Setting Sail

From Newburyport we drove to Salem, Massachusetts-famous for the Salem witch trials.  We had about two hours to go exploring around the city on our own.  For some reason, I expected at least some of Salem to look like it did in the 1700's with old wooden houses and open fields.  Much to my disappointment, it looked like a regular modern-day city.  However, we did come across a witch on the street!

After exploring Salem, we headed to Hamilton/Wenham where we had the opportunity to meet General George Patton's daughter-in-law who now lives in Hamilton.  It was so special to hear what life was like for her as a member of a celebrated army family.  She was thrilled that we were in town and she was so grateful for the work that we would be doing throughout the week.  Hamilton/Wenham  was so excited for us to be in town that almost every cast member was housed alone because everyone wanted to host us.  It's such a special feeling to arrive into a town and be so graciously welcomed.  This week I lived with Ian, Carey, and her two children- Ella who is 16 and Cooper who is 14.

Schools have finally begun in Massachusetts and Tuesday was our first time to go into the schools and work with the children.  Instead of our usual community impact projects, this week was spent in the schools.  I worked in an elementary school on Tuesday in a fourth and fifth grade class where we facilitated an activity called personal flags.  The purpose of the activity was to give the class a chance to design a flag that represents them.  At the end of the class, we put all the flags together making one large flag that represents the entire class.  It was so great to spend time in the classroom and interact with the kids.  At the end of the day, some of the kids were having a hard time letting us leave.

Wednesday we performed three 40 minute shows in the morning for the entire middle school and high school.  It was an exhausting morning, but the middle and high schoolers loved our mini show and it was a good way to promote our two full shows at the end of the week.  Later in the afternoon I worked on preparations for Concord next week.  Some of the cast will be facilitating anti-bullying workshops in the Concord schools.

I had the opportunity to work in the high school on Thursday.  With high school students we facilitated an activity that revolved around values.  We had a "values auction" where students try to outbid one another on certain values.  The purpose of the activity was to get the students to commit to their values and to help them realize that if they feel strongly enough about certain values they are worth fighting for.  I was really surprised at how engaged and participative most of the students were when we were working with them.

This week our two shows were in the high school gymnasium.  We built a stage on one end of the gym and set up our usual equipment.  Friday night was a sold out show of 1000+ and the audience was full of energy.  People were standing up and dancing and singing with us through most of the show.  Because our performance was in the gym, it was incredibly hot.  One song in and we were all sweating uncontrollably.  By intermission you could not tell if I was sweating or had just gotten out of the shower and forgot to dry off.  But despite the unbearable heat, the energy from the audience made our shows in Hamilton the most fun performances yet.

Sunday was our host family day so we started off the morning by going on a walk through the woods.  We never had a dull moment together and we always found something to talk about or laugh about.

After our morning walk, we all headed to an apple orchard for some old fashion apple pickin'.  Many other host families had a similar idea, so it was fun to see cast mates and their host families also picking apples.  Ella, Cooper, and I had a great time running up and down the rows of apples trying all the different types.  After tasting eight different apples, we about had our fill of apples for the week.  One of the highlights of the orchard was the apple cider donuts, which basically tasted like heaven fried in oil.  After the orchard we headed back home for a mid afternoon snack.

Ian loves to sail so Carey and Ian took me sailboating in the afternoon.  Sailing has been on the top of my bucket list for many years so I was incredibly excited not only to be on a sailboat, but learn how to sail.  Before we set sail, we stopped in the yacht club to get a nice adult beverage for our sail.  Once we were on board, Ian immediately began teaching me about the parts of the boat.  We started untying tons of ropes that served some purpose for sailing and then we raised the main sail on the mast.  The main sail is the larger sail that is attached to the mast and the boom, the perpendicular pole to the mast and extends the foot of the sail.  We then raised the jib, which is the smaller sail in front of the main sail.

