Parading, Painting, and Performing

We arrived to Hermosillo late Sunday night, had our allocation meeting, and headed home with our new host families.  I was hosted alone for the week with a 23-year-old law school student named Martin.  I immediately headed to bed because we had a very big day on Monday.

At 7 am on Monday morning, we gathered to prepare for a huge parade in Hermosillo.  There was a celebration throughout Mexico celebrating a war fought in the country and our cast were the first  civilians invited to walk in the parade for the past 100 years.  It was a very special honor to be invited to participate in the parade, so we had work to do before the parade started.  We had an hour to organize ourselves, put on our international costumes, and put our international flags together.  Our cast was divided into two groups and each group stood on a huge trailer-truck with microphones and a sound system.

The parade began and we rode up and down the streets of Hermosillo singing our hearts out to the Spanish version of Up with People called Viva la Gente.  I wore a costume from Nepal, which I have worn many times throughout the semester.  It was amazing to see such a large crowd come to the parade and even more exciting to actually see people in the crowd singing along with us to our song.

After the two hour parade, we had a free afternoon with our host families and Martin ended up taking me to the movies in the evening with some of his friends.

Tuesday was our Community Impact day where we spent the morning at a school facilitating a workshop.  We facilitated the activity called Personal Flags, which allows the students to talk about the significance of a flag and why each country has a flag.  Then, each student had the chance to create their own personal flag using symbols that represented them.  We ended with a discussion about how all the flags together create a symbolic representation of each student in the class.

In the afternoon, a small group of us drove around the city painting over graffiti on the walls.  This Community Impact became one of my favorite community service projects for the fact that we did not have enough supplies for all of us to participate, so we found other ways to make our service worthwhile.  Our group of 8 was given three paintbrushes to use with two different colors of paint.  If the wall was white, we had two paintbrushes to use, but if the wall was gray, we only had one brush.  To add to our humor, the paint that we were given to use did not even match the colors of the wall.  We decided to give it our all, so when one or two people were painted over the graffiti, the rest of us stood by and cheered the others on by clapping and making lots of noise.  As we painted the walls, we heard car after car honking at us.  We could not figure out why so many cars honked as they drove by.  However, we later found out that the cars were honking because they were grateful that someone was painting the graffiti.  We learned that something as little as painting over graffiti left a huge impact on the community.

That evening, we were invited to have dinner with the Mayor at his home.  We had a delicious meal on their private basketball court and ending the evening by dancing and singing.

Wednesday was our first show day, which was in a massive arena.  We ended up performing for about 4000 people.

Thursday was another Community Impact day where we spent the morning at a physical therapy facility for students who were paralyzed or physically disabled.  A couple of us interacted with the students during the morning, while the rest of us painted a mural on one of the walls.  I had a blast painting a mural, especially since we had the freedom to paint whatever we wanted.

In the afternoon, our group went to an orphanage and spent the rest of the day playing with the children.  We spent an hour teaching the children dances from around the world and the rest of the time was spent running around playing games, singing, and dancing on the playground.  While it was often difficult to communicate with the children, a smile is the same in any language.

The following day was our second show, but we began our morning with an expression session where anyone in the cast had the opportunity to prepare something and perform it in front of the cast.  Some students sang, others dances, some shared poetry, and some told jokes.  I was so amazed at how much talent we had in the cast, because we rarely have the opportunity to share those talents during the day.  It was such a great morning having the chance to see my friends perform.

Our second show day was a private show for our sponsors.  It's amazing how different it feels to perform for a crowd of a couple hundred after performing so many shows for several thousand.  However, each show is special and we always give it our all no matter who is in the audience.

Saturday was our second to last mini show of the semester.  We arrived at our site, which was a beautiful plaza surrounded by several cathedrals.  It was a relaxed day since we have done some many mini shows.

Sunday, Martin took me to the zoo with some of his family.  Zoos are my favorite places to visit, so I was extremely excited to spend the afternoon exploring a zoo in a foreign country.