Today I finally got home for spring break, after spending four wonderful days traveling around the great state of Washington with the Adelphian Concert Choir. I. Am. Exhausted. (And possibly starting to get sick… I’m amazed I managed to dodge the tour bug as long as I did.) But it was a freaking blast.
Some of the best experiences of tour, in no particular order:
-The homestays. We had some amazing UPS alumni and Adelphian friends volunteer to house us for the nights we stayed in Walla Walla and Spokane, and these people were seriously amazing. In Spokane I got to stay in a beautiful house that had been transformed into a bed and breakfast, where I got the best night of sleep I’ve had in a long time. Then in Walla Walla, I stayed with five other Adelphians in a lovely home where we were provided with Oreos, tea, cuddly dogs, comfy beds, a giant walk-in shower, and biscuits and bacon for breakfast. My homestays were so awesome that at first I kind of felt bad for Adelphians who had been housed at other places, but then I heard about homestays where there were cinnamon rolls for breakfast and pet chinchillas to cuddle. From what I heard, all the homestays were just as awesome.
-We had all brought our swimsuits so we could hang out in the hot tub at the hotel in Wenatchee, but when we arrived we found that the hot tub was, in fact, a cold tub. But did that stop us? Nay! After some initial disappointment, we said “screw it” and went swimming in the pool instead, and probably kept the entire hotel awake. (At least, until 11:30 when we were kicked out for being too loud.)
-Getting to know my choir buddies so much better. We got a lot of quality time together, especially on the bus. There was one really exciting leg of our journey where we played this great bus ride game: the people on the aisles would move from seat to seat, and our tour manager (the amazing Aaron Altabet) would ask a super creative questions to get some conversation going, and we spend would a few minutes getting to know our seat buddies. Probably my favorite question was, “If you could have lunch with a UPS professor, a famous person, and a fellow Adelphian, who would you pick?” (It’s a tough one, but I’d have to go with Mita Mahato, J.K. Rowling, and Daniel Wolfert. I just have a hunch we’d have some of the most amazing conversations about Harry Potter.)
-The food in Leavenworth. I mean, Leavenworth in general was pretty awesome, but the food, oh my. They had an entire shop devoted to cheese, and there was salt water taffy in basically every store, and for lunch I got to split French onion soup and German macaroni with a fellow Adelph. It was the absolute best.
-Meeting Adelphian alumni after our concerts. We had a concert every night of tour, and after almost every one, an alumnus or two would join us afterwards for our usual post-concert song. We met recent alumni as well as some from the seventies and eighties, maybe even a couple from the fifties and sixties, and they all joined in as though they’d been in Adelphians yesterday. Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how long this group has been around, and meeting these alumni and hearing their stories was so much fun. For serious, I feel so honored to be part of this group.
-Dr. Zopfi wearing this hat:
