I survived

Music Fest was very awesome. We spent about 29 hours, or so, on the ferry getting up to Sitka. Some of the scenery was amazing. I just continue to enjoy the area I live in. We arrived in on Wednesday evening. We went straight from the ferry to a meeting in the auditorium, which was followed by a directors meeting. I sent my kids, with my chaperone, to the hotel while I went to my meeting. It's a good thing too, we didn't finish our meeting till almost 11PM. It was a long meeting. I checked into the hotel and went to bed, I woke up at about 5:30AM. There are times, I hate being a morning person. We left the hotel a little late, so we didn't get to the event right at 8AM, not that that was a big deal. I went to go do a few director things, like turning in scores for our adjudication that night, and left my students to watch solo and ensembles with the chaperone. One student snuck out and proceeded to talk on her cell phone for 20 minutes in the bathroom, only to get caught by another director. Needless to say, her phone got taken away for the rest of the trip. Let me tell you how popular I was. Thursday afternoon we had our dress rehearsal on the stage in the auditorium. It was pretty awful. It sounded more like I had handed my students brand new music than music that we had been working on. After getting through that, we had a rehearsal, at the students' request. That went a lot better. That evening was our performance on the stage, it went very well. There were still plenty of times where parts weren't really together, but I'm still very happy with their performance. All I have to say was, that stage was a bit intimidating. Friday was another long day of solos and ensembles, clinics, and performances. We left a little early because my students were falling asleep in the auditorium. On our way out we ran into Tasha, who was upset so we talked and my students and I sang An Austrian went Yodeling and Baby Shark for her. It was hilarious. We got her to smile. Saturday was similar to the days before except my chaperone left to go visit with some of his family and I was left with one sick child sitting in the van (and throwing up near it) and the rest of my students in the auditorium. I spent the entire time running back and forth checking on them. I also left at one point to go get my sick student Pepto and sprite. After the last performance, there was another director's meeting, I left a little early because I had to get everyone down to the ferry. In that time my chaperone reappeared. We drove down to the ferry and loaded. Then everyone got ready for bed. I think we were all pretty exhausted. That was a 24 hour ferry ride. We overnighted in Ketchikan at a pretty nice hotel, which there was a miscommunication and they didn't move all of our room reservations to the correct day, they had only moved mine. So then we kinda scrambled to find rooms for everyone, but it all worked out. I went out and got breakfast in the morning only to come back to the hotel, miss a step, and hurt my ankle. This is not the ankle I sprained back in February, it's the other one. I'm happy to say that my ankle isn't broken, but it sure hurts. I went to the clinic, they said it wasn't broken, but didn't give me much more information than that.
I figured it out, we spent a total of 56 hours, or so, on the ferry, had two 14 hour days, one 13 hour day (which was followed by getting on the ferry), and slept on floors for two nights. It was a long, exhausting trip, but it was great. The rest of the year is pretty much all down hill from here. We have about 3 week left and a week after that I fly home. It should be fun.