Visit to Carthage College

Drew and I had a great visit to Carthage, and he's officially a student and all set for fall classes now!

We arrived Sunday just in time for the concert of the Ladies Choir and Lincoln Chamber Singers in the chapel where Drew is going to be singing a lot of songs over the next four years. It has a beautiful pipe organ and is the largest of its kind in the Midwest, I think the program said.

After the concert, we were invited to dinner by one of the Music Dept professors, a man who is likely to be Drew's private voice teacher for his college years, and he also is the accompanist for the choral groups. He was part of Drew's audition in Feb. We talked with the Director of Choral Music during the concert and set up an appt to go to his office the next day. Neither of the men recognized Drew at first ... and both commented that he had cut his hair since his audition! HA

The campus is starting to come back to life after the long, cold winter ... and thank goodness there was no snow on the ground! Sunday was pretty cold and windy off of Lake Michigan, but Monday was a beautiful day (mid-40's though) to walk around and take in the sights of the Lake and the campus.

Monday was a full day of preparation for fall ... Drew had his photo taken right away for his Carthage student ID and was whisked off to do a personal assessment of what he needed for his major and to get registered for classes. Music majors, unlike many other majors, start their coursework in their major right away instead of just concentrating on the core courses freshman year. So he will spend about half of his day each day in the Music Dept and perfecting his vocal and piano skills in preparation for teaching. He made an interesting choice for his language credits (2 classes) during college and chose to take Chinese. While it will be tough, he has a bit of China in his heart and has a real interest to learn some of the language. He met with the Chinese language professor and thought she was a pretty neat person. They teach language total immersion, so she started out yesterday speaking nothing but Mandarin to him ... he said he knows he looked a bit like a deer in headlights, but he did at least know what "Ni Hao" (hello) meant when she said, "Ni Hao, Scott Drew!" And he also knew why she said his last name first! HA

We had lunch in the dining commons (pretty good, actually) and he spent the afternoon in the Music Dept. We had a private meeting with the Director of Vocal Music and Drew got some guidance on how to prepare prior to the fall. He also shared with Drew that next January is the Carthage Choir's trip to Europe, which did not break Drew's heart. HA Their tentative plan right now is to be gone about 16 days and sing in local churches in Berlin, Prague, Hamburg, Vienna and Paris. Not too shabby.
After his meeting he sat in on a rehearsal session of the Carthage Choir and got to meet some kids, plus hop into the tenor section and work on a song they were learning. So he felt pretty good about that.

He left with his student ID, Carthage student email address, an idea of fall class schedule ... and a lot of excitement about the years ahead!