Europe

In this blog I am going to talk about my trip to Europe last summer.  I traveled with the Iowa Ambassadors of Music to seven countries in two weeks.   The seven countries were England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Liechtenstein.  During this tour, we played concerts for the locals.  I played the clarinet.  There were about three hundred total who went.  This trip was the trip of a lifetime for me.
To start off, I was going to be a senior in high school and this would be my first time away from my parents for an extended amount of time.  I thought it would be a good college like experience for them and for me.  They were a little more nervous about me going on the trip than they were leaving me at college because well I was leaving the country and literally almost on my own.  I had to make sure I kept my passport with me at all times.  I was in control of money spending and across the ocean, the dollar isn't worth a whole lot.
A week before we actually left we had a music camp.  This was an intensive band or choir rehearsal.  This was fun and I learned a lot.  It boosted my confidence musically because we were playing songs like Stars and Stripes Forever.  It felt good to play in a band of almost two hundred and play musically challenging songs because it was a huge step up from high school band, whose attendance was about twenty-five.
We left on the morning of July 3, literally the morning of, I think it was one o'clock.  We drove to Chicago airport and waited to board the plane to Minneapolis.  At Minneapolis we had an eight hour layover until we could fly into London.  We finally made it on the fourth of July.  It was weird being there on Independence Day because they don't care.  After London, we crossed the English Channel and arrived in Paris.  The Eiffel Tower was amazing!  From there we traveled to Switzerland.  The Alps were gorgeous!  It was my favorite place because the people were nice, the scenery was beautiful and it was all so relaxing. After that we went on to Austria, traveling through Liechtenstein.  This country was about an Iowa county wide.  While we were in Austria, we took a day trip to Venice, Italy.  This was super hot and it was also memorable.  The gelato was very good!  We then traveled on to Germany.  The first day was a sad one because we stopped at Dachau, a concentration camp.  It is one thing to just hear about them, but it is another to actually be there where it happened.  On July nineteenth we flew home to New York then to Chicago and then the ride back into Iowa.
This experience has definitely change my life.  I respect more people seeing what other cultures are like.  I have learned to appreciate life more and to take opportunities as they come.  It has made me see the world in a better light, seeing that all people in the world are almost the same.