by Vera Lefort
In these past couple of weeks, but especially after our Bon Voyage Concert on Saturday, I felt ready to travel and focus on having fun performing on tour. Our concert was very successful, and all of the feedback I received was filled with nothing but positivity. It made me feel incredibly proud of all of the hours each of us has spent preparing, and how rewarding it is going to feel to be received by international audiences.
Even as I was making my final preparations on Sunday morning before leaving my house, I felt very calm, which is something that I do not usually feel when traveling, especially internationally. Where I typically feel a general sense of worry and concern, I felt calm and confident that whatever was about to happen during our travel day would be okay, and that we would help each other through as a group. We had a period of unstructured time at MYAC before going to Chicago O’Hare, so we played some card games as a chaperone group, which was the perfect activity for us at that time. We’ve already become closer as a group, before we’ve even reached our first destination!
As a whole, our travel day was quite calm, and I am very grateful for all of the chaperones and staff who worked to make this a smooth and seamless experience. Our initial flight to Frankfurt got slightly delayed so we took off about an hour later than scheduled, but fortunately we were still able to make our connection from Germany to Poland. I attempted to get some sleep on the plane, but I have a record of poor sleep on planes, so that effort was partially lost. This may have been due to the fact that I was excited to finally be traveling and that my body was still on Chicago time. However, I decided to embrace my energy and watch a movie while enjoying my dinner of pasta, a bread roll, a mix of vegetables, and a tasty dessert that was similar to a brownie. Eventually, I fell asleep for about 40 minutes, and when I woke up, the sun was beginning to rise outside the plane. Despite any minor mishaps, I enjoyed that time to myself to relax and realize what a great travel experience this has been so far!
Cover Photo: Willa Grimm