Work Hard, Play Hard

It is amazing how quickly my days go by during the week when we are rehearsing all day.  Two weeks ago was a little slower because our production staff (vocalist, dancers, and lighting and sound technicians) where in Tucson, AZ performing at the Up with People reunion.  While the production staff was away, we had our first Community Impact day, which is a chance for our cast to volunteer and impact the local communities during our week-long stay.  We spent the day working with the Coalition for the Upper South Platte-an organization dedicated to preserving water, which is the most precious resource in the mountainous area.  We worked in an area that was burned in the Hayman fire, which was the largest fire in Colorado's history.

After the cast was divided into groups, my group suited up with hardhats and hiked to our work zone.  Our group spent the afternoon rebuilding steps on a hiking trail through the mountains.  We all had a great day volunteering and it was nice to have the opportunity to give back to the local community.  As we spent the afternoon rebuilding the trail, it was encouraging to hear the hikers that passed by appreciate the work we were doing in their area.

Aside from working hard for 9-10 hours each day, I have had some fun adventures around the Denver area.  One evening, my brother took me to his favorite street tacos place for dinner.  Ever since Breton traveled in Mexico, he has had a love for street taco.  It was a neat experience to watch the owners prepare the tacos, which were delicious.  Breton also explained to me how he used to eat street tacos in Mexico, which was adding pineapple to the tacos.  I am now looking forward to eating street tacos in Mexico.

On another afternoon, I went to the pool down the street with some friends.  One thing that I have grown accustomed to is not always having access to transportation.  Vera (from the Netherlands) Janelle (from North Platte), and I had to find our own transportation.  We ended up finding a small scooter, a child-sized bike with flat tires, and a bike without a sturdy seat and flat tires.  We laughed all the way down the street as we slowly biked and scooted our way to the pool.
 

One evening, after a long day of rehearsals, I was invited by some friends to Red Rocks for a concert and to watch a movie.  Bailey (Colorado), Abbey (Colorado), Romane (Belgium) and I had the opportunity to have a tour behind the stage thanks to Abbey's father who invited me to Red Rocks.  We  walked the halls backstage where Prince and the Beach Boys performed.  I had never been to Red Rocks and I was amazed at how beautiful the area is as you look out and see the city lights in the distance.  Because I have to wake up at 6:30am during the week, I usually fall asleep by 10pm.  The movie did not start until 9:30pm, so unfortunately, Bailey, Romane, and I started falling asleep 30 minutes into the movie.  We did not end up staying for the entire movie, but I had a great evening spending time with friends outside of our rehearsals.

For the past two weeks, we have been blocking our entire show.  Our show producer, Lynne Morris, has been producing the Up with People show for almost 40 years.  The first two days that Lynne was with us she walked us through every single movement in the two-hour show.  It was a very tedious process, but our show is finally coming together!  Now that the show is blocked, we have been doing full show run-throughs.  Each time we run through the show, different singers are singing solos and different dancers are put in the dance lines.  We are constantly switching performers so the staff can see who works well in the different parts of the show.  The constant changes certainly make us all stay on our toes and focused.  We actually will not know who will be performing the solos and dances until the night of our show on Friday night.  Even then, the dancers and soloists will change as we travel on the road, so we must always be ready to perform.

It has been a blast rehearsing the show for the past two weeks.  I am very much looking forward to our world premiere performance on Saturday night!  Up with People used to produce a new show every two years, however, it has been ten years since Up with People has produce a completely original show so I am thrilled to be part of a brand new show.

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.  

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.

Living Life

The first lesson that I have learned this semester came while I was having dinner at a neighbors house after spending the evening swimming with some of my friends.  As we were sitting at the dinner table, Gary, from Belgium, talked about some of the many places he has traveled to throughout his lifetime.  I was very excited to hear about Gary's travels to Rwanda, until he said that he was in Rwanda in 1994.  Gary was vacationing in Rwanda when the Rwandan Genocide began.  My heart stopped as he began to explain his experience during the beginning of the genocide.

Gary was staying with some relatives in Rwanda while his mother was up in the mountains gorilla trekking.  One evening, while Gary was with his relatives, gunshots were fired in the home.  Gary explained that he spent the next two days hiding in the center of the home, away from windows and doors, where the family passed the time by watching movies.  Eventually, the militia came to take his family to safety.

Meanwhile, his mother was up in the mountains when the genocide broke out, unaware that her children had been hiding in the midst of a massacre.  When she finally heard the news of the genocide, she immediately tried to flee the country.  His mother made it to a facility run by three nuns where she was able to contact her family.  Gary explained that during that time, Belgians were not well liked by the Rwandan people, so his mother was very worried about finding a way out of the country.  She was not sure if she would be safer to stay at with the nuns or to try and cross the border.  With her Belgian passport hidden in her shoe, Gary's mother made it across the border with a fake Dutch passport and a large bill to bride the border patrol.  Her mother found out later that the nuns who helped her were victims of the horrific genocide.

I can only image the feelings that Gary's mother felt as she was in the mountains wondering if her children were safe and if she would survive.  Gary said that after living through that nightmare, his mother lives every day as if it is her last.  I am very blessed to have had a chance to hear Gary's story, especially so early on in my journey.  Gary's story has taught me to make the most out of each day of my travels and that each day is a gift where I am given chance to grow and learn.

The first week of staging was a very busy and eventful week.  Our days begin at 8 as the cast arrives and catches up with one another.  Each morning we have an all-cast meeting at 8:30 to go over the events of the day and any announcements.  The rest of the day consists of either vocal rehearsals, cast movement rehearsals, or education workshops.  During rehearsals, we have been learning the music and dances to some of the new songs in our show called Voices.

The second day of staging was devoted to auditions for dancing, singing, and speaking parts of the show.  After the first round of auditions, students are called back and asked to work on specific dances or songs for further auditions.  Throughout the rest of staging, students will continue to work on their specific dances and songs until eventually the final students are selected to perform the solos and dances for the show.

This week I was asked to learn several dances and a couple songs for the show.  In order to learn the dances we have dance workshops.  Friday, I danced in an 80's medley workshop and a hiphop dance workshop for two hours each.  It was an extremely exhausting yet fun day.  In addition to dance workshops, and cast movement rehearsals, because the Up with People program is intense and fast-paced, several times a week we have workout sessions.  This week we had a 90 minute Zumba dance party, which the entire cast loved.  

Our days end with a wrap-up meeting at 5:15 and we arrive home at 6 ready for dinner.  The rest of the evening I spend with Bruce, Linda, and my host sisters Marloes and Linda.  Several nights this week Marloes, Linda, and I went on a walk to visit some of my other cast mates in the neighborhood.  We walked to a lake down the street to skip rocks and get to know each other.

My first week was a blast and I can't wait to see what lies ahead in the coming weeks!