Hello all!
This week started off in Muscatine, Iowa, a quaint town on the eastern side of Iowa that represented our last city in my fair state. While I have to admit that it was nice being back near my own Iowan culture, I am VERY much looking forward to traveling somewhere outside of the Midwest. Chicago, I think, represents that step outward, even though it still is considered in the Midwest. Still, Chicago is its own unique culture, I would expect. Anyways, our stay in
Muscatine, like Lincoln, was short. We arrived on Sunday evening, met our host families, and went our separate ways. My roommate for this city was Johan from the Netherlands (see left), one of the few in our cast who traveled last semester with UWP. Our host family was Rick and Peggy Decker. Both of their children were off on their own, so Johan and I had the entire basement to ourselves. I took the air mattress in the “family room” and Johan took the bedroom. I have to say that the air mattress was especially comfortable! And, I was sleeping right next to a big screen T.V. which I used a couple times. Nice. Our first full day in Muscatine, Monday, was filled with “Stand for Peace” projects. I matched up with Eilis and Carolina (from Maryland and Sweden, respectively), and we all worked with 5th graders in the morning and 6th graders in the afternoon. It was a good time! For lunch, we ate at Madison Elementary School and had pork tenderloin sandwiches….mmmmmmm!! They were amazing!! Our next d
ay in Muscatine was show day, and I was put on a vocal workshop for the morning. We spent all morning long going over songs and such in the high school, which was where our performance was to take place at. Before lunch, the high school choir class invited us to come watch them on a couple songs, and we took them up on the offer. They were amazing! I’d forgotten how much fun high school choir was until then. I mean, sure, we sing and stuff in UWP, but not like that. They have that choir sound, a sound we try and avoid in our show since we are not a choir. We got a chance to introduce ourselves, and I was quite surprised that I got a huge cheer when I said I was from Iowa. But I suppose I’m doing a bit of “representin,” so that explains it. Still…cool.
After lunch, we had rehearsal that lasted all afternoon. Because the stage was a smaller one, we divided the cast in half again for the bulk of the songs. I, however, was on mike groups for most of the show, so I was on stage pretty much the entire time. Fine with me. We finished rehearsal and had a wrap up before dinner, which is when we got some of the best news in a while. As I mentioned before, AJ from Wisconsin had to leave us because of medical reasons and while he
was going to visit us in Burlington, WI, we knew he would not be able to rejoin us. During wrap up, we learned that AJ’s doctor had cleared him and given him the green light to rejoin UWP! I can’t tell you how pumped up this made the cast. For once, we’d gotten some GOOD news! I think this news reflected in our show, because it seemed to me that it stepped up a notch and it went off great. We had a good time. After the show, I was assigned to admissions interviews, where interview people who are applying to UWP from the city we’re in. It was an interesting experience for me, being on the other side of the interview process. I’d like to say that I reached back to my Interviewing class I took last spring at USD, but I know that I didn’t. Oh well. The interview seemed to go well anyway. After I finished with that, I helped with the remainder of strike, which is the photo you see above.
Wednesday brought the end of our Muscatine visit and another travel day. After some morning discussions and lectures, we left on our four-hour drive to Burlington, Wisconsin. Along the way, we watched “Wedding Crashers,” one of comedy’s greats, and most of “Once Upon A Time in Mexico,” an interesting movie that the verdict is still out on for me. I’d never seen it before, and it’s hard to catch nuances of movies on a bus. We arrived in cold Burlington, and I quickly found out that I didn’t have a roommate I would be staying with, a first for me in the “on the road” experience. I met my host family, Paul and Rhonda Sullivan and their two kids Jake and Alex. They even had another host sibling – Jorge from Paraguay. We went over to another host family’s (they were hosting Chris from Hawaii and Tucker from Denver) house to have a combined dinner. They host dad is an amazing recreational chef, and he cooked us tossed up lasagna and spaghetti and Italian sausage and cheese garlic bread. Mmmmmmm. I pretty sure I ate too much. After that, we all went back to my host family’s place and settled in for the night.
Thursday brought Community Impact day for the cast, and we worked most of the day with our beneficiary – Love, Inc., which is (simply put) a food pantry, thrift store, and transitional housing shelter. Some of the other cast also went to Mount Carmel, a senior living home, and worked with residents there. I, on the other hand, was on the sign-out list for the day, and worked on dance in the morning and then vocals in the afternoon. For dance, we worked on “World Celebration,” which involves swaying and scarves. Fun. (Yes, yes. There was sarcasm there.) Honestly, I’m not a big fan of the dance for the song, but hey that how it goes sometimes, right? Right. In the afternoon, as I mentioned, I worked on vocals, which I liked considering all the mike group work I had to do in the last show.
