Enid, Oklahoma -- the Next Windy City

Hello all!

Sorry to disappoint, but I haven't got any pictures from this city either. I've gotten lazy this past week, and I haven't had my camera with me as much so hence -- no pictures. I'll make up for it I'm sure over the next month and a half. We're leaving for Brenham, Texas, tomorrow morning (bright and early), and after a week there we will be crossing the border into MEXICO! Woo hoo! For me, the culture shock and culture shift will begin! While all my castmates from outside of America have been going through their own culture shift since staging in Denver, I've been in the lap of "comfort" that is mainstream America. Should be interesting once I step foot into a place where Spanish is the main language and hardly no one will understand me. Definitely going to appreciate those four years of high school Spanish -- thanks Mrs. Hoch! :)

We left St. Joseph, Missouri, at about 11 a.m. after a presentation about environmental awareness. During this presentation, the entire cast was given a challenge that would last from that point until we arrived in Brenham, Texas. The challenge was simple -- we were not allowed to throw any of our trash away. Any trash we made, whether recyclable or not, would be stored in our own personalized garbage sack that we were to keep track of throughout our stay in Enid. Bottles, napkins, paper towls, wrappers -- anything! Needless to say, we suddenly became very conscious of everything we were throwing away. Trash also included banana peels, uneaten food, etc. If that doesn't make you aware, nothing will. Of course this challenge was totally reliant on the honor system, but I trust our cast. And we're all pretty good about keep each other honest as well. Anyway, after this presentation, we loaded the buses and took off on our six hour drive to Enid, Oklahoma. I was on bus #1 and we watched three different movies -- Beauty and the Beast, Happy Feet, and Superstar. That certainly entertained those who didn't want to sleep, and didn't pester those who did. All in all, an enjoyable and relaxing trip. When we arrived, I found out that I was to be rooming with three other people -- Gabe, our show manager; Britta, from Sweden; and Eilis, from Georgia/Ireland. In short, I've really enjoyed hanging out with all of them, and its been especially fun getting to know Gabe outside of his staff role. Our host family, too, is pretty cool -- they're Mike and Michelle Jansen. Mike is an Air Force pilot, so they are a military family -- often traveling around. They just moved to Enid about 10 weeks ago, so they knew as much about the city as we did. But they were definitely excited to have us. They also have three children: Beau, Jack, and Julie -- all of them under eight years old. Julie, the youngest, is three years old.

Friday was our show day, which makes our Enid visit a bit backwards since we are doing our show BEFORE we do our CI work. I was assigned to dance workshops in the morning, and I worked on "A World Celebration" frontline dance. Probably the one song that I hate dancing to. Ugh. If anything, it is SO hard on my shoulder sockets. But I worked through it, and I have the dance down a bit better now. We were able to practice the song outside, too, in the nice weather, which was nice even though the wind made our scarves go everywhere. I have to admit, that Enid IS a windy city -- just as much as Chicago! After lunch (where we had to keep our plates and napkins and utensils in our own trash bags), the cast as a whole continued to work on our Mexican Medley dancing. We've got about all of it learned now, but its just getting it memorized. After this, we did our normal rehearsal, and I found myself in the same spots as in the last show -- mike groups for the most part, but in the cast stage for "We'll Be There" and "Up with People." Rehearsal ended, and dinner came and went. We gathered for our Green Room, and broke to begint he show. It went off well. Definitely cannot complain about anything. Afterward, I was on Cast University again, and we didn't have much to do, so a few of us walked to a gas station and grabbed some food. Fun times. Because there wasn't too many interviews to do, most of the people on admissions moved to strike and they did a "super-strike" -- basically, try and take down the set as quick as possible. For the United States, the fastest UWP has taken down the set in the past was 1 hr. and 1 minute. They got the set down on Friday in 53 minutes. Though they had to add two, 1 minute penalties for opening the trucks up again, they still did a great job beating that record with extra equipment compared to past years.

Saturday was our CI day. While there were plenty of different spots around Enid, Oklahoma for the cast to go, I went to our beneficiary's location, a place called Leonardo's. Basically, it seemed to be a community children's museum that is completely intereactive, where kids can let there imaginations run wild in two primary areas -- art and science. The fifteen of us that went spent the morning working up on the third floor, cleaning up their supply room, which was basically items that they've saved or been donated to them over the years and that had piled up to an unsiftable, unorganized mess. So we helped organize it for them. After lunch, we split in half, some going out to their adventure land to clean leaves and weed their park area, while the rest went back upstairs to continue sorting. I took advantage of the opprotunity to go outside, and spent my time cleaning up a ton of leaves and dirt and such. Overall, we filled 35 gallon trash bags with leaves, and we filled 22 bags full of this stuff in about an hour and a half. Good amount of work, I felt like. After CI was complete, the whole cast regrouped and did a wrap-up discussion about everyone's experience. After this, we returned once again to our Mexican Medley practice, working on lyrics for the different songs, and then going over the dances. I would say that we're about half way there. This next week in Brenham will be all we need, I think, to be ready for Mexico. And I can't wait!

Today was our free day/host family day. We got to sleep in and then Eilis, Britta, and I went to Catholic Palm Sunday mass at 11 a.m. Afterwards, we came back and had lunch, and then Mike took us all on a tour of the Air Force base. We also went bowling there, we I scraped up a score of 129 and 133. Not too impressive. But it was still fun. After bowling, we all came back to our host family's home, and was joined by another host family with their students. We grilled out and just had a good time, which seemed to go quickly. While our stay in Enid was short, it definitely left an impression, it seems like!

Until my next post!

Dan