The End of the North American Tour

Hello all!

Oh dear. So I’ve totally slacked and not updated in a while. I’m sitting right now in the Los Angeles airport, waiting for our flight to Hong Kong, which will then take us to Bangkok, Thailand. Fun times. But, while I’m waiting, I’m going to update everyone on the comings and goings of myself for the past week and a half.

So Wednesday and Thursday went well in the Woodlands. I continued with deck project on Wednesday, and we managed to get the frame almost all constructed, which left only the deck floor boards to be put on for Thursday. I, however, was not able to return the next day – I was signed out for vocals, catching back up from my advanced work break from the show and sort of “re-learning” the vocal parts for the show. That went well.

Friday was our regional learning day for The Woodlands. We went to a local lake and had a beach day all day. We played volleyball and ultimate Frisbee and swam for a while. It was great. The cast, however, didn’t quite take to heart the advice our staff gave about sunscreen, so a lot of us (including myself) found ourselves burnt. Thankfully, I wasn’t NEAR as burnt as I had been in Acapulco, so I got over it quickly. Overall, however, the day was an amazing time for us – a block of relaxation in an usually hectic schedule.

Saturday was show day for the cast, and for me the first show I had done since Mexico City. Needless to say, I was EXCITED! The entire day went by fast. I discovered Jamba Juice somewhere along the way, and had a fun talk with our assistant cast manager Scott Enebo. Rehearsal zoomed by, and soon it was time for the show. For me, it was a great show. We had about 1,500 people there, which I thought was a good turn out. We were only allowed to sell 3,000 tickets, and the facility was gorgeous – a HUGE amphitheatre. It was great to get back onto stage and re-engage into the show – a show that I thought was going to be the biggest challenge of this Up with People experience.

Sunday brought our host family day in The Woodlands. I spent the morning catching up on some z’s, and then the afternoon relaxing (obviously not updating my blog because here I am a week later). That evening, Leo and I went with our host family for some dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant in Houston, which was delicious. After that, we went to “The Wedding Singer” the nationally traveling Broadway production. It was amazing!! I really enjoyed it, even though I haven’t seen the movie. The music was great, I after being in Up with People I could really appreciate the technical side of putting a production like that on.

Monday brought travel day to Plano, which was fun and uneventful. When we arrived, we were able to spend an hour and a half at the local YMCA swimming and working or just relaxing. It was great. After that, we changed into our nice clothes and took out some blind folds. For our allocation in this city, we were going to experience it all blindfolded. From getting our luggage off the bus to finding our host families, it all had to be done without the use of our crutch sight. Needless to say, it was an interesting experience. Thankfully, I did not run into anything and hurt myself. And I was able to find my host family with relative ease. But it did make the entire process a LOT longer, and far more educational than it normally is. Once I arrived at my host family’s place, I got to take off my blindfold and “meet” them. My host mom’s name is Mary Reeves, and her husband is Steve. They both are amazing people and really made our last U.S. city experience amazing. I was roomed with Kyle DeGraff, the son of the Up with People Midwest Coordinator. I found out once I got there that Kyle’s parents would be joining us for the week at our host family’s home, making it one full house!

Tuesday was Regional Learning day in Dallas. We toured around the art district in downtown Dallas, and learned about its history. After that, an afternoon-long presentation on world hunger and poverty. While the presentation was long, and full of some amazing and ghastly information, some statistics that stuck in my head were that 1.2 BILLION people live on less than a $1 a day, and 1.6 BILLION people live on less than $2 a day. That is staggering to think about. We hear about stuff like this all the time, but its not often when the information sets in like it did on Tuesday. Just how widespread world hunger and poverty really is. Just how PREVENTABLE it all is. The top 20% in the world use 80% of the world’s resources. While I believe in people working for their own, there’s a point where we all must say that something’s wrong here when we look at this statistic. We finished the afternoon/evening with a hunger banquet, where half of our group had nothing but salt water and cold rice to eat, a third had warm rice and beans to eat with juice, and the rest had a full-out restaurant-style meal, after which all the extra food was thrown away. We all sat and ate this meal together, all next to each other (though segregated into our groups). It an interesting experience, one that I had done before at the University of South Dakota Newman Center. I could tell that it really made people think about how much they order and then DON’T eat at restaurants.

