By Request

Now that the boys are back, we've got thousands of photos of their trip. Quite a change from when they were gone and we were all scouring the internet for any mention of them.

I know Riley came home with enough pictures that it took two sessions of watching a slideshow to see all of them. He was the videographer for the choir so he didn't even get a chance to take his camera around as much as he wanted to because he was using the choir's video camera (see him at about 32 seconds).

All that being said, there were some pretty neat moments on tour that need to be shared with anyone who's still reading along. One of them was Joe Reece carrying the World Choir Games banner during the opening ceremonies. I'd think that it's a pretty special moment for the choir and especially for Joe. Roger sent me a few pictures for posting up here. So, here's Joe!

Choirboys in the News

The Land of Lakes Choirboys are featured in an article in the Star Tribune today. Some great quotes from the boys and a picture from their warmups at the homecoming concert on the 17th.

What Happens Now?

Some people asked me, "what happens to this site now? Does it ever go away?"

It's a free site via Google-owned Blogger. So, as long as Google keeps in business and keeps Blogger going, this site will be here.

I'm hoping to keep the site updated for the next few days with links to any news articles that are maybe posted after the fact, but it's likely to be pretty quiet here after that.

There's been some interest in possibly having a blog like this for camp. There's some technical difficulties involved with that since camps aren't exactly known for having easy internet access but, I'll see what I can do. If that happens, it would likely be on a less Viking choir specific site yet to be named. In any case, I'd let Mary Jo know and she'd send out an email to everyone to let them know.

So, thanks to all the choir parents and families who read along. It sure was fun posting things that people were interested in, tanks for reading!

Stats!

Aaron Ziegler made a comment a while back that he wanted to see the stats of the site. There's nothing I like better than stats! Actually, I've got fancy graphs and map overlays and all sorts of nifty stuff to see the stats from the blog. I could go on for hours. But, since that's boring, here's the rundown of some interesting stats:

53 posts. 47 comments.

2,000 distinct visits
7,800 page views
23 countries
26 states
340 unique visitors

Each visitor viewed about 4 pages and spent 6 minutes on the site

Our biggest day for pageviews was July 10th with 763 page views.

The most viewed page (aside from the homepage) was the post on June 20th that had a link to a video of the boys singing in France. 265 views on that page alone.

Most of our traffic came from people clicking the link out of an email or using a bookmark but we did see a lot of traffic from myfamily.com and various websites associated with grizzlygroundswell.com

People came to our site while searching for mostly specific terms like "land of lakes choirboys" and whatnot. We got a few hits from people using search engines to search for "Riley LinDell" and a significant number of hits from people search for World Choir Games info and results.

The most interesting hit from search engines was probably the one that came from someone searching for "landesakadamie, schlitz, germany" (nothing relating directly to the choirboys) but the person who came to our site using that search term stayed and viewed 30 pages.

Home at last!

The boys are finally home!! After five weeks, we finally get to hear their voices and give them hugs. Welcome back boys!

Here's some video from the airport as they came down the elevators to their biggest fans.





We weren't thinking about how to get good pictures so you can't see the hardware... but those are two silver medals hanging around Riley's neck!

Land of Lakes Choirboys in the "Elk River Star News"

The Elk River Star News wrote an article telling about the Land of Lakes Choirboys winning two silver medals at the World Choir Games. Perhaps this is just the first of many articles and stories that will be celebrating our fantastic boychoir.

Viking Today...7/15

Get your "Welcome Home" balloons and signs ready! It'll only be a matter of hours now until we see our boys. I'm sure they've all grown a foot taller, and, in my own son's case, gone another octave lower vocally. They start out 4,565 miles away now, but will at in our arms soon.

The boys leave Munich at 11:50 am their time (4:50 am our time) on NWA flight 8516. They take a 737 from Munich International Airport (airport code MUC) to Amsterdam-Schiphol, Netherlands (airport code AMS). They are due to arrive in Amsterdam at 1:30 PM ( 6:30 am our time).

A little side note for our buddy Jack Z: the Amsterdam airport was in the news a while back for painting flies on their urinals.

From Amsterdam they are to take an A330-300 for NWA flight 0055 to Minneapolis (good ol' MSP). The flight is scheduled to arrive at 5:25 pm our time, but it will feel like 12:25 am Wed. in their brains.

I would guess the boys will try to nap on the flight and they will be very excited and awake to see their families at the airport, but they will crash into their beds (their own beds, finally) by the time they get home. We plan to go out to dinner as a family (getting as many details as we can!) after the airport, and then put Riley to bed.

Viking Today...7/14

The boys' itinerary only says they'll be moving from Graz to Munich as step one of their return for home. Looks like that drive is about four hours.

I think Roger said in an update that they were actually heading back to Eichenau, a suburb west of Munich, to stay with the same people that hosted them earlier in the tour. Looks like that'll tack an extra 20 minutes or so onto the drive. I'm sure the choirboys will all be excited to share the news of their time in Graz at the World Choir Olympics with their hosts.

Perhaps they will see scenes like these on their drive today. Unfortunately for the boys, they are leaving Austria to early to take part in the Lederhosen Festival. I'm sure they're very upset about that. (Actually, Riley probably would be sad to miss that...)

Viking Today...7/13

This morning the boychoir will attend the Award Ceremony in the large hall of the Stadthalle to receive their TWO SILVER MEDALS. Congratulations, boys!

Here is a picture from my new best friend (the man that took a picture of the boys at the parade) of Francis at the ceremony. This picture is clearer, but from further away. Francis is in the front, 1/3 of the way on the left. You can see more pictures from the same photographer here.

The schedule from Roger says, "Common singing with Gotthilf Fischer (traditional german folk songs)" in the Hauptplatz. Here are a couple other pictures I found of the Hauptplaz. Such beautiful buildings surround it! The Graz city hall seems to be on one side of the open plaza.

All I found about the common singing event on the World Choir Games website is this (scroll down to page 24/25 for July 13th). My guess is that this will be a big concert of many choirs. Perhaps the boys will also sing the two official songs of the game there.

The first part of the World Choir Games ends this evening with a concert of the champions and a closing ceremony. At this point, the Games website has not yet posted the official results for the medal round. Check here to see which choirs are the champions.