Thursday dawned both brighter and earlier than I would have liked, but our host’s fresh blueberries and peaches at breakfast certainly made up for that. Also, the blessedness of a rest day stretched out before us beautifully. After a hearty breakfast, our hosts drove us to Blue Mountain Christian Fellowship where we left with the rest of the choir.
For most of the morning, we spent time in downtown Walla Walla (home of the acclaimed Walla Walla sweet onion), or at the Whitman Mission. My morning in Walla Walla consisted of drinking coffee, coloring, and drifting about town. I didn’t visit the Whitman Mission, but, evidently, it was a mission started to evangelize the local Native American people. They also provided care and supplies to pioneers traveling west. Jeron Mullet describes the view from the mission like this: “Luscious rolling grass in the foreground, like a picture.”
Our route in the afternoon took us through the picture-perfect Palouse, a region of undulating hills thick with wheat. We stopped at Palouse Falls, which appears out of the brown rolling hills as you approach it. The water drops an impressive distance into a wide canyon and flows away into the Palouse River.
That evening, once we arrived in Moscow, ID, we settled into our hotel and went for some much-needed supper. My supper group had a rather bummy experience at a Thai restaurant. We had to wait a long time to get our waters, and then even longer for our waiter to take our orders. I observed the same (rather flustered) waiter struggling to right a tipped bowl of rice on a platter of food she was carrying. The bowl rolled in playful little circles, bumping another bowl of food that was on the same platter. She set the platter on a nearby table and muttered something self-consciously. I found the whole ordeal very engaging. When my bowl of rice arrive (much later), it was fun to try to recreate the performance.
After supper, we headed back to the hotel for a presentation about overtones brought by our very own Ivan Godoy. People headed out for ice cream, talked, and played games late into the night.
Friday morning dawned quite early, again. We packed onto the bus and drove a few minutes to our concert venue for the evening. Our schedule consisted of a two-hour choral clinic with Dr. David Erb, more rehearsal, and a pre-concert photoshoot.
Dr. David Erb is a professor from New St. Andrews. We spent the morning with him, exploring various interpretive and technical ideas in our repertoire, which included doing a sort of dance thing to help us find “more weight on beat one.”
Our concert in the evening went quite well, and most of us left the church rather earlier than usual for an early night to bed. However, three members of the choir stayed after the concert for three folk dances for both children and adults. According to Twyla, “It was a high old time! It was so community oriented, with eight-year-olds and grandmas dancing together.”
Joshua Miller, Bass 2
