Philadelphia Girls Choir

The weekend of January 19th was Lina’s last weekend with us. We had an amazing year and already miss her a lot. Before we took her to the airport on Saturday, she, Sophie and I went into Center City to march in the (now annual) Women’s March down the Parkway. We marched with a group of girls from Girls Inc., a nonprofit whose board I sit on.

It was a really chilly day, but also a lot of fun. We started at Love Park and marched with hundreds of others to the steps of the art museum.

The next day was MLK Day and the Philadelphia Girls Choir was invited to sing at a lunch event for the Philadelphia Martin Luther King, Jr. Association for Nonviolence. In attendance was mayor Kenney, governor Wolf, lieutenant governor Fetterman, and state senator Casey. It was a pretty impressive crowd and the girls did not disappoint. They performed three songs from their season last year.

After Lina left, Dave’s parents have officially taken over care of the kids before and after school. They arrive in the morning before I leave to finish getting them together and out the door, and pick them up in the afternoons to take them to their various activities and help with homework. The transition has gone incredibly smoothly and it’s great to have them here every day.

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The PGC had their holiday concert in the middle of December at Temple’s Performing Arts Center. It was beautiful, as it always is. Sophie is in the Etude group, which is made up of the youngest girls.

Sophie was front and center in the Etude group
The last song the entire choir performed together was “Believe” by Josh Groban. It was pretty amazing.
Here’s the singer after the performance.
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At the beginning of April the Etude section of the Philadelphia Girls Choir had a field trip to NYC and I was a chaperone. There were 40 girls, ages 7-12, and 6 adults. It was nutty. But fun. We hopped on a bus from Philly and arrived at One World Observatory, where the girls gave a 20 minute concert. It was great because it’s the first time I’ve heard them perform a lot of the songs that I hear sung around the house.

Here’s the group. Sophie is in the front, third from the right.

Here’s a short video of the group. Unfortunately most of the video I took was too long to upload here.

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After the performance the chaperones took their group of girls and toured the building, which had pretty amazing views.

Here’s my group of girls.

After that we took everyone for lunch in a food court, which was absolute chaos. I’ve never been so paranoid about losing a child.

The day was nice, but cold. We walked around the City, saw the Statue of Liberty from a distance, and did some touristy shopping.

Here’s the whole group in front of the building they sang at the top of. It was a pretty good day and great experience for Sophie.

We got back to Philly around 7pm and were completely exhausted.

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