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It was around 5 o’clock PM, Wednesday March 24, 2010, when the ZBTHS Band boarded the
bus to begin the interminably, dreadful 15 hour trek to NYC.
The Next day, most of us woke up on the bus at 6 o’clock to our bus driver singing,
the Canadian Love Song. Most of us were pretty p’d-off about that, but if you were awake
already, you thought it was pretty funny listening to the reaction of the kids. It was then that
we found out our bus driver could not sing. We stopped at a Mcdonalds for breakfast that
day where I, David, the creeper, took lots of pictures without people noticing him. Check
my Facebook out, they’re on there. After breakfast, we continued on, New York City
about 2 hours away. Compared to Chicago, which because of this,
we don’t complain anymore about it, New York City was full of traffic. If you wanted
to go about 1 mile in Chicago on a bad day, it could have probably taken us 5 minutes
tops, Manhattan on a bad day, about… 400 hours. But before we got to Manhattan, we
had to go through the Lincoln tunnel. The Lincoln tunnel is 1.5 mile long tunnel that
connects Manhattan to the outside world. Everything went fine until Rymer told us that we were
completely underwater. That is when most of the passengers suddenly claimed to have claustrophobia
and hydrophobia. After riding around for a while, we made it
into Battery Park. It was the band’s first steps in New York City. This is where we met
Gary, our tour guide with his wonderfully colored umbrella. While in Battery Park, we
got our tickets to go to Ellis Island. While in the line to get on the boat, we went through
security, where we once again, found out the differences of Illinois and New York. Apparently,
it is illegal to own a laser pointer if you are under the age of 18. What a fun day.
The Boat ride was pretty ok. While on the boat, we passed the majestic Statue of Liberty,
or… Eiffel Tower according to many people. Also, we learned the statue of liberty isn’t
as majestic… as exclaimed to be. Honestly… its just a green statue. There really isn’t
anything to be excited about. It’s just a green statue. I guess it’s just the extremely
wide high angled arcing aerial shots or maybe the low wide angled shots that they do in
movies that make it look amazing… ‘cause… it’s really not. But… but… it was ok.
After arriving at Ellis Island we explored a bit looked around at the history of our
roots, learned stuff about travelers of the 18th-early 20th centuries, bought stuff for
the first time and discovered how expensive it was, took lots of pictures, and chased
birds. We decided to head back to Battery Park.
Around 4:30, we decided to check out Chinatown and Little Italy. Jalen, our amazing Asian
friend seemed like he knew exactly where he was going, yet he had never been there before.
Chinatown and Little Italy had very good bargains and things that you could never buy outside
of the area. Ask Max Mavec what he bought. After running around, we went for dinner at
the Puglia Restaurant in Little Italy where we had fairly good food and we shook our napkins
to the “Get up and shake your napkin” song.
After we had our meals, we finally headed to the hotels for a goodnights sleep… where
many of us… did not sleep. On Friday, we frantically awoke to us quickly
eating breakfast and zooming to get on the bus. We traveled to a clinic at the Hofstra
university school of Music to meet Mr. Peter Boonshaft. While on the way there, we discovered
that NYC has way to many dead people… way to many. Anyways, The performance was quite
interesting and we got a lot of help on preparing the attack of the instrument and how to place
ourselves in the pyramid of musical dynamics. Because of the traffic, we sadly missed our
performance at Madison Sculpture Garden, so we headed directly to the NBC studios at the
Rockefeller Center where we got a fantastic tour of NBC, got to go on stages of where
they actually film shows, and sort of got to be on TV. Ryan, Meredith, Jalen, and Jasmine
know what I’m talking about. After that, we sat down for dinner at
the Cucina and Co. Restaurant where we enjoyed more Italian food and vegetables. Watching
Kaija eat is really funny, Zucchini, okay, squash, awful.
We headed over to the Jazz portion of the Lincoln center where we enjoyed an interesting
performance of Pablo Aslan; Tango Salon. We headed back to the hotel where we got lost
over and over again, but it was ok.