Hello all!
Wow! This week has blown by faster than I had thought it would. But, of course, this is the Windy City! Our week in Chicago was full of many fun, busy, and exciting things, so many that this will be a LONG post – hope you’re all buckled down to read it, because I know its going to be a long one to type! :)
We arrived in Chicago late Monday morning, and our two tour buses
headed straight for a well known attraction in the city – Navy Pier. If I had to sum it up in one word, I would say that it was picturesque. I took SO many pictures of the Navy Pier area! There is a great view of the downtown area from the pier, and there were many different attractions to see as well. They had a large rainforest/tropical tree area/thing near the center of the complex which was cool to check 
out. A bunch of us also went outside to the actual pier and took a TON of pictures of each other doing crazy stuff. We wandered around the Pier for the rest of the morning, checking out the different shops and taking the Chicagoan flavor. At about 1:30, we made our way back to the buses and went to our show venue
– the Copernicus Theatre, which was a renovated movie theatre built back in the 1920s. We had a roundtable discussion activity set up for us with some of the local Chicago leaders which was interesting and educational. We rounded out the day by separating into two separate groups – the northsiders and the southsiders. Chicago is such a big city that we had two Host Pick-Up places to make it more convenient. I was allocated to the southside, so I hopped onto a bus and headed that way. Once we arrived there, I met with one of my castmate’s hosts, who told us he was taking us back because my roommate and I’s host mother had a meeting that evening and couldn’t pick us up. The only problem
was, we had to walk. With our luggage. Which, despite having wheels, was heavy. We walked about ten blocks with all our stuff – thankfully in the nice Chicago evening. It was about 30 outside, so I couldn’t complain at all. Once we arrived at my host family’s place, we all ordered a true Chicago deep-dish pizza. Mmmmmm! Twas good. After an hour or so, Johan (my roommate who is from the Netherlands) and I’s host mother arrived home – an awesome woman named Mary Ellen Duffy. We all hung out for a while before we closed out the night for some sleep.
Tuesday came and with it an early rise. Since I was living on the southside, we had to catch a train in the morning that would take us to downtown Chicago, where we were catching the UWP
bus to our morning location. We had to be downtown at or before 7:15 a.m., which mean we had to catch the 6:15 train from 103rd street, which meant Johan and I had to be up at 5:00 a.m. Every. Morning. Ugh. So, as I was saying, it was an early rise on Tuesday. We caught our train with ease and met up with all the other southsiders soon enough. We walked the five blocks to Union Station (our rendezvous point) and got a chance to check out downtown Chicago. Not going to lie, I thought Denver had a big downtown. Chicago dwarfed it. Wow! We all caught our bus, and arrived at a local high school for our morning meeting. We all got divvyed up into groups and went out in Chicago, split up over three or four high schools. I was placed in Foreman High School, and got a chance to meet some great students there. The entire school was SO diverse! I did get a reality check, however, when I arrived and had to go through metal detectors and a sign-in process. I was telling some of my castmates that this school had more security than the County Courthouse I interned at a couple summers ago. Crazy! Anyway, I worked in three different class periods, doing an abbreviated version of the “Stand for Peace”
project, focusing more on the Card Identification activity and the Take a Stand activity. They all seemed to be received well, and we also got many students interesting in our program and show. After all the school projects finished, the cast regrouped and went over the day.
In the interest of time, I’ll combine Wednesday and Thursday into shorter segments :) On both days, the cast was split into different Community Involvement groups, some still working in local high schools, other doing workshops for the show, still other doing internship duties, and others doing different CI activities. On both days, I was assigned to high schools, and I went to Eisenhower High School and Wendell Phillips High School, where I found myself a sure minority. At Eisenhower, the ration of students was 40% Hispanic, 40% Black, 17% White, and 3% Asian. Coming from Iowa, where diversity can be lacking, it was a cultural shift for my – definitely! After doing CI most of the day, we all gathered together afterwards to do wrap-up and work on other things. In Burlington, WI, we began working on our Spanish medley for Mexico, and we continued that on Wednesday, making it through most of the songs. On Thursday, we did a group workshop where
we had an auction for a list of values. This was a very interesting way to discover what values we held important to ourselves, and how far we were willing to go to “have” them. Some people spent all of the fake money on one value because it was THAT important!
