West Des Moines, Iowa
Feb 13th, 2009 by small
Tuesday March 2 – 7 p.m.
West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Avenue
West Des Moines, IA 50265
(515) 279-0826
Click the link below for photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35355241@N05/sets/72157623419465277/show/with/4402122455/
Autumn Knipp:
Getting up this early is really a damper on Spring Break, but it’s worth it when host parents give goodie bags for the bus, like ours did this morning. After we left the house (it was a bit of a rush since Steph woke up a half hour late, yet still looked fabulous!), we had our breakfast on the bus, consisting of homemade rolls and jam. I’m a big fan of homemade bread AND jam, so this was wonderful! After departing from our lovely host family, we all snoozed for a good two hours as we hit the road for Huxley, Iowa. This school is important because a College Choir alumnus is the choir director at this school. So, we performed for his choirs. After our stop in Huxley, we drove to our town for the night, West Des Moines. We had some free time, so we stopped by Jordan Creek Mall in town for a few hours.
After a few random purchases and a lunch break, we headed to the state capital. Our original plan was to sing in the rotunda, but many phone calls and the “we’re college students from many miles away!” schpeel couldn’t even convince our own state capital to let us sing for them inside. So, we looked around for a bit and then headed outside to sing on the front steps for the kind women who helped with the phone calls and such. As we finished up and headed towards the bus, a black Yukon pulled up, rolled down its passenger window, and asked who we were and what was up. Who was it? Iowa’s own Governor Chet Culver! He asked about who we were and what our story was, and offered to stay and hear a song. (How crazy is this?!) We sang My Soul’s Been Anchored In The Lord for him and he absolutely loved it! He wants to buy a CD of ours, since he couldn’t make it to the concert tonight. So, Chet Culver will know who the College Choir is! Once we finished taking pictures with him and explaining to the Nebraskans who exactly that was, we piled onto the bus and headed to the church. This church was pretty cool! It was three stories tall and had its own elevator, which was nice for our luggage. Also, the upstairs is painted with sea creatures and random animals and scripture all over the walls. It was colorful and festive, which was an avid attempt to cheer the distressed choir up. We all were pretty tired today, so we were kind of crabby when we got to the church till we got on stage. Honestly, tonight was a great show. I felt like we did awesome, even though it was extremely hot and we were all pretty pessimistic beforehand. Danny gave his senior speech during intermission before jazz choir performed and lightened the mood with his kind and compassionate words. From there on, the concert went by smoothly. A few alums were in the audience tonight, so they came up with us and sang All That I Am. The concert was a success, and we loaded up and were assigned our host parents. Katie and I are currently with a lovely couple that like fly fishing and have two 16-year-old twin daughters. We stayed up for a while talking to Jenny and Duane about how they met on a blind date, what their daughters do at school, and everything the choir and its kids are all about. Jenny and Duane are very nice people, and Katie and I have our own basement area to have and hang out. It’s a fun house with a fun family, and it’s a great way to end such an exhausting day.
Andrew Gerodias:
Another early morning, awaking at 5:15 and getting ready for a long bus ride. I’ve never been a huge fan of long bus rides, but I was hoping that I would be sleepy enough to pass out on the bus. I pet the kittens one last time before leaving the house and started making my way back to the church. We arrived a little early and wondered where the other cars and bus was at. No more than two minutes later a convoy of cars made their way into the parking lot followed soon by the bus. I said bye to the in laws and hunkered down for the three hour trip to Huxley, IA. We started to tell each other about our family stays and quickly fell asleep. We arrived at the Huxley High School and warmed up to perform for their music groups in the school. The choir director was alum from Morningside and so we were welcomed by a great crowd. We performed a few songs, answered a couple questions, and left for our break time for the day. We headed out for Jordan Creek mall in Des Moines to have lunch and some relaxing shopping time. I first went to have Chinese for lunch before going to the mall to relax. Nothing of note happened at the mall though, so I’ll move on to the next part of the day. We left the mall to go visit the State Capital. It was interesting getting through security, but we made it through and started to check out the sights to be had in the building. We tried to perform under the dome to hear the acoustics. It did not work sadly and we spent quite a bit of time discussing if we could or could not. We also met the General of the Iowa National Guard who is also an Alum from Morningside, for those of you who didn’t know. So to make the trip worth our time, we left and sang on the steps of the capital for a crowd of two. It was surprisingly fun. So as we were leaving, I noticed a nice black SUV about to leave the capital and as I came to the sidewalk the window rolled down. Next thing you know the Governor, Chet Culver, is asking where we are from. I answered his questions before Tim Watson came over and introduced himself and us. We then offered to perform a song for him quickly. We sang a quick spiritual song for him and were asked if we had any CDs for him to buy. We told him we would get him a CD and invited him to our concert that night. We left and made our way to the final performance. It was a beautiful location for our performance as their sanctuary was brand new. We sounded terrific and we had a wonderful turn out. It was a great concert, and tomorrow we will be making our way to Jefferson to have a great, if not better, concert!