High on Life
Wow, the choir trip was incredible. Now that I'm home, I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. It was strange sleeping in a room with no one else last night. No curfew, no South Park 'till midnight, no ice to eat before falling alseep, no two hours of swimming with the back of the bus crew before in-room curfew. And this morning... no fruitloops! That's probably a good thing.
I took out my pjs last night and they smelled like the hotel. And when I washed my hair, it smelled like the pool. I don't want to go back to real life...
Anyhow, our activities were fun. We sang at a the PA senior center, an elementary school, a community center (for maybe 10 people), and a private school in downtown Portland. The last group was easily our best audience, and they were really fun to talk to before the concert. I got to see a few people I knew from PA at the senior center. Fun stuff. We also had an impromtu mini-concert at the Mt. St. Helens observatory thing. Everyone was dead and off pitch, but whatever, we had some smiles from the audience.
Hopefully in order:
17th
The first night at the hotel, we swam for about 2 hours. They had a sauna and hot tub too *dies* It was soo sooo nice after 7 hours of bus. We got about 2 hours of swim time per night, and we took advantage of it, bigtime. My skin and hair is all weird from the chlorine right now.
18th
The workshop we had at George Fox Uni was awesome and really improved our mass numbers. The prof was all cheery and fun, and the piano (that I got to play for maybe 3 minutes) was gorgeous. I love baby grands. Haha, here's where I have to run off and get the itinerary. Everything blended together so much that I don't remember what happened when. Oh right, then we went shopping/skating in Oregon's biggest mall. That was fun. I found my favorite licorice pastels (YUM!), and we browsed a few stores. I got a fun little (low cut, eep) corsetish top and some lip stuff from the Body Shop. Skating was alright, but ankle killing, like usual.
19th
Thursday we had a tour of the Columbia River Gorge. The lushness of the green everything on the highway made me want to crawl into the Hoh Rainforest and never come out again. It was so beautiful! We got to take a hike up the highest year-round falling watefall in the states, Multnomah Falls. It took about an hour, all steadily uphill, but it was completely worth it. My camera batteries kind of died on the way down, so I didn't get many more photos until the end of the trip when Mike lent me some (Thank you!). Stupidly enough though, my sister's memory card died on me and I lost all of the last photos.
20th
Friday is when we went downtown to sing and shop. We went to Powell's City of Books for a little over an hour. I wanted WAY more time, but *sigh*, oh well. My group also meandered to the Whole Foods Store. Yum. My god. Yum. Then we went to OMSI, the science museum in Portland. We toured their submarine, the USS Blueback, which was awesome, but I doubt I'd be able to live there for 6 weeks. The bunks are TINY. Yay for maybe a foot of head room. And it smelled. And I'd get sick of not being able to move around. Supposedly the food was good though (compared to the rest of the military). We went to the original Spaghetti Factory for dinner (yay for rice noodles). Their "stained glass windows" had flourencent lights behind them... I was annoyed at that for some reason.
21st
Travel home day. We went to the Coldwater Ridge observatory (Mt. St. Helens). I fell asleep on the bus ride with Kaiza playing with my hair, but the drive down was pretty... it was kind of snowing on the way up, so apparently visibility wasn't great anyways. And neither was the tour. I already knew a lot about St. Helens, so I was a bit bored. Not worth the 2 hours it took to get up and down the mountains just for the hour of info. Blah. Still pretty though. We crossed the border at Surrey and everyone burst into O'Canada. We're apparently crazy. : ) Caught the 7 pm ferry back to Vic and got picked up at 9:30 ish. We improved all our songs on the ride from the ferry to school. Stuff about how we didn't want to do homework, didn't want to go home, were actually going to get to sleep in our own beds, etc. Fun times.
I also got everyone addicted to Vitamin Water! :D Yum! And Caitlan got me addicted to mintwater. The peppermint is amazing.
Aaaand.....
Day 1
kind of dead on the ferry
And then we bought Lukcy Charms....
...and woke up a bit.
"Pst, Mike! They're crazy!"
Leaving Vic.
We then decided to go outside and try to toss pennies on the ledge just above the water. Didn't work at all. : (
I dragged everyone upstairs...
I love my Kaiza :D
I'm still half asleep here.
Day 3
One of the many gorgeous waterfalls along the Gorge
The bottom of Multnomah Falls
Noelle on the bridge in front of the falls
Looking out over the Gorge about half way up
The top of the falls.
