The Road Continues...

Hello all!

Maquoketa has come and gone, leaving us smack-dab in the middle of Iowa and its capital – Des Moines. We arrived in the early evening of Monday after a seven hour drive from Maquoketa. This traditionally three hour drive turned into the seven hour monotony because of the terrible winter storm that ran through the eastern half of Iowa the day before – our show day in Maquoketa. That story will come later. There were times on our drive to Des Moines that our bus was at a full stop on the interstate because of the traffic. As we drove along, we saw dozens of trucks, cars, and SUVs rolled, stuck, and discombobulated in the interstate median. I learned later that over a hundred vehicles were thrown off the road between Maquoketa and Des Moines, resulting in four deaths. Crazy! I do have to admit that the extra down time on the bus was a welcome turn of events, even if it was uncomfortable for me. Time that is unblocked and unscripted is something ALWAYS welcome, I think. We arrived just in time to be welcomed by the mayor of Des Moines and receive an official proclamation from him. After that, we met up with our host family’s and headed towards their homes. I was lucky enough to be roomed with Ultan Courtney from Ireland again. I was his roommate in Maquoketa, but he’s definitely one of those people you want to be around a lot. He’s got so much energy!

Okay, for those who love continuity, I’m going to mess with your sense of direction. I’m going to backtrack to Maquoketa and finish that story before I continue on with Des Moines – sound cool? Because I don’t want to hear that I didn’t give you fair warning. If memory serves, my last entry about Maquoketa talked about my arrival there, so I’ll pick up there. The first day in Maquoketa was a CI day (community involvement), but I was on the sign-out list for performing arts/dance, so I was stuck in the local community center working on different songs, which made for a disappointing and long day. But, the next day brought our first host day on the road – an opportunity to sleep in…YES! :) Unfortunately the night before we were up until about 3 a.m., which negated much of the sleeping in. Our host family took myself, Ultan, and Mark (from England) bowling in a local alley, which was an experience for my foreign roommates. We met up with another host family, which were hosting three girls from our cast, and we all bowled together. After bowling and playing pool for a couple hours, we went to the girls’ host family’s place and hung out until three, sipping on orange julius’ and chatting. It was a great time. Saturday, our free day, followed and we spent most of it relaxing about the house. I played PS2 with my host brother, Jacob – mostly playing Star Wars: Battlefront 1 and 2, which I had been craving a bit of for a while. In the evening, another host family who lived two houses down came over and we all hung out, watching T.V. and playing cards. Fun times. Sunday, show day in Maquoketa, was highlighted by the terrible weather moving through the area. It started off by raining on the area all morning, which turned instantly to a wet ice on anything with snow on it. Most back roads had not been cleared of all the snow, so those turned instantly to impassable ice – stranding a few of our castmates in their host family’s homes until later in the day. After about noon, snow started falling, making travel a bit more manageable, but cutting down on visibility. As a result of the weather, our audience wasn’t near as big as it could have been. The auditorium holds about 850 people, and I don’t think it was half full. BUT, the people who were there were an amazing audience. It was great! AND, most (if not all) of the audience were first-time viewers of the show – what a way to make an impression! :) We had a great time, and everyone seemed to be impressed with the show. The next morning we said our goodbyes and left for Des Moines, which leads me back to what I was saying above.

Our first day in Des Moines was spent working with our beneficiary for our show on Friday – Kids Against Hunger. This organization packages meals specially formulated for malnourished children and then ships them to countries in need. Each package we make is the equivalent of six meals. We had about a hundred people working with the organization from about 8 a.m. to 6:30 at night. Our goal was to package 200,000 meals – a lofty goal. By the end of the day, we packaged 251,600 meals – and absolutely impressive feat! It was amazing! Though I have to admit that I was dreaming of dried vegetables and rice all night long. Wednesday brought a trip to the Pioneer Hy-Bred Seed Company where we were able to visit many of the scientists that work there and also talk to many of the people who work there. I have to admit that I found the entire tour interesting. They had a bean plant in a glass case in the lobby that was part of a plot that produced 154 bushels/acre – a good average would 54 bushels/acre! The plant was literally covered with bean pods…it was unbelievable! After the Pioneer campus tour, the cast had an afternoon to hang out and roller skate in a local rink. I, unfortunately, had to do a mini-show performance at a Des Moines mall for promotions for the show. While the few of us had fun, it was something else I didn’t get to do with the rest of the cast. We returned back to our base of operations in Des Moines only to find out that we were to get the evening to hang out and have a dance/karaoke event – sort of a lazy, social evening. However, much akin to earlier in the day, I had work on some stuff and was unable to participate. We finished the evening at about nine and went back home, where I continued to work on my project until about midnight. Sidenote – my project was a news presentation for the cast on Thursday morning. The bad thing about Up with People sometimes is that you are so busy doing stuff that it becomes hard to keep up with news going on outside of the program. So, a few people are in charge of presenting some news to the cast and one of those persons happen to be me. Since I got selected for the position, I haven’t had any time to work on this presentation and finally I just told my host family that I had to work on it and forego any socialization. But I got it done and it went off well! Today brought another CI day, and I was involved with the Stand for Peace project again, this time working with an 8th grade class. I was surprised at the amount of intelligent questions they all had. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think they were stupid or anything, but I sort of had a level of expectation after working with two 6th grade classes in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I was surprised at the level of advancement between the two school years. It was a noticeable difference. After the school project in the morning, we put on another mini-show for the school in the afternoon. It. Was. A. Blast. Before the show, we were all dancing with the students while we waited to get the show started. Then we did the show, and they all seemed to have a blast. And then after, they all rushed us and started dancing with us again, climbing up on the stage and such, wanting us to sign autographs, etc. It was SO much fun! Ah!

Tomorrow is set to bring our Des Moines performance in the Civic Center. The center holds about 2,500 people, and I’ve been told that the stage is big and beautiful – I’m definitely looking forward to it. Also, my family is trekking down from Sioux City to the show, and it will be great to see all them again after the past six weeks – its sort of hard to imagine that its only been that long. It seems like FOREVER, really! After Friday’s show, we’re set to have a host family day on Saturday, in which we’re definitely going to sleep in and we may possibly also see “Jumper.” We’ll see how it goes! We take off from Des Moines on Sunday afternoon and we’ll arrive in Muscatine, Iowa, in the evening. After a few days, we’ll continue on to Burlington, Wisconsin. Should be good!

Until my next post!

Dan