Friday was show day in Burlington, and we spent the entire day in high school there, setting up our stage in the gymnasium since their auditorium simply was not big enough. This brought an interesting challenge from a set up perspective because of the openness of the venue. We had to use a LOT of curtains so that the Burlingtonians didn’t get a peep show instead of an UWP show :) While most people were either on set-up or workshops, I was on the fitness crew – basically a fill time for people extra people in the cast. Since they didn’t need more people on set-up, and I had done dance and vocal workshops the day before, that squarely put me in fitness. We were left to lead our own fitness, the fifteen of us that were on it. Cody from Denver led some of us in an ab workout that I’m regretting right now. After that, we played a few games and then meditated (also known as sleeping). It was great really. Relaxing. Care-free. I like it. The afternoon brought rehearsal, just like always, and I found myself again in mike groups for most of the show. Soon, rehearsal was over and the show was beginning. AJ stopped in and said hello to the cast, and we were all very happy to see him. He got to sit in the first row and watch the show. The first half of the show went smoothly, all up until the last song of the half – “Keep the Beat.” I was standing on mike groups when all the sound suddenly kicked out. No band. No vocals. Nothing. The cast, however, didn’t miss a beat. We kept right on going. Our tempo never wavered, we filled what was suppose to be an instrumental interlude with cheers and such, and picked the vocals back up all on cue. It was AMAZING to see us all pull together in that sudden, unexpected moment. Even as I was standing up on the mike group platform, I could see everyone’s game faces stay on and their dancing keep together. It. Was. Great. We broke for intermission, fixed the sound problem, and came back to re-perform “Keep the Beat” with no problems. After that, show went on great, without any other hitches. After the show, I was on admissions interviews again, which went rather quickly. Once I finished, I joined a fitness/yoga group (again, a group of extra people from the cast) and had fun with them, talking and such.
Saturday was a regional learning day, at least for the morning. We s
pent our pre-lunch time at a local dairy farm, learning about the dairy business and seeing all the different parts of the process. For the many people who had never been on the farm, the most common comment was, “I never realized cows were so big!” I had to laugh a couple times when people commented on the manure smell, mainly because that same smell reminded me of being back home. The silage helped with that, too. The cast also got a chance to see a bunch of the newborn calves as well, which everyone enjoyed. I sort of started something when I had a calf suck on my finger. After that, others join
ed in and then peer-pressured others into doing it. Quite fun. After the dairy farm tour, we went back to Burlington and had a few meetings and group discussions, the last one about the five stages of group dynamics, which I thought was a well-received discussion that made people think about how we, as a cast, want to interact with each other, as well as put a name to the different dynamics we are experiencing as a large group. After all of that, my host family picked me up from the Veteran’s Community Center, and we all went out to eat at a Japanese restaurant. I had never had Japanese food, so I knew right away this would be an interesting experience, but one I should challenge myself to experience. When we got there, I ordered a dish whose name I can’t remember but basically it was a steak stir-fry. It was good. But before we got our main entrees, we had some appetizers – sushi. I’d never had sushi before, so it was definitely an interesting experience. I ended up trying about five different kinds of sushi, most of which I enjoyed. In fact, I don’t think I hated any of them. During the night, I even learned how to eat with chopsticks, and I also had fried ice cream – which I’m a new fan of. Yum. After that, we all went back to their place and watch “American Gangster” – an interesting, albeit long film.
Today was host family day, which meant I could sleep in and I did.
Once I got up, we all went to Milwaukee, which wasn’t too far away, and to the famous art museum that is there. The building itself was designed by a famous architect who had never designed a building in the United States before this one. It was such a cool building. It had a large triangle portion of windows that would be covered up by sails during the evening and then opened up like sails during the day to let in the light. It was very cool to look at, as well as the art that 
was inside. Some of it was a little boring, which artwork can be sometimes, but other parts were cool too. After the art museum, we all went to “Vantage Point” in the theatres, which was an intriguing mystery/action movie. Afterwards, we went back to Burlington and ate at Fred’s Burgers (?) home of the “World’s Best Burger.” Honestly, it was a good burger, but I’m not sure it was the best. Eh :) After dinner and evening church, we went over to Chris and Tucker’s host family’s place where I learned how to play a couple guitar chords and we at some amazing chocolate, macadamia nut pie. Delicious.
Tomorrow, we’re leaving for Chicago at about 8:30 am. It’s only about an hour and a half drive, but we’re playing to spend the rest of the day at Navy Pier and do some regional learning/tourism stuff. It should be really interesting!
Until my next post!