We untied the boat and off we sailed.  We had about a nine mile an hour wind, which helped us sail at a steady pace.  As we began, the wind caught the sails and the boat tilted to about 45 degrees as we moved through the water.  At first, I was a little worried that I was eventually going to be swimming home if the boat did not stop tilting.  However, Ian explained to me that there is a 1000 pound keel on the bottom of the boat that counteracts the sideways movements of the boat.  Ian eventually showed me how to steer the boat with the tiller, which is a long handle connected to the rudder.  

We sailed around the harbor for about an hour and I can assure you I had the largest smile on my face the entire time.  

It was very difficult to say goodbye to Ian, Carey, Ella, and Cooper because I grew very close with the family throughout the week.  The reason Up With People had the opportunity to come to Hamilton/Wenham was because Carey saw a show when she was in school and remembered how much she enjoyed her experience.  She decided to call the Up With People office in Denver three years ago and she has been working ever since to bring us to her community.  We spent every available minute talking, laughing, or just being together.  I am so blessed to have lived with them for the week and they truly made me feel like part of their family.  Staying in different host families has allowed me to think about what kind of family I would like to have someday.  After this week, I know I want to have a family that is as incredible, loving, and as fun as the Nielsen family.  

Beach Party

From Cape Cod we drove to Newburyport, MA our next city.  As an education intern, Dristy and I got to organize and lead a staff roundtable for two hours, where the cast was able to break up into small groups and get to know our staff on a more personal level.  This activity was our first major project as education interns, and Dristy and I had a great time working together to organize the activity.

This week, I got to room with Dave, our cast manager/director and we stayed with Abby and Betty Allsopp.  Abby traveled in Up With People in 2008 with Dave, so it was great to get to live with an alumni and hear all about her travels and experiences.  It was also great because Abby knew what little time we had to spend in Newburyport and she wanted to make sure we got the most out of our experience there.

Tuesday I had the opportunity to work on the most impacting Community Impact day that I have had yet.  I worked at a small church that has a preschool program.  Our job was to build a playground in the backyard of the church for the children.  The special part about the project was that the pastor wanted us to design the playground our own way so the children would always remember that Up With People built the playground.  We worked with the kindest people at the church and they were right along side us as we constructed a place for the children to play.  The pastor wanted the playground to be made from natural materials, so we used stones, logs, dirt, sand, and twigs.  In the four and a half hours we had to work, we dug a hole and built a sandbox, constructed a teepee, built a mud pit surrounded by a fence made of logs, painted dressers to hold art supplies, laid logs in the ground for children to jump across, and put mulch down over the entire area.

This Community Impact will always be a special memory for me because of how passionate our group was at building a space for children to play and also because of how grateful the members of the church were when we completed the playground.  They could not stop thanking us for our help and one woman started crying because she was so appreciative, which made our group start crying.  It is for days like this that I am so grateful to be a part of Up With People where we can make a difference in people's lives.

This week we had two performances-one on Wednesday and one on Thursday.  We performed in a middle school theater that was not air conditioned.  I tend to sweat when I stand outside in the snow without shoes, so performing in this auditorium was certainly an experience.  At one point of the show, about five songs in, as I was singing my heart out and jamming on stage, I moved back and looked down at the floor to find a small puddle of my sweat on the stage.  When I got off stage, I realized that the top half of my shirt was soaking wet.  We were all miserable because it was so hot, but that did not stop us from giving it our all for both performances.  It also gave us a better understanding of how hot it might get for us in Taiwan, The Philippines, and Mexico. 

Friday we spent the entire day together as a cast and we had a culture fair.  Each country has been working on a presentation for culture fair for six weeks and as an education intern, it was my job to help organize this culture fair which was for the North and South American countries.  Kelli, one of our education coordinators, and I were in charge of welcoming the cast to culture fair.  We decided to welcome everyone and get people excited by doing a few cheers and lifts.  We came up with three cheers that related to culture fair and added a few interesting twists.  We also dressed up as cheerleaders with sweatbands, cutoff shirts, and spandex shorts.  Kelli and I had a blast putting our welcome together and it got the entire cast laughing.

