV and chatted. For dinner, we ordered pasta from an Italian restaurant. At around 12:00, I fell asleep. Harrison had no bed, so he had to sleep on an ironing board!
Next morning, I got up at 5:30 (we were first to perform at 8), had my breakfast, and got on the bus to go to the music festival at the University of Washington. When we got there, we practiced a little at a rehearsal studio, and then started performing in a massive theatre. There were only a few people in the audience, but we kept going. The adjudicator corrected some things, but overall, we did fine. We watched some other middle and high schools play (the audience grew bigger). We went to a street called University Ave. and bought some snacks. At 11:30, we went back to the university and attended music “clinics”. There was a clinic for each instrument. I went to the trumpet clinic, and the teacher there explained about the history of the trumpet, about the forerunners, such as the conch shell (a seashell). It works the same way as a trumpet does, but less complicated. He also explained about and showed us some types of trumpets, like the E flat, the F, and so on, and played some tunes. It was a great experience, as it got me to know more about my instrument. The players of the other instruments also said that it was a good program.
We had to leave midway through the festival, and had to miss the other performances and the closing concert, but we had to get home, didn’t we? So we had lunch at the same street that we had a snack on, and went on the bus back to Seattle. At around 2:30, we arrived at Pike Place Market to do some shopping. I browsed around the shops, sampling the food, looking at the gifts and clocks made on slabs of wood. There were some very interesting things in the market, but none of them seemed worth buying. I don’t think anyone else bought much, either. We got on the bus at 4:30 and headed home. We had to fill out a custom form, but I won’t bore you with the details. We arrived at NWSS at 7:30.
This trip was great as it was my first non-family trip, but, more importantly, my first music performance at another city (and country!) This trip will hopefully be the first of many to come. I am very looking forward to next year’s trip, and no matter where it will be I know we will play our best.
