My day began by waking up early to head off to North Surrey Secondary School for an exchange choir concert. We were very fortunate to work with another choir director named Frank Lee who listened to our music and then gave us lots of great feedback! After working with him we got a tour of the high school and ate lunch in their cafeteria. I ordered their chicken noodle soup and it tasted amazing. All of my friends and me were very fascinated at how huge their school was. Then again we all come from a smaller high school consisting of roughly 500 students whereas their school was just over 1400. After we finished eating lunch and were given a quick tour of their high school, we sang our choir songs for them and vice versa. It was such an amazing experience to perform for them. They were so impressed with our choir which was nice to hear, but I just thought it was funny considering we are from such a small city and they are from Vancouver, which eliminates everything compared to us. Acca believe it! Overall, I really loved their rendition of In My Life by The Beatles because that song has a lot of meaning to me and while they sung it I began tearing up. It is funny how one song can spark a memory and allow you to reminisce on your past life events.
After our performance and workshop we ventured off to an elementary school and sang there. This was a much different experience because the children were not as appreciative of choir music as the high school. Although, I can understand this completely because even though kids can be in choir at a younger age too, the repertoire is much different!
Next we headed over to Gastown/ Chinatown and I was super excited to explore this area. We all had to make a quick change into some fancy dresses/ suits before we went though because we didn’t have time to go to the hotel after dinner in Gastown before we went to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. When we got to Gastown/ Chinatown, everyone on our bus was dressed very fancy – in fact too fancy to be walking downtown Vancouver… We first saw the famous steam clock that sounds an alarm every 15 minutes which was super cool. After that we all got to split up into groups to explore. I went with 3 of my friends and together we searched for a bike shop. Little did we know how sketchy downtown Vancouver would be. The further we walked up the block the more worse it was. I feel horrible for saying this but in all honesty I was very scared for my life. I have never once experienced anything of the kind in my entire life and I really wasn’t expecting the streets of downtown Vancouver to be so bad. To say the least, there were people smoking weed everywhere you walked. Sadly, the streets were crowded with homeless people all staring at us demanding for money. In some parts there were people swearing at others and nearby there was cop which we thought was doing some sort of inspection. Later more cops arrived, but we had no clue as to why… At one point we were forced to turn around because ahead, a man walked up the sidewalk and was immediately surrounded by people shouting and begging him for money. It was a very scary moment considering we are all teenagers and have never experienced anything like this before.
I was very happy to be travelling with a male figure in my group because as a female, I felt slightly threatened mostly due to the fact that we weren’t dressed appropriately to be walking in this area. Wearing heels, a dress, and lots of makeup with a nice hair updo is definitely an outfit I would never recommend to wear downtown Vancouver! You will for sure feel uncomfortable. We had a man following us as we tried to find the bike shop and it was a very scary moment! We could see him through the mirrored side windows. Altogether, my experience trying to shop downtown was NOT OKAY. I didn’t end up venturing off to Chinatown because of my fear of something horrible happening.
*** I am not trying to scare anyone away from going downtown Vancouver because truly there are sketchy places in all parts of the world including the city of which I live in. The point here was that I have never witnessed or been surrounded by people taking drugs right in front of my very own eyes or seen so many homeless people in the streets. It opened my eyes up completely and I think this was definitely a learning experience for me.
For supper we went to Catch 122 Gastown which is a unique restaurant that allows the customers to experience new foods. I can’t remember what I tried exactly but they were textured foods! Next we headed off to the UBC Rose Gardens overlooking False Creek and there we took some pretty pictures in our fancy wear! Eventually we went into the Chan center and watched The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra perform. That was also a unique experience!
At the end of the night everyone was extremely tired so most of us slept on the way back to the hotel! I don’t know why, but whenever I get really tired there comes a point where I experience an extreme sugar rush and I become really hyper. I hope I’m not the only one haha! Anyways this was another interesting day in B.C.
Written by Tessa R. Adamski
Life in Colour 
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