Friday brought show day for the cast, and, like always, people were divided up into different groups – workshops, strike, and fitness. I was on the fitness crew along with about 10 others, so we worked together and made a great fitness session of games, workouts, and stretches. We even ended with a small massage session – it was great! After a great Polish lunch, we did rehearsal for the show, and went over all the special conditions we had to work with the stage. Since this venue used to be an old movie theatre, it had NO backstage to speak of. None. We had to set up curtains on the sides so we could enter on the stage, and there were only two entrances on stage instead of the normal four, which made for many traffic jams during rehearsal. But, we worked through the difficulties and made the show one of our best. And, the audience LOVED it! I didn’t realize the large Hispanic crowd we had until Jessica Rojas, my castmate, got up on stage to do the Spanish portion of our show. We she began the mariachi long-note, the crowd went WILD!! The “Oye El Boom” came next and they just erupted! It was SO cool! The show ended well, and we all moved into our post-show stage. I had admissions work again, and did an interview before I caught a bus to the southside of Chicago for the evening. By the time I got done and in bed, it was 12:30 a.m., and after a day that started at 5 a.m. it was definitely a long day!!
Saturday brought a morning CI at the Field Museum, where the Illinois PTA
(our beneficiary) was holding a parent summit, so we served as guides and watchers for the parents’ kids and we took them around the museum. I had seven 4-8 year olds that I took around the museum for about two hours. While I know they had fun, they were also quite hungry and tired by the time lunchtime rolled around. After we dropped 
the kids off, we were given the rest of the afternoon off to explore downtown Chicago. I joined up with some of my castmembers and we walked around, ate some lunch, and finally made our way to the Sears Tower. After riding up the super-fast elevator, we were awed by the amazing view on the skydeck. It. Was. Awesome! We took SO many pictures, I can’t even come close to throwing them all up on this blog. Sorry! :)
Sunday morning started later than the rest, at about 10 a.m. The
southside of Chicago was having their annual (and HUGE) St. Patrick’s Day Parade, arguably larger than the more popular northside parade where they dye the river green. It was SO cool!! After the parade, which was a bit chilly and snowy, we went over to our city-setter-upper’s place (Patrick) for a party where we hung out and relaxed after a very long week. Safe to say, we had a good time! :)
Tomorrow, we’re leaving for St. Joseph, MO, and it is supposed to be about a nine hour drive, which will be a great time to rest. AND, its supposed to be 50 degrees when we get there!! Woot!!
Until my next post!
Dan
Wow! This week has blown by faster than I had thought it would. But, of course, this is the Windy City! Our week in Chicago was full of many fun, busy, and exciting things, so many that this will be a LONG post – hope you’re all buckled down to read it, because I know its going to be a long one to type! :)
We arrived in Chicago late Monday morning, and our two tour buses
headed straight for a well known attraction in the city – Navy Pier. If I had to sum it up in one word, I would say that it was picturesque. I took SO many pictures of the Navy Pier area! There is a great view of the downtown area from the pier, and there were many different attractions to see as well. They had a large rainforest/tropical tree area/thing near the center of the complex which was cool to check 
out. A bunch of us also went outside to the actual pier and took a TON of pictures of each other doing crazy stuff. We wandered around the Pier for the rest of the morning, checking out the different shops and taking the Chicagoan flavor. At about 1:30, we made our way back to the buses and went to our show venue
– the Copernicus Theatre, which was a renovated movie theatre built back in the 1920s. We had a roundtable discussion activity set up for us with some of the local Chicago leaders which was interesting and educational. We rounded out the day by separating into two separate groups – the northsiders and the southsiders. Chicago is such a big city that we had two Host Pick-Up places to make it more convenient. I was allocated to the southside, so I hopped onto a bus and headed that way. Once we arrived there, I met with one of my castmate’s hosts, who told us he was taking us back because my roommate and I’s host mother had a meeting that evening and couldn’t pick us up. The only problem
was, we had to walk. With our luggage. Which, despite having wheels, was heavy. We walked about ten blocks with all our stuff – thankfully in the nice Chicago evening. It was about 30 outside, so I couldn’t complain at all. Once we arrived at my host family’s place, we all ordered a true Chicago deep-dish pizza. Mmmmmm! Twas good. After an hour or so, Johan (my roommate who is from the Netherlands) and I’s host mother arrived home – an awesome woman named Mary Ellen Duffy. We all hung out for a while before we closed out the night for some sleep.Tuesday came and with it an early rise. Since I was living on the southside, we had to catch a train in the morning that would take us to downtown Chicago, where we were catching the UWP
