The Board of Education recently approved the Grosse Pointe South Choir’s mid-winter break trip to Barcelona and the French Riviera.

The bi-annual trip was approved with a unanimous 7-0 vote on Feb. 13 at the Board of Education meeting at Brownell Middle School.

“In the 2014 trip we had 65 [students] and in the 2016 trip we had 55 [students]. So we anticipate somewhere around that same participation again,” choir teacher, Christopher Pratt, said at the Board of Education meeting.

At the meeting, the dates when the group will be traveling were decided on.

“We go the full week of midwinter break of next year, 2018,”  Poli Dulworth ’19 said.

According to Pratt at the board meeting, he choir will start in Spain and travel to the French Riviera.

“We are definitely going to do the classic tourist things and are going to try to squeeze in all we can into that one week. We will see the main part of Barcelona,” Hailey Martin ’18 said.

According to Martin, along with seeing the European sights, the students will also perform.

“Students will do multiple performances, both chamber and concert oriented as well show choir oriented with local groups and schools doing exchange concerts,” Pratt said. “Our students will see their performance and what they are doing at their school, and then they will see what we do as well.”

According to Dulworth, the Choir’s last overseas trip was to Ireland in the spring of 2016.

“We always go to Europe, so that was on our top priority,” Martin said. “We circled through a few of the trips and we haven’t gone to Spain in a long time.”

According to Pratt, this is a long tradition of international travel that began after 2000 with the past four trips.

“It’s gone over extremely well with our students and many of our students have friends they keep in touch with,”  Pratt said.

Many students have expressed their excitement towards the upcoming trip.

“I am most looking forward to experiencing that culture,”  Martin said. “I have always been really intrigued by it and international trips are just always a fun time because all the choir people go and we are all best friends, so it’s just really fun.”