Hello! I’m Dash Alschuler-Pierce, an incoming Freshman at Williams College, and am part of the MYO France Tour Choir, and I’ll be writing the Tour Blog.

After a year of deposits and anticipation and a five-day music bootcamp, we finally were ready to leave for France.

We each arrived at the airport in shock by the speed of our trips. I mean, mine was a whole fourteen minutes! As we gathered into our groups, some attempted to create group names. “Minions,” was Em’s group, and they definitely had the most zeal for the name; the rest of us were stuck behind their achievement.

We traveled through security, surveying each other’s seat number and re-memorizing names as we went. Eventually we got to the gate, after several liquids were confiscated, and waited 10 minutes.

We took off. No matter how many times I go on a plane, it feels magical. It’s like a good cry or releasing a sigh after holding one’s breath. And then, you become nothing! It feels like you’re no longer part of that world, and you can see it from the third person. I know how flat Long Island is, but my god—it’s a piece of paper! And then, you disappear into clouds and leave all contact with the world behind. It’s the one place where I can feel entirely pure and isolated.

The plane food was plane food. Use your own senses to interpret that. Following the food was the plane respite as desperate sleepers took their melatonin in hopes of sleep; it was 6:00 when we left, and Nice was 6 hours ahead, so we had to sleep in preparation for our first full day.

We arrived, some with sleep, some without. Those without had surpassed the sleepy stage into loopiness—loopiness running on adrenaline and ‘shiny object.’

We grabbed our bags and immediately began on a journey to Saint-Paul de Vence, a small town 45 minutes from Nice. We walked around this ancient city, trying new foods and practicing our Duolingo-French, such as “The cat is in the garden.” We took in the gorgeous vistas and fought against yawns.

Afterwards, we headed for the hotel—the hotel, met with the naps of a thousand children. Each student pair compared each other’s rooms, many in awe by a split between a toilet room and washroom. Others became apoplectic with the absence of a shower head. However, most were too mentally bankrupt from the past 24 hours to care. As am I.