Our cast's over-night ended at 3 am as we loaded the busses and headed to Frankfurt, Germany for our flight to Mexico. After a long 14-hour flight, we landed in Mexico City in the late evening. We took a bus to our first city, Naucalpan, which is a suburb of Mexico City. I lived in Naucalpan last semester with one of my cast mates families, Dany, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to stay with his family again. It was a houseful for the week with Sean from Orlando, Raymundo from Mexico, Abby from Colorado, Julia from Germany, Georgie from Minnesota, Dany, and myself. It was really great because all of us have been traveling together for the past year, so it was a special week to talk about all our memories together.
After a quick night of sleep, we had the opportunity to facilitate workshops in schools on Tuesday. It was a challenge fighting the jet lag on our first day in a new country, but we made the most of it and had fun interacting with the students.
Wednesday was a full cast set up in the morning at the school where we facilitated workshops. In the afternoon, we had the Hunger Banquet, which we did last semester in Taiwan. During the Hunger Banquet, we were all divided into three groups that reflect the distribution of wealth around the world. The few who were the wealthiest, sat at a beautiful table and were served salad, fruit, chicken, and vegetables. Those who were middle class, like myself, sat in chairs and had to eat rice out of cups. Those representing the poorest class, sat in trash on the floor and had to eat rice with their hands and drink dirty water. The food that we were not able to finish was thrown out right in front of us. We had to watch the staff dump buckets of rice in the trash and throw all the delicious food that the wealthiest class did not eat. It was another eye-opening experience which really made me reflect on how blessed I am each day to go to bed with a full stomach.
Thursday was a full cast load-in meaning that the entire cast helped set up our stage for our two shows the following day. We spent the rest of the afternoon in rehearsal and preparing our Mexican medley.
While we still continued to fight the jet lag, on Friday, we had two shows. The first show was for all of the students at the school that we had done workshops with and the audience was full of screaming girls. We end our show with a famous UWP song called, "De que Color es la Piel de Dios," which means "What Color is God's Skin." As we finished our first show, it was so touching to hear every child in the audience singing the song with us. I got chills as I heard the children sing, "What color is God's skin? What color is God's skin? I said it's black, brown, it's yellow, it is red, it is white. Everyone's the same in the good Lord's sight."
Saturday was our host family day. Dany's brother, Armando, who is also our Mexican tour manager, took us all around Mexico City to see the historical sites. We began the morning by visiting Chapultepec Castle, which overlooks the entire city from a large hill. Armando did a wonderful job explaining the rich history that has given Mexico its beautiful culture. After visiting the castle we walked to El Reforma, which is a very famous avenue with many historical monuments. After exploring the city and having a drink in a cafe, we headed home to have a big dinner full of lots of laughs.
Sunday was another double show day. By our fourth show, the cast was extremely exhausted and rundown. During the last show, people were dropping like flies and getting sick. Having multiple people getting sick during a show creates a lot of excitement and chaos backstage because we are all scrambling to fill soloist and dance spots. Somehow, we all managed to pull off four successful shows despite the jet lag, exhaustion, and new country transition.
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