Travel Writing Exercise 4

Travel Writing

Exercise 4

The most intense part of my story I think was the beginning, when I was describing Times Square, but I hadn’t yet said that it was Times Square. In order to tell that whole story, you have to know the back story that led up to it. Why I was even in New York City in the first place.

I love Musical Theater. I have been singing, dancing and performing since the fifth grade. My fifth grade teacher was the best. Her name was Mrs. Lipps. She made us all class t-shirts and as a holiday gift once, I got her a KISS Lips pillow. She loved the arts just as much as I do now. She loved it so much that she had our entire class work on putting on a show all school year long. It was called Over the Rainbow. It was a kind of spoof on Wizard of Oz. There was still a Dorothy, Tin Man, Lion, Scarecrow, and Witch, but instead of Munchkins, there were Discokins. I was one of them and we got to dance to Boogie Shoes by KC and the Sunshine Band. I was also the Big Bad Wolf and I was going through the forest and I asked the Wicked Witch if she had seen a little girl walking through. She thought I meant Dorothy, so she pointed offstage and said, “Yes, she went that way.” I said, “Thanks.” And went on my way. I thought it was funny that we added that.

That’s what started my whole love for performing. After that, I joined my middle school choir at Turkey Foot and absolutely loved it. My teacher was really cool and fun. I’ve been singing in choirs ever since the sixth grade. I was in choir two years at Turkey Foot, Beginning Choir because of scheduling issues in eighth grade, Senior Choir in ninth grade, Men’s Ensemble in tenth grade, and Cincinnati Children’s Young Men’s Choir now.

I did more shows in Middle School following my first show in fifth grade. The summers of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade I did the drama part of Camp Coney at Coney Island. We would pick a show, cast on day 1, rehearse all week, then perform it on Friday. Those were really fun. I also did Beauty and the Beast in seventh grade. I was the Prince.

So, I ended up in Times Square in New York City because that’s where I want to be someday, performing on Broadway.

Travel Writing Exercise 6

 Travel Writing

                                                                      Exercise 6      

The 8 most important things on my trip to New York were:

1)      Being in Times Square

2)      Getting professional voice, acting, and dance classes everyday

3)      Seeing 6 Broadway shows in 3 weeks

4)      Meeting really cool people who work on Broadway

5)      Making great new friends

6)      Playing music on the floors

7)      The nightly site visits

8)      And of course, the food

The thread connecting all of these is the fact that they are all a part of this one amazing camp. Each new bullet adds to the amazingness in a bottle that is Passport NYC.

Seeing 6 Broadway Shows in 3 Weeks

Seeing 6 shows in a matter of 3 weeks was pretty crazy. What was even more crazy about it this year was the fact that we only saw 1 show week 1 and 3 shows 3 nights in a row week 2. That was a crazy, exhausting week. 2 of the 3 shows were late night starts, so we wouldn’t get back to the 92^nd Street Y until midnight usually.

Making Great New Friends

People come to Passport NYC from all over the world. It’s amazing. There were two counselors from Israel, a girl from Spain, a guy from Canada, and a guy from Guatemala. They also come from all over the states. There was a girl from San Diego, a girl from Texas, and a guy from Cincinnati (huh, wonder who that was?). There were some amazing talented people at camp. We would have jam sessions on our floors every night, it was so much fun. People brought there guitars, ukuleles, bongos, trumpets, etc. and we just kept on playing until it was time to go to bed. There were some really cool people there with some of the same interests as me and we could talk for hours.

Meeting Really Cool People on Broadway

We met some incredible people while there. We got to see every aspect of Broadway, and that there are infinite ways to work on Broadway. From directing and producing, to lighting and costume design.

The Food

The food was really good at camp. They had a catering company take care of all three of our meals. Breakfast was buffet style and usually consisted of some sort of egg dish, bagels, yogurt, and cereal. Lunch was a boxed lunch that we took to class and ate there and we had the chose of certain wraps, salads, or sandwiches. Dinner was buffet style and each night had a different theme for example, Chinese night or Italian night.

Passport NYC

Travel Writing

Exercise 5

It wasn’t the first thing I saw, but it was the thing that stood out the most and made me finally feel like I was actually there. Bright lights, billboards 5 stories high, some of these billboards advertisements and others are for musicals in town. Tons and tons of people, giant skyscrapers, 50 stores on one block. I’m talking about Times Square in New York City.

I went to a Musical Theater camp this summer called Passport NYC and we were staying in Manhattan. When I got to camp, I knew I was in New York City, but something didn’t feel right yet, something was still missing. Then came the first day of classes and we walked through Times Square to get to class and that was it. I was officially in New York City. For a Musical Theater person, my dream is to one day not just see a show on Broadway, but be in a show on Broadway, see all of those seats in the theater filled for me.

This camp was the perfect opportunity to get great practice and meet with some top name people who work in the Broadway business, whether it was meeting with a casting director, a president of certain theaters, or a marketing research company. All of the classes and trips and experiences were simply amazing and I learned so much.

