Mr. Shue was thoroughly frustrated on Sunday. Everyone was off. Even the usually ‘on’ Warblers. The male leads from both groups seemed to be performing well. It was everybody else that seemed to be dragging. Even the singing was off key. There were times when people were actually leaving the stage while performing and needing to get a drink, or sit down or go to the bathroom. “I don’t know what’s going on people, but maybe we should take a 10 minute break. Let’s try to come back and do what we need to do. I must say I am terribly disappointed on how this practice is going. We only have 2 more weeks to figure this out.”

Finn and Blaine approached Mr. Shue. Finn spoke first, “Mr. Shue. We wanted to let you know why practice is so rough today.” Finn glanced at Blaine. “We kind of had a party at Rachel’s house on Friday night. We intended on it being a get together so that we and the Warblers could get to know each other better before the trip. It got pretty wild though and, I think, outside of Blaine and me, everyone is still pretty hungover.”

“Mr. Shue, we were the designated drivers. Finn and I made sure everyone was safe. We are so sorry that practice has been less than perfect because of this.” Blaine appeared quite sincere with his apology.

“Blaine and Finn, thank you for letting me know what the problem is tonight. I think we should try to continue to push through this for another 45 minutes and see if we can get back on track. I do appreciate you telling me so that I can deal with this better.”

Everyone made their way back and were all sitting on the stage waiting for direction. Mr. Schuester addressed the group. “Okay everyone, I know everyone is feeling a little under the weather, but I think we should try to push through this. Can everyone try to give me 45 minutes and then we can call it a night.”

Everyone seemed to understand and tried to focus on the choreography for the next 45 minutes. They were able to sort out the opening, when the Warblers would sing and when the New Directions would sing. It ended with both of them taking the stage at the end to sing the original songs that they were supposed to be writing. Though not extremely happy and no specific choreography was completed, Mr. Schuester was happy to have the shell of the entire performance completed. They would work the next 2 weeks on filling in all the blanks with the songs that were already chosen.

“Can I see the Warbler Council for minute before you leave? “Wes, David and Thad. I think we should add more combined practice in to the week. My suggestion would be that we take the last hour of every practice to combine. New Directions already know most of their songs. How are the Warblers?”

“Mr. Schuester, we just have to figure out the backgrounds for a few of the songs. However, we should be okay with the time we would have before combining. I tend to agree with you that we need more combined practice time.” Wes turned to Thad and David, though he knew they would agree with his recommendation as he was kind of the leader of the council. As suspected they both nodded in agreement.

“Perfect, so we start with the new plan on Monday.”