My trip to Nashville.

Wednesday
Happiness members got together Wednesday morning over break and had a group breakfast at Perkins. I realized that breakfast food is the greatest food of all time. Because I never grew out of being a picky eater, most of the time I struggle to find one thing that I want to eat at restaurants. Anything with vegetables is off the table, I only eat beef, chicken and turkey, and ketchup and cheese sauces are the only sauces allowed. At Perkins, most of the food meets my requirements for eating, so I had a lovely time. I even cleaned my plate.
After our lovely breakfast, we all had a morning practice in the black box at Kennedy. The practice was what we refer to as a "run-through" which is just doing the show start-to-finish minus the costumes, which are really a hassle to put on. Our director, Mr. Ziegler, told us to take the practice and the upcoming competition seriously, but we really found that hard to do. Nationals is really a huge deal, and its always stiff competition. None of us thought we could win, so we really were shooting for third or fourth place. Third or fourth place would be good enough for us and I'm sure it would impress people at home. Third in the nation isn't bad at all, it's definitely better than any other Kennedy activity has done.

Thursday
2 a.m: arrive at Kennedy. I figured my best strategy for this was to just not go to bed Wednesday night. This proved really difficult. I think my natural sleep cycle favors me waking up earlier than most people and going to bed early. I wake up every morning for school at 5:29 am and try to go to bed around 10. So from 10-2, I struggled to keep my eyes open and function. Sleeping on the bus is crucial because it passes the time. Being awake for an entire 12 hour bus ride would drive you insane. I survived until the departure time and immediately passed out on the floor of the bus. Fun fact: sleeping on the floor of the bus is weirdly comfortable. I think knowing that its the best position you can be in makes it really relaxing. I woke up around 7 am very confused. I forgot that I was on a bus somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Around 7:30 all 70 something travelers attacked a McDonald's somewhere in Illinois. I was lucky enough to be one of the first people in line so I got my food quickly. McDonald's hashbrowns when you're starving = delicious. We got back on the bus and after some abuse of nyquil, I fell asleep until about 12. Then, we watched the wonderful film that is Baby Momma. Seriously, you watch the most random movies on show choir buses. It helped pass the time. Once we entered the Nashville area, we we are really excited and the torture that is a 12 hour bus ride was almost nothing. The first view of the hotel was astonishing. The Gaylord Opryland hotel is bigger than you can even imagine. I've been to Las Vegas numerous times and never seen anything so big, in fact I could'nt even get all of it in view for a picture.
We got our rooms, fixed our appearances and headed over to the Grand Ole Opry to watch some of the womens division show choir. I hate watching womens groups. Its hard to enjoy show choir when you're at a high level of performance. When I was younger and in bad groups, everything looked amazing to me. Now, you can't really appreciate other groups when you know you're better than they are. It sounds awful and cocky, but that's really just how it is. We were greeted at the Grand Ole Opry with some people who worked at Red Bull and were giving out free cans. It was great. After watching the groups, we went back to explore the huge hotel. For the most part, we hung out in the atrium and just enjoyed how pretty it was.

Friday
Wake-up time was 6:30. We all were fed a quick breakfast of granola bars and juice and then had to go to a practice outside the hotel on a large empty balcony by the Opryland convention center. We worked on making there were no crucial problems with our show for about 30 minutes and then were told to go get our costumes on and hair and makeup done. We got on the buses for a quick ride to the Grand Ole Opry, which was pretty close by. We watched a lot of really good groups. Almost all of them had huge sets with lights, fog, and many costume changes. It's really intimidating to watch lots of good groups with all of these additions knowing your group doesn't have any of that. One group, the Fairfield Choraliers, was especially scary to watch. They were the first group that could really sing. We left the auditorium after their performance to get ready for our own, scared. The performance went great. After the curtain dropped, we all screamed from excitement because we knew it was the best we had ever done. My favorite part of being on that stage is that in the front, there is a circle of wood from the original stage where performers like Elvis Presley and Hank Williams performed. At awards we were the last group announced to perform for the finals. We all got really nervous before the made the announcement and started to worry that we hadn't made it into the top 6. On the bus ride back, Mr. Ziegler told us that we were currently in second place, not far behind the first place group: Fairfield. We were fired up because we never thought we could even place that high. The rest of the day was spent shopping and exploring the hotel.


Saturday
The wake up call was 6:30. We were the last group scheduled to perform in the finals. We had breakfast and practiced again like we did the day before. Mr. Ziegler gave us some things that judges had specifically asked for and we tried to put them into our show. We were nervous and not very confident we could actually beat the first place group. Most of us had came to terms with second place and were excited by the idea. We went back to our rooms, got costumes, hair, and makeup ready. We got on the bus there in silence and nervously waited to perform once we got to the Grand Ole Opry. Groups are given about 20 minutes of time to warm up their voices and go over parts of their show before they perform. We had a guest with us; the man who created happiness back in 1968. He told us about how proud he was of what Happiness had become and explained to us where the yellow jackets came from: he went out to get a travel jacket for the group and was only able to get them in yellow to represent the school colors. When he showed them to the group, they were less than pleased, but wore them anyway. He made the members sign a contracts saying that they would only wear the jacket when at a Happiness event and to wear them with pride. We were all inspired and wanted to make him proud of us. The show went well, but we didn't all feel the same confidence we felt after yesterdays performance. I was so nervous for the results I could barely talk. Before the announcer said who the second place group was, we all held hands and braced for the announcement. When he said that second given to Fairfield, a feeling of relief and excitement overcame us that cant even be described. We were the national champions. The rest of the trip, we were too excited to worry about anything else. Being number one is a great, great feeling.


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