DCI

Jeremy and I went to the DCI competition last night, and it was so much fun!  You may be wondering, "What is DCI?"  It is the Drum Corps International competition, a drum and bugle corps.  There are several different groups from all over the country within the DCI, but all the musicians in these groups are INTENSE and amazingly talented!  They truly are an elite group of musicians, and they're only high school and college students!  I was shocked at how disciplined every group was,  and I learned so much about how much work goes in to being in one of the bands.  So, if you want to be in one of these groups, you have to audition, pay a large fee, and then you go on tour for the entire summer and compete all over the world.  The final competition, The World Championship, is in August.  Lake Highlands just happens to be one of the stops on the DCI tour, so this year we decided to go!  Well, actually, we just walked around to watch all the different groups warm up...it was so cool!  All the different drum lines were SO much fun to watch, and every band had a different way to warm up.  We saw some groups who spent 30 mintues doing warm-up and tuning exercises!  And they weren't just simple warm-ups...they were intense!  One group even stood in a tight circle and sang their program!  They were really good singers, too!

As we walked through the different groups, I noticed they all had their own personalized tour busses to travel in, along with at least two accompanying semis to hold all their instruments and equipment, and then another semi to carry all their food for the summer!  It's crazy!  Here's one of them:

Here's a video of one of the drum corps warming up...

I liked this group, too...

It was lots of fun!  I really want to go back again next year!