This series of pages is curently under construction and not finished.
Europe Trip 2000 - The Saga Begins
New York and Belgium
Page 1
It all started when a bunch of kids from all over the U.S. got invited to got on a trip to Europe with an organization called the United States Collegate Wind Band, for their 2000 tour. The United States Collegate Wind Band (USCWB)is "among America's most distinguished musical organizations." It has been hosted out of Purdue University by Dr. and Mrs. Wright for over 30 years. Every year they only pick 2 instrumentalist per state to join them on the tour so we were all very excited when we got to Newark, where the rehearsals were to take place. We met each other at our hotel in Newark and we all made many new friends quickly. Most of us are still in contact. About 20 min. after meeting each other we were off to see the New York Sites.
Macy's in New York with some of us.
Don't you just love New York!
We went everywhere, from Central Park, to The Rockefeller Center, to Radio City Music Hall.
After 3 days of hard practice we got on a plane and flew to Belguim.
Some people tried to sleep on the plane, but most of us just dozed. We were all very excited. Finally 7 hours or so later, we arrived in Brussels, Belgium. We were all delerious, which was pretty funny for others to watch I'm sure. We kept makeing awfull jokes about, "Look! It's a real Belgium Telephone Poll," or "Look it's a real Belgium Car." It got so bad that when we saw a car trying to parallel park into a small space we said "Look! A real Belgium drivers test!." As you can tell we were all tired. It was freezing to! We left New York in our short sleeve shirts and shorts and when we got to Belgium it was about 45 or 50 degress and raining. All of our things where stored away in the busses so we couldn't get to them, and the first thing we did when we left the Airport was get in the busses, drive into the middle of to city, and get out and walk around in small groups for 4 hours. Lots of us got sick after that. After the site seeing we left and headed for host familes. Belgium was the only country that we had host families for, but I loved it! It was great being able to soak up the different culture by being right in it, instead of a hotel room.
The Band in front of the Atomium in Brussels, Belgium
We had our first concert in this nice church in Rosmeer,Belgium.(our host families attended.)
Our concert in the Rosmeer Church
The next day we played a concert at the Sunday Market. It was still very cold but we tuffed it out. It threatend to rain but never did. The day after that we said "Goodbye" to our host families. We made of short stop in Holland were we did "taps" at a United States World War 2 Cemetary. Then we left for Germany.
Next
Go back to Main Page
Email:
Fluteman_99@yahoo.com
Learn more about the United States Collegate Wind Band by going to there website at
www.musictours.org
