Today was a pretty lowkey day. We traveled from Morehead, NC which is right by Atlantic Beach in what I think is the outer banks… all the way to Charlotte, NC. We spent a lot of hours in the bus and ate at Chic-Fil-A!

We had dinner at Cracker Barrel and Alissa and Meredith Fahrenz got to see some family friends. It was Kyle Hay’s birthday! Happy Birthday to him!!! Michelle Sander got to see some of her family too and they came to the concert! Kim Baleskie also got to see some family! It was pretty cool!

We got to sing at Carrington Place and it was seriously a really sweet concert! For starters the space we were in was really hot and we had to have a huge fan on the entire time. Nobody broke rule number 3 so that’s good! One of the elderly residents had her son there with her and they were rockin out and playin the air drums the entire time! It was really cool.

Most of the group is in host homes tonight and there are a few of us guys sleeping on the floor of Matthews United Methodist Church. We’re singing in worship there tomorrow!

Here’s some pictures from the day.

[Image by: OSLCmedia]

First off… I realize I said in yesterday’s post “USC” instead of “UNC”… sorry… my bad. I was actually falling asleep while I was writing the post. (I fixed it already…)

On Friday we drove to Morehead & Atlantic Beach, NC! The plan was to arrive at Shepherd of the Sea Church in Atlantic Beach around noon and then go play at the beach until about 3:00pm or so. That happened… but when we rolled up in the church parking lot we found out that they weren’t expecting us until Saturday! There was a mix-up in our communications… the really cool thing is that they started calling everyone in their church and telling them to come at 7:30pm on Friday instead of Saturday and we had a pretty good turnout! The congregation made us an excellent BBQ meal of burgers and dogs and we ate until we were full… and then some!

Here’s a video of that and some of our concert!

The beach was a rockin’ good time! We played in the waves and swallowed a bunch of salt water. We had the chance to walk around the town of Atlantic Beach as well… there was a nice little diner that I got to eat at! Then we went to Wings and The Blue Reef… they’re both beach-side tourist stores that have a lot of organized junk in them. J Awesome!

Alex, Brad and I decided that we needed to have some tour pets to bring us closer together as a group. The below video explains the lowdown on that!

As the day came to a close we were fortunate enough to get to stay at a Hampton Inn in Morehead, NC. A clean bed and a warm shower were much appreciated after a couple nights on gymnasium floors! We’re on the bus again on our way to Charlotte, NC as I write this and we’re all clean and well rested!

Here’s pictures from today.

More later!

Sang at Hillcrest… walked around Franklin Street near UNC… saw the Duke Chapel (sang in it)

Thursday was a really cool day! We got to give our concert at Hillcrest Convalescent Home in Durham, NC. We had a chance to talk with some of the residents there and they were really happy to have us! One lady exclaimed, “You keep singing!”

Then we made our way to Chapel Hill, NC and walked up and down Franklin street by UNC. There was a lot of light blue going on around there… you’d think they won a championship back in April or something?!?! The campus was very nice looking and very large. If you ever get the chance… go to the UNC campus and visit Franklin Street. There are a ton of cool little shops there and we were able to spend a few hours walking around. Us mentors found a Mexican restaurant in an ally that was very similar to Potter’s Place in downtown Naperville. I had an excellent taco. The picture to the right is of the library (I think) on the UNC campus. There are more pictures of UNC in the slideshow below.

After UNC we made our way across town to Duke. Yeah… we hit up both rival schools in the same day! We didn’t have a lot of time at Duke before we had to leave. But we did get to see the Duke chapel! We walked around the chapel for a little while and found out that we get to do an impromptu choir concert!!! There happened to be another choir group touring the chapel too… they were from Orange Park United Methodist Church from Orange Park, FL which is near Jacksonville, FL and Lynn Panosh has been friends with their choir director Mark for over 20 years!!! Crazy coincidence!!!

It was just so cool to run into another youth choir and to see the kids get so excited to sing for their peers. Not only did they get to experience the acoustics and the incredible singing venue of a chapel but they got to sing for peers that they had never met and then appreciate what each other were doing. And the coolest thing was that they found they had songs in common that they could sing together!

-Lynn Panosh

Here’s some pictures from the day!

I’ve typed up some fun facts about the Duke University Chapel after the jump. (after the jump means after you click the below link… if you’re looking at this specific post and not just the blog home page you can disreguard this message)

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