Meeting with all of the people working behind the scenes was really cool. We got to experience and learn about all of the different jobs on Broadway. You don’t have to be an actor to be on Broadway. You can be a director, or an agent, or even a person who works the lights. It’s all still Broadway.

The many classes we had at DANY Studios were really fun. Every day we would have three classes there; a voice class, a dance class, and an acting class. Our voice teacher was an actual member of the Ensemble in Cinderella, Branch Woodman. It was so awesome being able to get really personal with a Broadway actor and become good friends. Our dance class was led by my brohemian rhapsody, Chris Liddell. He’s a really cool and a fabulous dancer. He’s a New York Yankees fan, so we talked about baseball a lot at camp. Our acting class was led by Corrie Cooper. She’s extremely nice and fun to be around and she really brings out the best actor in all of us. We had class every day from 9 to 1 with an hour for lunch.

After our morning classes, we would go out for our specialty visits. Some of my favorite specialty visits were; touring Juliard, touring the Lincoln Center, meeting Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, and meeting with a Broadway marketing company. All of our visits were amazing and I learned so much about all of the different aspects of Broadway. Every visit made me more and more aware of the fact that this is what I wanted to do, I want to be an actor on Broadway. Another cool part about meeting Jordan Roth was that his office is just a few floors above the stage, so we were able to hear the actors rehearsing for a Beatles Tribute show, then we got to go and actually sit in the theater and listen, it was amazing.

Once we were done with both our classes and our specialty visit, it was finally time to return to the 92 Street Y where we stayed. Musical Theater having the longest day out of all of the other specialties, we were always the last ones to get back. We would usually only have like 20 minutes to shower and get ready for dinner, it was insane.

The night capped of another wonderful day of NYC with more wonderful stuff in NYC. The entire camp would all do something together so that we had time to meet people in other specialties as well. Some of the really cool things we did together was; go on an open top bus tour of NYC, seeing a screening of the movie Magic Camp, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, seeing a Musical. On top of the one musical the entire camp saw together, the Musical Theater specialty got to see 5 other shows. The 6 shows we got to see were; A Trip to Bountiful, Pippin, Cinderella, Motown, Matilda, and Kinky Boots. My favorite show was Pippin. It was this really interesting story about a boy named Pippin searching for meaning in his life. He saw all of the magic and circus stuff going on around his life, all of the fame, but he didn’t want any of that. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, but he knew that the fame was too much. He knew that everything had its season and its time, and that whatever he was meant for in the world would come to him soon. It was magic show, circus, and musical all in one and it was simply amazing.

My trip to New York City couldn’t have been any better. I learned so much, I made a bunch of new friends who share the same interests and goals as me, I made a bro for life, I made connections, I had the best summer ever… again. I went last summer and I didn’t think it could get any better, and this summer shot far beyond my expectations. I loved it so much and can’t wait till next summer.

Loveland Castle

Loveland Castle

I had a really great time at the Loveland Castle. I learned a lot about Harry Andrews. He was the man who had the idea for and put the most work into Chateau Laroche. He and a group of friends wanted to become knights. They called themselves, the Knights Of the Golden Trail, or KOGT. Harry knew that if they were going to be knights, they needed a castle. It took Harry many years and a good chunk of his life to build just the first part of the castle. Then, when he was 80 years old, he felt like he needed a hobby, so he built a second part of the castle. The second part only took him 9 years to build. That’s amazing considering the numerous trips he had to take to get all of the stones for the castle. He would go down to the river banks and collect as many stones as he could in one wheelbarrow and bring them back to the castle. He used milk and orange juice cartons and poured cement into those to form the bricks. He had small windows put all over the front wall so that his men could shoot arrows from the inside.

The main objective was defending the front door. So the front door was built in 3 different layers and two main smaller doors called wiccett doors. It was also made of 238 different pieces of wood and 2,000 nails. It was impossible to cut through. The only way to get through it was to use a battering ram. If the enemy happened to get through the main front door, Harry and his men had to rush up the stairs. The stairs were interesting. One would be bigger or smaller than the next and they were very hard to climb without a handrail. Even if the enemy did get up the stairs, the KOGT had a long pole to knock them back down the stairs.

Harry Andrews was a genius. He had an IQ of 189, was fluent in 7 languages, had a photographic memory, and was smarter than the entire city of Dayton. The Great Flood demolished the city of Dayton, but Harry was smart. He had two flood walls built instead of just one to better protect his castle that was right alongside the Little Miami River.

So if they were Knights, who were they defending themselves against? Well, Harry was in a Boy Scouts Troop and two of his friends parents took up on a Cincinnati Enquirer offer. If you bought a full one year subscription, you got a plot of land down by the Little Miami River. Harry and his Scouts were there so much, that they decided to just leave their stuff there. Well, most of the time, when they returned, their gear would be gone or ruined. So Harry had the genius idea of building two giant stone tents so everyone’s stuff would be safe. The Knights of the Golden Trail in a way were defending their castle, but it wasn’t from other Knights, it was from thieves who wanted to steal their gear.