July 4th - Part 2 - by Brenna McKim

Wednesday July 4^th 2012 (Brenna M^cKim)

            What a tremendous day this has been! This is my very first tour and I have to say that this is a great start. I marched in my very first midnight parade with the band. It was a very fast parade, but at least 100,000 people watched! Then a fantastic 6 hour sleep from 3am-9am! The odd thing about sleeping at 3AM is that when you wake up, you forget that it’s the same day. Well, at least that’s what I thought. After breakfast we had to pack up and move to a school called “Pi Beta Phi” at noon. It was funny to see everybody struggle with deflating their air mattresses. All I had to do was take out the plug and fold it up. when we got to the new location we had 3 and a half hours to get lunch and explore downtown. My group and I found a place that served fried Oreos…..Now that isn’t something you see or hear of everyday. At 3:30 the whole band had a concert practice and the colour guard came up with a new routine for the song “Rocky Top” it was so good! We had free time again after practice but I decided to stay back and read. When everyone came back we all got dressed and walked to “Ripley’s Aquarium” for the concert. It was a great show and the crowd enjoyed the colour guard and drum feature. We all enjoyed Bill’s dancing with a crowd member too!!! When we came back we could go out and enjoy the festivities and fireworks. I decided to stay back to read (again) and take a shower (the first person, but had a unexpected visitor in the shower. A big, fat cricket that scared the daylights out of me! But Mrs. Delahunt took care of it!). But everybody said that it was really nice and the fireworks were really big and bright, it sounded like a humongous thunderstorm inside the gym. Today was such a great and memorable day. I can’t wait for tomorrow and what it will bring to my first tour experience. But one thing for sure is that this is a great way to start becoming a family member with this great band!