Dan
This week started off in Muscatine, Iowa, a quaint town on the eastern side of Iowa that represented our last city in my fair state. While I have to admit that it was nice being back near my own Iowan culture, I am VERY much looking forward to traveling somewhere outside of the Midwest. Chicago, I think, represents that step outward, even though it still is considered in the Midwest. Still, Chicago is its own unique culture, I would expect. Anyways, our stay in
Muscatine, like Lincoln, was short. We arrived on Sunday evening, met our host families, and went our separate ways. My roommate for this city was Johan from the Netherlands (see left), one of the few in our cast who traveled last semester with UWP. Our host family was Rick and Peggy Decker. Both of their children were off on their own, so Johan and I had the entire basement to ourselves. I took the air mattress in the “family room” and Johan took the bedroom. I have to say that the air mattress was especially comfortable! And, I was sleeping right next to a big screen T.V. which I used a couple times. Nice. Our first full day in Muscatine, Monday, was filled with “Stand for Peace” projects. I matched up with Eilis and Carolina (from Maryland and Sweden, respectively), and we all worked with 5th graders in the morning and 6th graders in the afternoon. It was a good time! For lunch, we ate at Madison Elementary School and had pork tenderloin sandwiches….mmmmmmm!! They were amazing!! Our next d
ay in Muscatine was show day, and I was put on a vocal workshop for the morning. We spent all morning long going over songs and such in the high school, which was where our performance was to take place at. Before lunch, the high school choir class invited us to come watch them on a couple songs, and we took them up on the offer. They were amazing! I’d forgotten how much fun high school choir was until then. I mean, sure, we sing and stuff in UWP, but not like that. They have that choir sound, a sound we try and avoid in our show since we are not a choir. We got a chance to introduce ourselves, and I was quite surprised that I got a huge cheer when I said I was from Iowa. But I suppose I’m doing a bit of “representin,” so that explains it. Still…cool.After lunch, we had rehearsal that lasted all afternoon. Because the stage was a smaller one, we divided the cast in half again for the bulk of the songs. I, however, was on mike groups for most of the show, so I was on stage pretty much the entire time. Fine with me. We finished rehearsal and had a wrap up before dinner, which is when we got some of the best news in a while. As I mentioned before, AJ from Wisconsin had to leave us because of medical reasons and while he
was going to visit us in Burlington, WI, we knew he would not be able to rejoin us. During wrap up, we learned that AJ’s doctor had cleared him and given him the green light to rejoin UWP! I can’t tell you how pumped up this made the cast. For once, we’d gotten some GOOD news! I think this news reflected in our show, because it seemed to me that it stepped up a notch and it went off great. We had a good time. After the show, I was assigned to admissions interviews, where interview people who are applying to UWP from the city we’re in. It was an interesting experience for me, being on the other side of the interview process. I’d like to say that I reached back to my Interviewing class I took last spring at USD, but I know that I didn’t. Oh well. The interview seemed to go well anyway. After I finished with that, I helped with the remainder of strike, which is the photo you see above.Wednesday brought the end of our Muscatine visit and another travel day. After some morning discussions and lectures, we left on our four-hour drive to Burlington, Wisconsin. Along the way, we watched “Wedding Crashers,” one of comedy’s greats, and most of “Once Upon A Time in Mexico,” an interesting movie that the verdict is still out on for me. I’d never seen it before, and it’s hard to catch nuances of movies on a bus. We arrived in cold Burlington, and I quickly found out that I didn’t have a roommate I would be staying with, a first for me in the “on the road” experience. I met my host family, Paul and Rhonda Sullivan and their two kids Jake and Alex. They even had another host sibling – Jorge from Paraguay. We went over to another host family’s (they were hosting Chris from Hawaii and Tucker from Denver) house to have a combined dinner. They host dad is an amazing recreational chef, and he cooked us tossed up lasagna and spaghetti and Italian sausage and cheese garlic bread. Mmmmmmm. I pretty sure I ate too much. After that, we all went back to my host family’s place and settled in for the night.
Thursday brought Community Impact day for the cast, and we worked most of the day with our beneficiary – Love, Inc., which is (simply put) a food pantry, thrift store, and transitional housing shelter. Some of the other cast also went to Mount Carmel, a senior living home, and worked with residents there. I, on the other hand, was on the sign-out list for the day, and worked on dance in the morning and then vocals in the afternoon. For dance, we worked on “World Celebration,” which involves swaying and scarves. Fun. (Yes, yes. There was sarcasm there.) Honestly, I’m not a big fan of the dance for the song, but hey that how it goes sometimes, right? Right. In the afternoon, as I mentioned, I worked on vocals, which I liked considering all the mike group work I had to do in the last show.