Wednesday and Thursday were CI days for the cast. I was on Stand For Peace, working in 4th grade classrooms. I had fun there, and it was fun to get back to that form of CI since I hadn’t done it in a long while. The afternoons on both days had BTS’s for the students at the school, which went great. On Wednesday, the entire staff were in a day-long meeting so we had to run the BTS by ourselves. I, personally, enjoyed this because I felt like I could take some personal initiative in all of this instead of just taking directions from the staff and carrying them out. It was fun! We did, however, find out that one of our staff members, Kristina Henry, would not be joining us on our trip to Thailand. She had interviewed for a position at Cirque de Sole and was offered the job. The only catch was that it would start on Tuesday. So, with regretful tears, she informed the cast that she would be seeing us off on Monday morning when we took our flight to Thailand, and she would get on her own flight to join Cirque de Sole.

Friday and Saturday were show days for the cast, and for us the last chance to make Kristina proud of us. Not that she wasn’t proud before, but I’m sure you get the picture. As Gabe, our show manager, put it once, Kristina is like our coach cheering us on, guiding us along, and giving us feedback to be better. So our Friday show came together nicely, but it still lacked a certain flare of passion. The message was there, since its part of the show, but the feeling behind it wasn’t quite on. Saturday came, and we spent the morning putting on an expression session – a chance for the cast to show off their talents and abilities they haven’t been able to before. That went off well, and really gave the cast a chance to relax and appreciate one another. Rehearsal came and went in the afternoon, and before we knew it Green Room was upon us. After we welcomed our guests and played some games, the mood turned emotionally serious. First, we invited Stan, our North American bus driver, to come to the center of the room so we could recognize him and say our goodbyes. Since we’d be going to Thailand, he wouldn’t be able to come with us. It was hard for both us and him to say goodbye. Many people have coined us the “welcoming cast” because we try and do just that – welcome everyone in. Stan wasn’t just our bus driver – he was a part of our cast. And we had to say goodbye.

After a large hug and gift presentation to Stan, we invited Kristina Henry to the center of the room. The air quickly thickened with the tears of many, especially the staff who had not only worked with her for the past few years but TRAVELED with her in A06. After a moment of emotion, Kristina said that she had been asked to read a poem of hers that she had written a few years ago when she was a student in Up with People – a poem she had read to us during staging but I had forgotten about. That poem was the one used in the song “Power With” we perform during our show. She then read her poem in its full-version, since the one we use in the show is abbreviated for its length. The words rang sharply in our ears, and I for the first time really heard the feeling behind it. Perhaps it was because the author was reading it, but it was a powerful moment. We broke from Green Room, determined to make Kristina cry by the end of the show (one of our little goals). I went through my normal progressions in the show, and soon enough I found myself out on stage for “Power With,” which is where we are miming people in verbal arguments with each other. I remember at one point looking behind me and seeing Kristina on stage, and I thought myself how cool that was that she got to be ON STAGE to perform one last time with Up with People. We progressed through the song, and during a break dance interlude, I found myself looking around for Vivia to come up onto the risers and give the poem lines after the break dance, but I couldn’t find her. I turned back towards the audience, silently worrying that something was wrong, but then turned back to see Kristina standing powerfully on the top riser, microphone in hand. And as her voice began to speak the words, “We’ve been walking through life blind…” a wonderful sensation of irony filled me and I tried my best not to smile. After all, who best to speak these words than the author herself?

“We’ve been walking through life blind, suffering of seclusion from other mankind, can we ask the questions to find the answers to bring this world back together, we are all mankind, a mammal so divine, we are one and strong we can be, if we open up our eyes and let our hearts be free.”

This was surely one of the most powerful moments I have ever been a part of.



The show ended as quickly as it always does. Kristina found her way back to her tech position at the back of the house right after “Power With,” but not before being hugged or congratulated by nearly everyone in the cast. We all realized how great of a moment that was – how special that was.

