Epic Adventure

Saturday afternoon, after several intense dance workshops, the cast headed downtown for a scavenger hunt in the metro area of Denver.  We were divided into teams and had to race around the city taking creative photographs in front of significant places around the city as well as answer questions about Denver.  We had fun exploring the city and, unfortunately, we did not win, but we did enjoy getting to have an activity away from our staging facility.  

After our eventful afternoon, a majority of the cast decided to stay downtown and have dinner together at the Cheesecake Factory.  All 60 of us sat at four long tables with five waiters serving us throughout the night.  We spent three hours together getting to know each other better and it was certainly nice to spend time together outside of our normal staging routine.

Sunday was a host family day, and I think it may be one of the single most memorable and enjoyable days I have ever had.  Marloes' brother, Johan, was here from the Netherlands for the weekend on his way to Tucson, Arizona for his five-year Up with People reunion.  Linda took Marloes, Johan, me, and another castmate, Azusa, to Estes Park to hike in the mountains.  We left the house at 9:30 am and finally made it to the head of the trail at about noon.  The hike up the mountain was incredibly beautiful.  We made our way up the mountain taking time to enjoy the breathtaking nature.  

After about an hour and a half of hiking up to the very end of the trail, we noticed some dark clouds quickly roll in.  We started to make our way back down the when it began to lightly rain.  We picked up the pace a little, but we were still enjoying our decent down the mountain.  All  of the sudden, a bolt of lightning whipped across the sky and the next thing I know, I see Linda running for dear life down the mountain.  As she sprinted passed all of us, she was telling us how she was afraid of lightning.  The light rain turned into a downpour as we were racing down the mountain.  After about a minute, the downpour turned into hail, which felt like we were being pricked with hundreds of needles.  Johan and I could not help but laugh hysterically at how comical our afternoon had become.  As Linda kept running down the mountain, we could all faintly hear her yell "Is everyone okay?" but she was running too fast to ever look back to check, so we would have to haul it up to her to tell her we were all alright. As I mentioned, it took us 90 minutes to get to the top of the mountain, and we made it down the mountain in 20 hilarious minutes.  When we got to the bottom, after we stopped laughing, we realized we were soaking wet, freezing, and covered in mud.  We laughed about our epic adventure the entire car ride home and could not wait to tell the rest of the cast how much fun we had on our host family day.  

Monday afternoon was devoted to a serious activity called Crossing the Line.  The activity gave us all a chance to open up and share more about our beliefs and values.  A statement was read to us and if we identified with the statement we had to cross the line.  Once we made our choice to cross or not, we had the chance to explain how we interpreted the statement and why we chose to cross or not cross the line.  Each statement that was read required us to become more vulnerable and share our personal beliefs with the cast.  It took us about 35 minutes for us realize how personal this activity was and many of us started consoling one another.  The amazing part was that at no time throughout the activity were any judgements or assumptions made.  Instead, each time we had to look at the other people across the line, there was nothing but support and trust in everyone's eyes.  After this activity, we were no longer a group of students from around the world-we had become an international family.