bus to our morning location. We had to be downtown at or before 7:15 a.m., which mean we had to catch the 6:15 train from 103rd street, which meant Johan and I had to be up at 5:00 a.m. Every. Morning. Ugh. So, as I was saying, it was an early rise on Tuesday. We caught our train with ease and met up with all the other southsiders soon enough. We walked the five blocks to Union Station (our rendezvous point) and got a chance to check out downtown Chicago. Not going to lie, I thought Denver had a big downtown. Chicago dwarfed it. Wow! We all caught our bus, and arrived at a local high school for our morning meeting. We all got divvyed up into groups and went out in Chicago, split up over three or four high schools. I was placed in Foreman High School, and got a chance to meet some great students there. The entire school was SO diverse! I did get a reality check, however, when I arrived and had to go through metal detectors and a sign-in process. I was telling some of my castmates that this school had more security than the County Courthouse I interned at a couple summers ago. Crazy! Anyway, I worked in three different class periods, doing an abbreviated version of the “Stand for Peace”
project, focusing more on the Card Identification activity and the Take a Stand activity. They all seemed to be received well, and we also got many students interesting in our program and show. After all the school projects finished, the cast regrouped and went over the day.In the interest of time, I’ll combine Wednesday and Thursday into shorter segments :) On both days, the cast was split into different Community Involvement groups, some still working in local high schools, other doing workshops for the show, still other doing internship duties, and others doing different CI activities. On both days, I was assigned to high schools, and I went to Eisenhower High School and Wendell Phillips High School, where I found myself a sure minority. At Eisenhower, the ration of students was 40% Hispanic, 40% Black, 17% White, and 3% Asian. Coming from Iowa, where diversity can be lacking, it was a cultural shift for my – definitely! After doing CI most of the day, we all gathered together afterwards to do wrap-up and work on other things. In Burlington, WI, we began working on our Spanish medley for Mexico, and we continued that on Wednesday, making it through most of the songs. On Thursday, we did a group workshop where
we had an auction for a list of values. This was a very interesting way to discover what values we held important to ourselves, and how far we were willing to go to “have” them. Some people spent all of the fake money on one value because it was THAT important!Friday brought show day for the cast, and, like always, people were divided up into different groups – workshops, strike, and fitness. I was on the fitness crew along with about 10 others, so we worked together and made a great fitness session of games, workouts, and stretches. We even ended with a small massage session – it was great! After a great Polish lunch, we did rehearsal for the show, and went over all the special conditions we had to work with the stage. Since this venue used to be an old movie theatre, it had NO backstage to speak of. None. We had to set up curtains on the sides so we could enter on the stage, and there were only two entrances on stage instead of the normal four, which made for many traffic jams during rehearsal. But, we worked through the difficulties and made the show one of our best. And, the audience LOVED it! I didn’t realize the large Hispanic crowd we had until Jessica Rojas, my castmate, got up on stage to do the Spanish portion of our show. We she began the mariachi long-note, the crowd went WILD!! The “Oye El Boom” came next and they just erupted! It was SO cool! The show ended well, and we all moved into our post-show stage. I had admissions work again, and did an interview before I caught a bus to the southside of Chicago for the evening. By the time I got done and in bed, it was 12:30 a.m., and after a day that started at 5 a.m. it was definitely a long day!!
Saturday brought a morning CI at the Field Museum, where the Illinois PTA
(our beneficiary) was holding a parent summit, so we served as guides and watchers for the parents’ kids and we took them around the museum. I had seven 4-8 year olds that I took around the museum for about two hours. While I know they had fun, they were also quite hungry and tired by the time lunchtime rolled around. After we dropped 
the kids off, we were given the rest of the afternoon off to explore downtown Chicago. I joined up with some of my castmembers and we walked around, ate some lunch, and finally made our way to the Sears Tower. After riding up the super-fast elevator, we were awed by the amazing view on the skydeck. It. Was. Awesome! We took SO many pictures, I can’t even come close to throwing them all up on this blog. Sorry! :)Sunday morning started later than the rest, at about 10 a.m. The
southside of Chicago was having their annual (and HUGE) St. Patrick’s Day Parade, arguably larger than the more popular northside parade where they dye the river green. It was SO cool!! After the parade, which was a bit chilly and snowy, we went over to our city-setter-upper’s place (Patrick) for a party where we hung out and relaxed after a very long week. Safe to say, we had a good time! :)Tomorrow, we’re leaving for St. Joseph, MO, and it is supposed to be about a nine hour drive, which will be a great time to rest. AND, its supposed to be 50 degrees when we get there!! Woot!!
Until my next post!
Dan
3 comments:
Your blog is so dreamy, I didn't read it yet but I can tell.
Sounds like Chicago was great. And how lucky to be there during St. Pat's! I've been to the Sears Tower too - great view. Enjoy your travels.
Hey Dan. Cool blog. I like the picture of us before the parade. It was great to have you and Johan in my home. Take care and keep in touch. Your host mom, Mary Ellen
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