Strike and interviews came. I did an interview and finished the paperwork for it in time to lend a hand on the last strike of Cast A. In Thailand, we’re not allowed to do any set-up or strike for our show – only direct Thai workers – so this show was our last strike. After we loaded up the truck, and Kristina ceremoniously locked the door, the three tech staff climbed to the top of the truck and gave a beautiful speech to us all and each other. Then they popped open three bottles of champagne and sprayed all of us below. Fun times. But, we did get our revenge. As I mentioned before, Gabe considered Kristina to be our coach, so we did to her what many championship teams do to THEIR coaches – we filled up a water cooler and doused her with it. I’ll attach a video of it as soon as I can – perhaps its there already. Look below. Needless to say, it gave us all a great way to end the evening with warm smiles and strong laughs.

Host family day came, my roommate Kyle and I spent the morning in church with our host mom and dad. After that, we went to see the new movie “Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”. I thought it was good – three out of four stars, I think. Definitely better than the first. After a great dinner of Mexican food, we went back and I began packing for my next big adventure – Thailand! After packing everything up, we loaded up our family’s vehicle and went to the Plano Chamber of Commerce at about 9:30 p.m. After some warm goodbyes, we unloaded our stuff, and went inside for Thailand prep and North American wrap-up. After a few hours of all this, we loaded the buses up at 3:30 a.m. and headed to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. We said goodbye once more to Stan, and proceeded through bag check-in and carry-on check in. We boarded our plane to Denver and took off at about 6:40 a.m., arriving there about an hour or so later. Flying into Denver was a bit surreal and nostalgic. I had the same approach as what I did back in January when I was first arriving – it was hard to imagine that so much had happened in between then and now. After we landed in Denver, we hopped right back onto a connecting flight to L.A., which lasted a couple hours. I tried to sleep a bit, but it didn’t work too well. Once we arrived, we had to grab our luggage and then hang out at the airport for about 13 hrs. before our next flight took off at 11:30 p.m. This was a relaxing, though sleepless experience. Still, I was able to get my taste of American food satisfied – I had McDonald’s for lunch, and some meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner. Mmmmm. And now I’m sitting in Gate 120 at L.A., waiting for our flight to leave. Our flight will last about 12 hrs. and put us in Hong Kong. From there, we get a connecting flight to Bangkok. We’ll go through customs, and then climb aboard buses to drive about 10 hrs. to Chang Rai, Thailand – which is in the far north. Honestly, I have NO idea what time of day it will be, but I have a bad feeling it will be during the hot, humid day when we’re on the bus, which will not make for a fun ride. Still, though, we’ll be in Thailand finally – and that’ll make it worth it.

I’m not sure what internet access will be like in Thailand. In fact, I’m hoping I can get this up sometime before I arrive, but its looking doubtful. But still, I’ll hope for Hong Kong. Either way, I’ll do my best to blog about the wrap up of Cast A’s tour around the world. June 16th marks the day we all go our separate ways from Thailand, and I have no doubt that it will come too soon.

Until my next post!

Dan

The Longest Day Ever

Hello all!

I know it's only been a few days, but I'm going to post again straight-away before I get bogged down again with something else that keeps me away from this blog! After all, who knows what posting will be like in Thailand, and it is fast approaching, so I'd best post while I can!

Well, even though I posted on Friday, I last talked about what happened on Wednesday of the week, so I'll pick up with Thursday. Thursday, as mentioned earlier, was a CI day, and for me it was at St. Jude's Children's Ranch again. We finished up the room that we'd been working on the day before, and we also organized some other things around that building. In between all of this, we cleaned all around the building -- sinks, bathrooms, etc. Two of the bathrooms we cleaned hadn't been touched in a couple years, I was told, so we cleaned that all up. After an amazing lunch of chicken nuggets and mac and cheese, we tidied up a few other things and then were able to just sit back and relax. We ended up leaving a bit early, picking up the other St. Jude's site people, and stopping off at a Walgreen's for some packaged ice cream -- a perfect way to end the day. Mmmmm.