I was amazed at the amount of work that groups put in for their presentations.  The people who were not presenting were split up into groups and we rotated around visiting different tables and listening to the countries present about their culture.  I was very impressed with how well the culture fair went and how much fun everyone had.  We have another culture fair in two weeks for the Europeans and Asians and I am very much looking forward to seeing what the next group will do.  

Because of the holiday weekend, and our incredibly busy upcoming week, we had two host family days.  On Saturday Abby took me, Dave, and Kelli to the beach and we spent the afternoon soaking up the sun and enjoying a beautifully warm day.  After an afternoon of relaxing at the beach, Abby took me and Dave to some of her favorite bars on Hampton beach.  We had a fun evening of exploring the different bars and sitting down to talk to each other.

Saturday evening Abby took us to her favorite Sunday night activity, which was a reggae dance club on the deck of a huge beach bar.  Abby, Dave, some of Abby's friends, and I danced for hours to the reggae music.  It was like I was living the life of someone you see on the travel channel dancing at a beach party.  Once the reggae beach party ended, Abby took us to another dance club where we continued to dance the night away.  

It was so great to stay with Abby and Betty this week, as well as room with Dave.  A few years down the road, I would really like to be the cast manager so I greatly appreciated getting to see Dave's job from a different perspective.  One thing I truly admire about Abby is her genuine and caring nature that she has for others.  Wherever we went, Abby would see people she knew, but they were not always people her age.  Abby has friends her age all the way to her second cousin who is 86.  I have always loved meeting new people, but living with Abby this week really showed me how to look for the best in each person no matter their background or their age.  I was blessed this week to have such a wonderful host family that could inspire me to be a better person.  

Off to the Cape

Monday we took off in our two busses and headed out to Cape Cod.  Monday was a regional learning day where we spent the day as tourists getting to see the sights of the area.  Since Cape Cod is known for its beaches, our cast got to spend the entire day together on the beach.  Unfortunately, it was rather cloudy and cold, but that did not stop us from enjoying swimming, playing sand volleyball, walking along the beach, and sleeping.

For my week in Cape Cod, I was hosted by myself with Kevin and Susan Eldredge.  Kevin, Susan, and Bella, their dog, live in a beautiful town on the eastern tip of the Cape called Chatham.  Kevin owns a laundry company that has been in his family for many years and Susan has started her own business called Howl-a-day Inn, which is a doggy day care on the Cape.  They live in a beautiful apartment loft that is decorated with a variety of artwork from paintings to sculptures.  

Tuesday and Wednesday I had the opportunity to volunteer at the YMCA doing some landscaping and cleaning up the area.  I really enjoy our community impact days not only because we get to serve the community but we also get the chance to work with our cast mates and really get to know each other on a deeper level.  On Wednesday morning it was a fun surprise to find myself in the local paper, The Cape Cod Times, weeding at the YMCA.  

This week we had two shows in Cape Cod.  As I have explained, we are constantly changing soloists and dance lines so it is always exciting to not know what songs we will be performing until the night of the show.  Friday night we had an almost sold out theater and I performed one new dance.  Saturday I was asked to learn a new dance during rehearsal that I ended up performing in the show that night.

Sunday was one of the most relaxing days I have had for a long time.  Kevin and Susan took me out boating in the harbor.  We cruised through the harbor looking at all the boats on the water and homes along the shore.  I felt like I was in a movie as the cool ocean breeze and mist hit my face.  We dropped anchor in a small cove and enjoyed a nice lunch.  We then laid out in the boat and I fell asleep several times. It was such a relaxing day and I was so thankful I could spend the day with Kevin and Susan. On the way back they took me to see all the seals playing in the harbor.  I could not have asked for a better way to spend the day with my host family.

I am very blessed to have had the chance to meet Kevin and Susan.  They graciously welcomed me into their home and immediately treated me like I was their own son.  They even put the picture of me from the newspaper on the refrigerator door because they were so proud of me.  It is always hard to leave a family that you become so close with, but I know I will continue to keep in touch with Kevin and Susan.