Sweet Adeline's in Winnipeg

After months of planning and some challenges/frustrations, my chorus has gone and already come back from our Regional Convention in Winnipeg, Canada.

We took a motor coach bus from the north side of town on Thursday, May 20th @ 8 am. We had a couple of our members fly and a couple who drove. So on the bus was 17 members and one husband.

The first couple of hours was quiet as a few of them tried to get in some missed sleep. Some read and the rest of us visited. We stopped in St Augusta, MN to pick up another chorus. They had 24 members on the bus. They had purchased some juice, coffee & doughnuts for all. It was about 10:30 am when we met them.

I had called ahead to the West Acres Mall in Fargo to tell them there would be a bus load of 45 people stopping for lunch. We got there about 12:45 pm. We gave everyone 45 minutes to be back to the bus. After our lunch, we did some singing and lots of talking.

We spent at least an hour at the border. They randomly asked about 5 people and the bus driver to go inside and they did a back ground check. They asked one of our members how much money she had with her and how much available credit she had on her credit cards.

We got to Winnipeg, checked into our hotel and all met at an Irish Pub for dinner.

On Friday morning, I attended a briefing for President's and Director's. After that the winners from last year who are going to represent us at International Competition in Seattle in October gave a wonderful class on choreography and presenting the music. The afternoon on Friday was free time. Quite a few of us took a bus out to a shopping mall.

On Friday night there was a Quartet competition. Heard lots of good barbershop music.

Saturday morning my chorus had a good breakfast, then we had a 45 minute rehearsal and then to our hotel to get stage make up and dressed for our 6 minutes on stage. We sing an uptune and a ballad. We were number 10 to be on stage. This is just the second competition with our new director. We did gain in points over last year, so we were satisfied. The judge's gave us some positive points and some things to really work on.

On saturday night we have a large banquet with about 800 people and then the winners from the quartets and choruses all sing for us. They also present some awards for the most improved chorus and for membership starting at 25 years, and this year we had one member in this region who has belonged for 55 years.

Then at 8 am on Sunday morning we did the reverse and came home. It was a great weekend with so many friends.