Unfortunately that's about all I got with my camera. It did something weird last night before I could copy all my photos and I lost all my shots from the ferry back. Fucking memory cards. Anyhow. I'm planning to update with a bunch more when I get everyone else's pictures.
Homework and housework time.
I took out my pjs last night and they smelled like the hotel. And when I washed my hair, it smelled like the pool. I don't want to go back to real life...
Anyhow, our activities were fun. We sang at a the PA senior center, an elementary school, a community center (for maybe 10 people), and a private school in downtown Portland. The last group was easily our best audience, and they were really fun to talk to before the concert. I got to see a few people I knew from PA at the senior center. Fun stuff. We also had an impromtu mini-concert at the Mt. St. Helens observatory thing. Everyone was dead and off pitch, but whatever, we had some smiles from the audience.
Hopefully in order:
17th
The first night at the hotel, we swam for about 2 hours. They had a sauna and hot tub too *dies* It was soo sooo nice after 7 hours of bus. We got about 2 hours of swim time per night, and we took advantage of it, bigtime. My skin and hair is all weird from the chlorine right now.
18th
The workshop we had at George Fox Uni was awesome and really improved our mass numbers. The prof was all cheery and fun, and the piano (that I got to play for maybe 3 minutes) was gorgeous. I love baby grands. Haha, here's where I have to run off and get the itinerary. Everything blended together so much that I don't remember what happened when. Oh right, then we went shopping/skating in Oregon's biggest mall. That was fun. I found my favorite licorice pastels (YUM!), and we browsed a few stores. I got a fun little (low cut, eep) corsetish top and some lip stuff from the Body Shop. Skating was alright, but ankle killing, like usual.
19th
Thursday we had a tour of the Columbia River Gorge. The lushness of the green everything on the highway made me want to crawl into the Hoh Rainforest and never come out again. It was so beautiful! We got to take a hike up the highest year-round falling watefall in the states, Multnomah Falls. It took about an hour, all steadily uphill, but it was completely worth it. My camera batteries kind of died on the way down, so I didn't get many more photos until the end of the trip when Mike lent me some (Thank you!). Stupidly enough though, my sister's memory card died on me and I lost all of the last photos.
20th
Friday is when we went downtown to sing and shop. We went to Powell's City of Books for a little over an hour. I wanted WAY more time, but *sigh*, oh well. My group also meandered to the Whole Foods Store. Yum. My god. Yum. Then we went to OMSI, the science museum in Portland. We toured their submarine, the USS Blueback, which was awesome, but I doubt I'd be able to live there for 6 weeks. The bunks are TINY. Yay for maybe a foot of head room. And it smelled. And I'd get sick of not being able to move around. Supposedly the food was good though (compared to the rest of the military). We went to the original Spaghetti Factory for dinner (yay for rice noodles). Their "stained glass windows" had flourencent lights behind them... I was annoyed at that for some reason.
21st
Travel home day. We went to the Coldwater Ridge observatory (Mt. St. Helens). I fell asleep on the bus ride with Kaiza playing with my hair, but the drive down was pretty... it was kind of snowing on the way up, so apparently visibility wasn't great anyways. And neither was the tour. I already knew a lot about St. Helens, so I was a bit bored. Not worth the 2 hours it took to get up and down the mountains just for the hour of info. Blah. Still pretty though. We crossed the border at Surrey and everyone burst into O'Canada. We're apparently crazy. : ) Caught the 7 pm ferry back to Vic and got picked up at 9:30 ish. We improved all our songs on the ride from the ferry to school. Stuff about how we didn't want to do homework, didn't want to go home, were actually going to get to sleep in our own beds, etc. Fun times.
I also got everyone addicted to Vitamin Water! :D Yum! And Caitlan got me addicted to mintwater. The peppermint is amazing.
Aaaand.....
Day 1
kind of dead on the ferry
And then we bought Lukcy Charms....
...and woke up a bit.
"Pst, Mike! They're crazy!"
Leaving Vic.
We then decided to go outside and try to toss pennies on the ledge just above the water. Didn't work at all. : (
I dragged everyone upstairs...
I love my Kaiza :D
I'm still half asleep here.
Day 3
One of the many gorgeous waterfalls along the Gorge
The bottom of Multnomah Falls
Noelle on the bridge in front of the falls
Looking out over the Gorge about half way up
The top of the falls.
Unfortunately that's about all I got with my camera. It did something weird last night before I could copy all my photos and I lost all my shots from the ferry back. Fucking memory cards. Anyhow. I'm planning to update with a bunch more when I get everyone else's pictures.
Homework and housework time.