Region Band is a band you try out for, and tryouts were held in November. About 900 kids auditioned, yet around 200 were selected. I was one of the 200 that was selected! Region was divided into three bands. Honor Band, being the top, Odd Band, and Even Band. Odd and Even are the 2nd band, but divided into two. I was in Odd Band.

Region Band dates were Friday, December 1st to Saturday, December 2nd. Practice was on Friday from seven pm to nine-thirty pm, and Saturday from eight to noon. Warm up for the concert was one-fifteen pm to two pm. The concert started a two-thirty pm.

This year Dobie had a record breaking amount of kids making it this year: 26 students from Dobie were selected. Dobie came in 2nd place for the school with the highest amount of kids chosen.

Region kids decided to stay after school on Friday. We were going to leave Dobie at four-thirty and arrive at Jason’s Deli around six pm. On the way to Jason’s Deli, the sky was already getting dark. It was cool to be in a bus when it is getting darker.

We arrived at Jason’s Deli and they had our order ready; we pre-ordered. We had a delicious sandwich, a giant cookie, bag of potato chips, a pickle on the side, and a drink. I got sour lemonade. They also had free ice cream!

We stayed there for about an hour. After that we headed to Edison High School. I, however, was tired at this point. We got to Edison and it was cold. We all went to the place we were suppose to, since there were three bands. I went to the large band hall with some of my friends in that same band. We walked in and everyone that was in there was quiet, because no one knew each other. It was pretty awkward.

Practice started and we met our band director. He was very funny. He would joke around, but be serious at the same time. When we started to play you could hear a difference in our sound. Probably because it was the top kids in the region. We had practice for a hour, then a ten minute break, then back to practice for an hour.

We finished practice at nine-thirty. We had only practice two songs out of four, and the concert was the next day! We got back to the school at ten-fifteen. I went to bed around eleven. My dad and I woke up the next day at around five-fifty a.m. We had to be at Dobie at six-fifteen a.m. I had only around five hours of sleep.

We all met in the band hall that morning. Mr. Daniels had brought tacos. We went back to Edison HIgh School for another practice. Practice started at eight a.m, we got a break at nine-thirty. After that we practiced all the way up to noon. We finally had lunch at noon to one-fifteen. Dobie gathered and ate pizza in the courtyard, it was nice and breezy. The cool things was that there were high schoolers practicing a musical for school.

For practice we could dress casual, but for the concert we had to wear our band formal uniform. All three bands went their separate ways to warm up. We went to the auditorium at two-fifteen. Even Band was going to perform first, then Odd, and finally Honor. The performance was great!

During the performance we played four songs. There was an intense song, a jungle type song, a jumpy song, and a christmas song. We didn’t mess up except two times. The stadium was full of many people. There were so many people that we ran out of seat, and it was a high school auditorium.

When everything was over we got a plaque, a shirt, and a badge.The experience was amazing. It was a pleasure to be in Region Band.