Week Two

This last weekend was Linda's last weekend in Denver.  Linda is a Promotional Representative for Up with People so one of her main jobs is to set up a city before we all arrive.  Linda headed to Cape Cod to arrange all of the host families, events, and activities that we will be doing while in Cape Cod.  Before Linda left, we all went to the Denver Zoo to visit the brand new Toyota Elephant Passage, which is a ten-acre mini-zoo where the elephants can walk across over-head bridges between fields and monkeys can swing freely across the ropes over the paths.  

I will certainly miss having Linda around the next few weeks because she could always make me laugh and there was never a dull moment when she was around.  I am definitely looking forward to seeing her in six weeks in Cape Cod and then again in her home town of Taipei.

I have had an absolute blast with my host sisters Linda and Maroloes.  Whenever we are together, we are always laughing and having fun.  For the past few weeks, Linda and Marloes have been teasing me for always making my bed at 7 am and keeping my room clean.  One night, after I brushed my teeth, I went to Linda's room to tell her goodnight.  I didn't see her in her room so I figured she was in Marloes' room.  As I passed by Marloes' room, I thought I heard some crying so I stopped by the door to make sure everything was alright.  I didn't hear anything so I continued to my room only to find all of my sheets, blankets, and pillows in a pile off my bed.  The girls we laughing hysterically at the fact they messed up my entire bed.  But little did they know that I can pull some pretty good pranks myself.

In order to get back at the girls for messing up my bed, I decided to mess up their beds as well.  While my entire host family was downstairs watching tv, I snuck upstairs to Linda and Marloes' bedrooms.  Linda was sleeping on a blow-up mattress so I took her mattress and moved it into Marloes' room.  When Marloes went to bed, she walked into her room to find Linda's bed on top of her bed.

On Sunday evening, a bunch of the cast decided to go to the Grizzly Rose, which is a famous country nightclub.  All 35 of us had a comical trying to learn how to line dance together.  We even had several mechanical bull riding competitions, which I am proud to admit I am a pretty good rider.

Week two has been and extremely fast-paced, busy, and exciting week.  We have continued learning the show with cast vocals and movement.  I have been very busy learning six of the major dances in the show so most of my days have been spent in dance workshops.  I have been having a blast learning the dances to the show, but I do not think I have ever been this sore in my life. 

In addition to all of the rehearsals this week, Wednesday we had Culture Jam, which was an opportunity for the cast to share their culture with the cast and host families.  The second lesson that I have learned came at the beginning of the week when one of our dance instructors asked if I would help perform a dance for Culture Jam with Dristy, a student from Nepal.  Dristy wanted to perform a Nepalese folk dance and needed a male partner so I was thrilled to have the chance to learn a dance from Nepal.  It was a stressful two days trying to learn a Nepalese folk dance in between the breaks that I had from my dance workshops because the dance was quite different from anything I had ever seen before.  Traditional Nepalese dances use a lot of hand movements and twisting of the wrist.  The song was called Taal Ko Pani, which is a folk song about water, so many of the movements were inspired by the waves of the ocean and the winding of the rivers.  Dristy and I had fun performing the dance together and I am grateful that Dristy could teach me about the Nepalese culture.