12:34 p.m Tuesday, Nov. 20:
I have just returned from a two-hour band rehearsal in the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel. Today, after a breakfast at Starbucks, the entire band and Color Guard had a rehearsal in the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel at 9 a.m. Almost 20 people came late.
The band and guard warmed up, reviewed drill, ran through the show a couple of times, and were dismissed at 11 a.m., after a review of what would happen later today.
5:41 PM:
About 50 of us are waiting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art after the bus picking us up broke down. But first, a flashback: After lunch, those who did not arrive late at the rehearsal met at the ballroom for tickets to the Met Museum of Art and boarded their buses.
At first, I thought that the Met would be pretty interesting. As it turned out, the Met was not as interactive as I thought it would be, just displaying pieces of art and brief descriptions. It became notorious for not having many places to sit down and few water fountains to drink from.
My group explored the whole museum in a little bit of over half the time allotted to us (three hours), and in addition to getting lost a couple of times, got incredibly bored. We had to wait an extra hour when our bus broke down.
A positive aspect of this misfortune was that there was a performance by quite a good tenor saxophone and clarinet player, and some band members even took pictures with him.
11:31 p.m.:
I am writing this after my curfew, so I’ll try to make this quick, before I have to go up to my room. After the incident with the broken bus, the entire band and guard were given tickets to a Broadway show.
I picked a show called “Newsies,” which is based on a true story about newspaper-selling boys (newsies) striking against a newspaper held by famous yellow journalist Joseph Pulitzer.
7:55 p.m., Nov. 21:
I have to go to sleep in a few minutes because of the parade tomorrow, so I only have time to write one journal entry.
Today, the entire band and guard had another two-hour rehearsal at the Sheraton Hotel ballroom. The band and guard just reviewed music we were going to perform at the parade tomorrow.
After a quick lunch, the band and guard went to a performance by the Rockettes concert Radio City Music Hall. The concert was appropriately labeled “Christmas Spectacular,” featuring Santa Claus and the Rockettes.
After that, the band and guard went to a restaurant called Carmine’s, and the excuse music director Michael Boitz used was to “carboload for the big day tomorrow.” The six-course dinner ranged from parmesan-covered chicken to salmon, and after an incident with a girl “accidentally” pouring half of a shaker of salt into a glass of drinks, I will never trust a glass of Coca Cola again.