Friday was show day in Burlington, and we spent the entire day in high school there, setting up our stage in the gymnasium since their auditorium simply was not big enough. This brought an interesting challenge from a set up perspective because of the openness of the venue. We had to use a LOT of curtains so that the Burlingtonians didn’t get a peep show instead of an UWP show :) While most people were either on set-up or workshops, I was on the fitness crew – basically a fill time for people extra people in the cast. Since they didn’t need more people on set-up, and I had done dance and vocal workshops the day before, that squarely put me in fitness. We were left to lead our own fitness, the fifteen of us that were on it. Cody from Denver led some of us in an ab workout that I’m regretting right now. After that, we played a few games and then meditated (also known as sleeping). It was great really. Relaxing. Care-free. I like it. The afternoon brought rehearsal, just like always, and I found myself again in mike groups for most of the show. Soon, rehearsal was over and the show was beginning. AJ stopped in and said hello to the cast, and we were all very happy to see him. He got to sit in the first row and watch the show. The first half of the show went smoothly, all up until the last song of the half – “Keep the Beat.” I was standing on mike groups when all the sound suddenly kicked out. No band. No vocals. Nothing. The cast, however, didn’t miss a beat. We kept right on going. Our tempo never wavered, we filled what was suppose to be an instrumental interlude with cheers and such, and picked the vocals back up all on cue. It was AMAZING to see us all pull together in that sudden, unexpected moment. Even as I was standing up on the mike group platform, I could see everyone’s game faces stay on and their dancing keep together. It. Was. Great. We broke for intermission, fixed the sound problem, and came back to re-perform “Keep the Beat” with no problems. After that, show went on great, without any other hitches. After the show, I was on admissions interviews again, which went rather quickly. Once I finished, I joined a fitness/yoga group (again, a group of extra people from the cast) and had fun with them, talking and such.
Saturday was a regional learning day, at least for the morning. We s
pent our pre-lunch time at a local dairy farm, learning about the dairy business and seeing all the different parts of the process. For the many people who had never been on the farm, the most common comment was, “I never realized cows were so big!” I had to laugh a couple times when people commented on the manure smell, mainly because that same smell reminded me of being back home. The silage helped with that, too. The cast also got a chance to see a bunch of the newborn calves as well, which everyone enjoyed. I sort of started something when I had a calf suck on my finger. After that, others join
ed in and then peer-pressured others into doing it. Quite fun. After the dairy farm tour, we went back to Burlington and had a few meetings and group discussions, the last one about the five stages of group dynamics, which I thought was a well-received discussion that made people think about how we, as a cast, want to interact with each other, as well as put a name to the different dynamics we are experiencing as a large group. After all of that, my host family picked me up from the Veteran’s Community Center, and we all went out to eat at a Japanese restaurant. I had never had Japanese food, so I knew right away this would be an interesting experience, but one I should challenge myself to experience. When we got there, I ordered a dish whose name I can’t remember but basically it was a steak stir-fry. It was good. But before we got our main entrees, we had some appetizers – sushi. I’d never had sushi before, so it was definitely an interesting experience. I ended up trying about five different kinds of sushi, most of which I enjoyed. In fact, I don’t think I hated any of them. During the night, I even learned how to eat with chopsticks, and I also had fried ice cream – which I’m a new fan of. Yum. After that, we all went back to their place and watch “American Gangster” – an interesting, albeit long film.Today was host family day, which meant I could sleep in and I did.
Once I got up, we all went to Milwaukee, which wasn’t too far away, and to the famous art museum that is there. The building itself was designed by a famous architect who had never designed a building in the United States before this one. It was such a cool building. It had a large triangle portion of windows that would be covered up by sails during the evening and then opened up like sails during the day to let in the light. It was very cool to look at, as well as the art that 
was inside. Some of it was a little boring, which artwork can be sometimes, but other parts were cool too. After the art museum, we all went to “Vantage Point” in the theatres, which was an intriguing mystery/action movie. Afterwards, we went back to Burlington and ate at Fred’s Burgers (?) home of the “World’s Best Burger.” Honestly, it was a good burger, but I’m not sure it was the best. Eh :) After dinner and evening church, we went over to Chris and Tucker’s host family’s place where I learned how to play a couple guitar chords and we at some amazing chocolate, macadamia nut pie. Delicious.Tomorrow, we’re leaving for Chicago at about 8:30 am. It’s only about an hour and a half drive, but we’re playing to spend the rest of the day at Navy Pier and do some regional learning/tourism stuff. It should be really interesting!
Until my next post!
Dan
2 comments:
Sounds like you are having a great time. And how about that family of yours coming from Sioux City, IA to see you. Must be love. :)
Nice to see you got to get back to your roots and be on a farm. I'm sure you didn't miss the smell.
Speaking of the farm, missed you this morning when I had to help sort pigs and get them loaded. NOT A FUN TIME! (You may laugh --- but not too hard! :) )
Love reading your blogs, keep them up. Take care!
Sorry we missed you in Burlington! Sounds like you're having a great time. I can't wait to hear all about it when you get home...
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