The World of Music (and Other Wonderful Adventures)

Last weekend I went in to work because Laura and I needed to get some analysis done before the week started, and Laura asked me if I would like to go to the symphony. Apparently, a group from DRP was going, but Laura had actually bought ticket's with her boyfriend before the outing was planned. Anyway, her boyfriend is out of town, so she had the extra ticket. For the most part, I blindly accepted, and found myself running home a few hours later to change in to appropriate attire. I met back up with the group at DRP (down the street from CMU), and we all carpooled downtown to the concert hall. We got there with plenty of time, and spent an hour or so sitting outside talking. I didn't realize how massive the concert hall was until after we walked inside. There were two levels, with thousands of seats each, plus a third level of box seating that was close to the stage. As we walked in and took our seats, the Pittsburgh symphony orchestra was down on the stage playing some mellow music in the background. After sitting for a couple minutes, the lights dimmed, and the conductor soon walked out on to the stage. Within a few seconds the orchestra was tuned and they began playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony (aka Ode to Joy). They continued to play through all four movements over the next hour, which was completed by an erupting of cheers and applause. After the third encore, the applause finally started to die down and everyone filed out of the hall. Shortly after meeting back up with everyone I was in a car heading back home. The rest of the night ended up being a small social night at thee Sigma Nu house, that finally ended after a late night snack at a 24 hour restaurant at about four in the morning.

The next day I met up with a friend of a friend from Stetson who is doing an internship at CMU over the summer, as well as another intern I have befriended. We hopped on a bus heading downtown toward the Three Rivers Art Festival. It is a 10 day art festival (that I went back to on Tuesday, and will be going to again tonight) featuring a huge bunch of booths with local art vendors, as well as various concerts and shows. Once we got off the bus, it took us a while to actually figure out where the art show was, but after getting directions for multiple groups of people, we finally made our way to the show. It was primarily set up in a park that stretched out to the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers come together to form the Ohio river. There were plenty of food stands set up, and some other interesting art boothes, but nothing that really struck our eyes. Shortly after getting to the festival a band started playing on the main stage. They were just a basica rock group, witha slight country sound, nothing too special. After they finished their set, an awesome New Orleans Jazz Brass group came up, called the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. They got the entire field of people dancing for the next hour while they did their set, it was tons of fun! After their set was over, the park cleared pretty quickly, including us, and we hopped on a bus back to CMU.

I ended up heading downtown with some friends again on thursday. We got this delicious Baked Zitti Pizza from a little local pizza shop, and then walked back down to the festival. We caught the end of a country band, and met up with another friend. She was out with some over friends, so we combined our adventuring powers and drove down to the south side, after getting lost and circling around downtown twice, to a cool little ice cream place. It was just a lone building standing in the middle over nowhere that only took cash, had a gigantic menu of various frozen delights, and served giant portions. After devouring our ice cream we made our way home.

On thursday I went with the DRP interns to Kennywood, Pittsburgh's local theme park. We all met up at DRP at about 4:00, and carpooled about forty-five minutes to the park. We entered the park and started thee fun with the intention of all staying together, but within about one or two rides everyone had broken up in to group of 4 or 5 to go explore the park together. My group ended up staying at the park almost til close, crossing off the last major ride in the park at about 10:30. My only slight regret was getting on a water ride right as the day was starting to cool down, so I was still wet when I got home six hours later. Other than that, the park was bundles of fun.

Now for the next adventure, as soon as I finish writing this, I am going to be packing up a suitcase to head to Ohio for the weekend. A friend needs to go home to do some things for the day, so a few of us are heading down there for an adventure! Also, I have about 100 picture that I will hopefully get to upload by the end of the weekend :-).