Niko's HHI Experience was incredible! I am so glad I was able to be a part of it.
Thursday: Niko drove with his group to SLC, where they caught a flight to LAX. They got in super late to their really nice AirBnb in the Walnut area.
Friday: They spent the morning practicing and doing sound/stage checks at the venue. After they went to Universal City Walk and ate food & checked out the stores. They ended the day attending opening ceremonies where they introduced the groups and the order everyone would be performing. Delta Force (Niko's group) were assigned to perform #3 out of 21, and Snow Pack was #4. The opening ceremonies were motivational and I'm sure all the kids had the adrenaline running for the next day's events.
Saturday: Mom, Nick, Dave, Uncle John & Loretta all met up at the venue at 8:45 to watch the hip hop groups. The talent level was on a whole other level! So many talented dancers, amazing choreography and the energy was out of this world. Niko's group performed well, and I'm so proud of them. Their group is good, but unfortunately, not as good as the best performers in the nation. Niko loved watching the other groups perform, and I love that he didn't take it as defeat. He took it as inspiration of how well we could do in the future, and new goals were set. I'm so proud that that's how he took it, because what an honor it was to share the stage with all that incredible talent. They scored 17th out of 21. To qualify for the finals they had to be in the top 9. His goal is to qualify for finals next year. Hopefully others in the group have that same drive since it is a team effort. After, we went and got pizza with the Curtins, and then headed out to Santa Monica Pier.
Sunday: Niko hung out with his group and then we met up to watch Finals. It was seriously such a fun opportunity to watch so much Hip Hop!
Monday: Sunday night we slept over at Nick's, and Monday before we headed out to the airport I decided to take him to the UC Irvine Campus to check out what other colleges besides BYU Idaho look like. It was a huge campus. We ran into a student who was checking out the eclipse, who shared his eclipse glasses with us & we also ran into a professor who was observing the eclipse through the shadow patterns that the leaves were projecting onto the concrete. It was fun to have people stop and talk to us in that way. Niko is still early on in the college prep game, but when you think about it, it'll come up sooner than we realize (or want it to). It was good to at least open doors, answer some questions for him and see what some bigger schools look like, and what potential there could be in the future!
What an amazing trip for Niko!
f it.
No comments:
Post a Comment