A ‘life-changing’ trip

A young Canadian student, who visited Qatar recently on his first overseas trip, has returned amazed, happy and full of praises for the “desert country.”“My trip to Qatar was a life-changing event,” declared Brad LeRiche, the soon-to-be second-year graduate of the music industry and performance programme at Bay St George campus of College of the North Atlantic in Stephenville.A member of a band that performed in a CNA-Qatar’s Global Village international cultural festival last month, he considers his visit nothing short of spectacular, especially because of the differences he noticed.“Light switches are upside down, mugs are only half as tall as they are here and experiencing the warmth of the sun, after coming from freezing Stephenville in March was such a big difference,” he told local publication The Georgian in an article published on Friday.Bay St George campus of CNA is located in Stephenville, a modern and progressive community of about 8,000 located on the west coast of the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador, where the temperature was 0C yesterday.LeRiche, a native of Port aux Basques (a town at the extreme southwestern tip of the island of Newfoundland), was amazed with the amount of fresh produce available in Qatar, especially in a country that is basically a desert. He said even the soda pop tastes different, with a lot less sugar. The young man was never outside Canada before and the furthest he had been was to Toronto for a National Band Festival with his school band from Port aux Basques, where they took a gold standard. He had only ever flown for two hours before and the 36-hour trip spent in airports and on airplanes gave him a new insight into what jet lag and exhaustion from travel really is.“But that’s not to say I’m complaining as I enjoyed every moment of the trip, especially the crowds at the festival who were so receptive and started clapping half way through the songs,” LeRiche recalled.He played electric guitar and sang backup vocals in the band, dubbed Mad Bass and Groovy Shakes, who performed six Canadian songs: Paranoid Freak by The Trews, Keep on Rocking in the Free World by Neil Young, Where Have All the Good People Gone by Sam Roberts, Poets by The Tragically Hip, If Everyone Cared by Nickelback - and Rush’s Fly by Night.It was the sixth time the event has been hosted by CNA-Q and the first time for a band consisting of music industry and performance students and recording arts students from the Bay St George campus in Stephenville performing at the event. Of the 20 acts in the festival, the band from the college in Stephenville was one of only three acts that were actual stage bands.“It was great to witness the other acts as well, which included song and dance, live theatre and traditional performances in modern dance from various countries,” LeRiche said. He remembers seeing performances from the US, Palestine, Sudan, Morocco, Egypt and India, making it a truly global experience.LeRiche’s band performed to an audience of about 2,000 people, which included a number of dignitaries.”Really, I have seen a whole another world from the outside looking in. It was great,” added LeRiche, who is now hoping to do the recording arts programme at the college.