I set off again on another CLU choir adventure. Last summer it was Italy, this year: NY, NJ, PA, MD and DC.My love for traveling was re-kindled. I was so happy to be exploring new and exciting places again. I'd been to Carnegie with choir before, but this time inside was equally as humbling and awe-inspiring as it had been before.
It's amazing to me that every experience I've had with New York City has been so dramatically different. The first time I was 16 years old. Giddy and excited to be exploring such a beautiful place with some of my best friends. My favorite memories from that trip were shopping on Canal St and the harbor cruise the whole choir went on after performing at Carnegie. The five days we spent in NYC in high school remained some of the best days of my life well up until this summer.
My second trip to the city was with my brother and my roommate, Shelby. Andrew and I had gone to visit her in Rhode Island and got a nice tour of the East Coast. We stayed at her uncle's appartment and I really enjoyed being in a new neighborhood. The highlight of our NY trip was playing (yes playing) in FAO Shwartz. To this day I'm still considering buying a giant piano for my living room.
This last trip to New York City was another incredible experience to add to the list. In the city we did a lot of good old fashioned wandering, and I got to see a lot of things I'd never seen before. By day we hit Time Square, Rockafeller Plaza and Central Park. By night we wandered SoHo and Time Square again and tried our luck at New York pizza and cheese cake. We also spent some time in a classic East Coast Irish pub. All of the trip was an incredible bonding experience for the choir, that's the main reason I love traveling with choir so much. I feel like a came away with a good handful of new friends and a stronger bond with those I already knew.
I think my favorite part of our stay in NY (aside from Carnegie and the harbor cruise afterward) was visiting the top of the Rockefeller Tower. I went with friends Liz and Chaz and together we saw the most amazing view of New York City from 70 stories up.
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| I love you concrete jungle!! |
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| Central Park with Chaz and Liz |
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| Lunch on the upper west side with Skelly! |
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| Totally legal picture of the inside of Carnegie ;) |
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| Our poster!! |
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| Lady Liberty from the Spirit of New York harbor cruise after our concert |
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| Brandon, Kevin, Spencer, KJ |
For the next few days, choir was packed up into two buses and driven from concert to concert. We woke up every morning around 7 or 8 and performed every night at 8pm in a different city, staying in the homes of incredibly gracious church and local choir members. NY - PA - NJ - PA - DC - MD - DC. The days were long and our voices and spirits tired, but we made it through and performed with new energy every night. Honestly, it's what we love to do.
Choir has been one of the most consistent things in my life sense I was in 8th grade. And besides my family and a few friends, the only consistency from year to year. It's my family, my home away from home =)
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| Pennsylvanian cemetery, cute houses and snow! |
At the tail end of our trip we had some free time in Washington DC! I hadn't been there sense I was a toddler with my parents so I was thrilled. It's such a beautiful city!!
I went to the Holocaust Museum and the National Mall before heading to Georgetown. The "Mall" was beautiful but the reflecting pool was closed =( One really fun extra though was that the White House's front fountain was running green for St. Patrick's day. After seeing the monuments with Liz and Spencer, Liz and I hopped in a taxi to Georgetown to meet up with my friend Yousif (Joe)!
Joe was my Ra in Cairo and, I think, the first non-American I met there. He was the first to take me into town, the first to show me Egyptian food, teach me how to cross the crowded streets and even the first to teach me "hello," "please" and "thank you." He is from Bahrain but grew up in Egypt.
It was incredibly meeting up with him. We met at a shisha place off of the main street. It felt like home to me. A Mediterranean food place with arabic signs and decorations that let out into a courtyard where men were smoking shisha and speaking arabic. It was so nice to speak the tiny bit of arabic I know!! And catching up with Joe was beyond amazing, I really made some incredible friends abroad. He is in fact, the best. Ever.
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| Vote Votipka/Berg in the next presidential election! Haha! |
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| Joey!!! |
This turned out to be a complete God-send. As luck would have it, another friend of mine is visiting Maryland from Egypt. So! Mohamed needing a ride, and Caitlin being one of the greatest friends ever, the Skelly family made their way to see the CLU choir, picking up Mohamed on the way. We all had dinner together at a BBQ place. It was amazing to see him and catch up, and especially relieving to actually have him in front of me sense I had been so worried about him during the revolution. It was an awesome day, and the concert went really well! I also got to see my cousins Chris and Jenn and their beautiful little girls Emily and Hannah. I havent seen them for a few Christmases so it was really great even though it was brief. The girls drew Dr. Morton and I pictures during the concert =) They are CLU choir Alum too!! I could tell it meant so much to Dr. Morton was really touched that they drove all the way out to watch us! And I was too!!
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| محمد haaabibi |
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| The CLU choir Bergs <3 |
Our last day we had a few hours of free time in DC and wandered the Mall one last time.
The entire trip was amazing. I feel very privileged, especially to be able to travel so much this year.
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| Molly, Liz, Kj, Lauren, Lincoln |
