Wind Ensemble in China

This is the story about 3 men that left Fredonia, NY at 3 PM on Saturday, May 17th, 2008, and are now with the Fredonia Sate Wind Ensemble in China. Their names are Sam Gelfer, Matt Maher, and Dan Caruso. It all started as they drove off from Fredonia, taking a stop in Binghamton for an hour to rest/so Dan could exchange cars, and then continued off to Long Island. Their goal was simple: reach Newark, NJ by 9:10. In order to do this without making Sam's parents drive a long distance, they set out to travel from Long Island using the Railway Express to arrive at Penn Station, leaving at 3:45 AM.

After leaving there at 6:07 AM on another train and through a series of "air trains", they arrived at the check-in station in Newark at about 7:30. Oh yeah, not only were they hauling their stuff, but a huge heavy box dubbed "Bill", which was a Bass Saxophone that Sam hauled in his van from Fredonia.

This is Dan, using my Blog account to write this. I'll try to get the other guys to write using mine or their own. To pick up the story, we took a 13 hour flight from Newark to Beijing, and it was my first time on a plane since sophomore year of high school. It wasn't bad, and I was able to catch up on some sleep, considering that Sam, Matt and I didn't sleep the previous night, and the night before that I had about 2 hours of sleep due to packing....and then 4 hours the night before that due to finals and studying! Sam and I are rooming together, and we pretty much crashed at 8 PM and slept until 7 AM the next day. Today, we went to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City (which is HUGE!), and the Temple of Heaven (great food!). Each place was incredibly majestic and epic, and we took lots of pictures!! At the moment, I won't go into detail, but I just wanna say that aside from the smog and the looks of some of the rivers, this place is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!!! There are trees everywhere, and everything just looks clean. Another cool thing about China, the food is excellent!!

Unfortunately, due to recent events in China with the earthquakes, our concerts have been pushed back. We are still having the same number of concerts, just pushed together later on in the week due to a "3 Day Silence" from entertainment like that.

Tomorrow we are off to the Great Wall....should be pretty fun!! I hope to write when I can, otherwise, I gotta get out of Chris "Bogme" Elsbree's room, as I am currently pirating his laptop.

Until next time, from halfway 'round the world,
-Dan Caruso (Action Van)