"El Vito," arr. Antonio Sanchez
http://www.lycoming.edu/choir/mp3s/cloudburst/elvito.html


One would think all the hours in the bus would kill ya, but it wasn't but a blink of time. The few hours at a time we spent commuting to DC and the other places were more stressful.

We drove for two days, then spent about three days in Virginia, which is the most beautiful place ever. Arbols upon arbols... :-D We competed in a choir competition that didn't go overly well, toured Colonial Williamsburg, spent about three hours at Busch Gardens in which we rode Splashdown, one rollercoaster, and ate nine inch baked potatoes. We sang for the church service at the Norfolk Naval Base and spent just a tiny bit of time at Jamestown, which they tell us should technically be Yamestowne. We visited the Yankee Candle Factory, which was like a magical mall, and spent three hours on the side of the road due to the unfortunate collision of two vehicles travelling with us. Thankfully injuries were minor, only a couple of knocks on the head and broken fingers. It was scary, though.

The Arlington Cemetery was beyond description. I could've spent days there, instead of the few hours we had. We toured the capitol building, and attended evensong at the National Cathedral. You should've heard those uncultured wimps in the choir whine about having to sit through 45 minutes of beautiful music. Wait wait, this is the nerd speaking. We finished that day up with dinner at the Union Station. BEWARE THE ARABS!!!!! :-) They somehow vetoed my suggestion that we return and ride the train home.

The next day I visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which was horribly boring, and the National Archives, which was much better. We got to see billions of monuments and memorials: the Lincoln, the Washington (you don't have much choice about seeing that one), the WW1 and WW2, the Korean and Vietnam wars (or are they conflicts?), the back of the White House, and a bunch of big impressive buildings.

Next day was Mount Vernon, and our surprise event, a dinner cruise and dance party down the Potomac. Lovely. Three sisters with us lost their grandmother that day, which was of course difficult for everybody.

That was pretty much the end of our trip, besides the 2 days driving back. We watched a nice little queue of movies, including some really dreadful ones like Spaceballs. We had story time with Uncle Aaron, when one of the seniors would read over the microphone these total nonsense stories written by half the bus one sentence at a time. That was memorable. :-)

The last night was like all last nights. We crammed into the teeny tiny breakfast room of the hotel (what do you mean 50 people anywhere makes any room seem teeny tiny?) and had the singing of our required song and people cried. The last time I sing our song will be a dreadful day.