Friday was show day for the cast, and I was especially excited for this because I was going to be able to watch the show for the first time! A perk of being on Advanced Work. While the cast was moving through the regular motions of set-up, workshops, fitness, and rehearsal, I was working with the advanced team putting together show flyers, surveys for the audience, and making sure meals arrived alright. In the end, it was a fairly lazy day for myself. Green room came and went; it definitely reminded me of how much I missed show days! Finally the show started with all its pomp and energy...wow! It was SO cool to watch everyone filter in during the opening of Ayiko, to see the entire song and such. I'm always backstage for this song, getting ready to come on for the next song, "Step into the World," so it was VERY cool to see how this song looks. Definitely jazzes up the room!! The rest of the show proceeded amazing; I found myself extremely entertained throughout it, and almost feeling like a proud parent watching their children strutting their stuff. Odd feeling, but I spose the analogy gives you a sense of my pride. There was one awkward moment in the show where our cast manager, Martin, forgot to come on a give the verbal transition for the cast. So, the cast ended up standing on the stage awkwardly, until Jared (our lighting tech guy) cued the lights out for the cast so they could get off :) After the show, the cast did a superstrike in attempts to beat their record previously set in the semester, but fell short about three minutes. However, I was told that the strike crew was not near as full as it had been last time, so they still accomplished a lot by getting that good of a time -- 57 minutes, I believe.

Saturday followed Friday, starting off a bit later since it was coming after a show day. We were all a bit thankful for that, though it was still tough to get out of bed. We took off for CI soon enough, and I returned to St. Jude's again, ready to wash their vehicles. But when we arrived, they told us we would be going with them to their barbeque and returning at about 1:30 to wash the vehicles. We were happy to comply, never one to turn down food. But after an amazing lunch of BBQ'd chicken and corn and sausages and the like, we didn't leave for St. Jude's until about 3 pm, putting us late for our return to the cast and no time to wash vehicles. I think we were all a bit disappointed by this, but there wasn't really much we could do about it, unfortunately. We still had a fun CI day, but it didn't feel very productive for us.

Sunday brought host family day for me, and since I was staying with my friend Annette, we had been talking throughout the week on what we could do. We decided, eventually, to take a roadtrip to watch one of Annette's favorite things -- NHL hockey. The Dallas Stars were playing at home in Dallas, in a quarter final playoff game. They were ahead 3-2 in the seven game series, which meant that if they won the game they would move on to face the Red Wings. The trip to Dallas was between 3.5 to 4 hrs, so we left for the game at about 3 pm, stopping once for some Sonic dinner. Mmmm. We arrived to the crazy scene at the American Airlines Arena, found our seats at the very top of the building, and settled in for the game. It opened with an amazing show of sound, light, and pyrotechnics, and before long the game the started at 8 pm. For those who don't know, there are 3 periods in hockey, each lasting 20 minutes long with 18 minute breaks in between. So a regular game of hockey lasts about two hours between time outs, penalties, and such. Neither team scored until the third period, and then they both scored one goal, sending the game into overtime. In overtime, the clock works about the same: 20 minute periods with 15 minute breaks in between periods should more be needed. The game extended out not one, not two, not three, but FOUR overtime periods!!! The Stars finally scored a goal in the middle of the fourth overtime period (the seventh in the game) to end it and send them forward in the playoff race for the Stanley Cup. The arena went crazy! Streamers flew, the crowd cheered, people danced. Nuts. Unfortunately for Annette and I, we did not get out of the stadium and on the road back to San Marcos until about 2 am. If you do the math, adding in the 3.5 drive, we did not get back home until 5:30 am. I had to be up to leave at 6:30. So. There was no point in going to bed. I stayed up and packed and wrote cards and other odd ends. Annette crashed for about an hour, and then woke up to drop me off. We said our goodbyes, realizing this would be the last time we'd see each other for the next 2.5 years (she's leaving for the Peace Corps in June), and then I hopped on the bus. We all got on the road at about 8:30, all set for the three hour drive to The Woodlands. I dozed off in my seat for about 45 minutes before my neck could no longer take the odd angle it had to rest at if I was to sleep. I ended up watching "Juno" for a while and then talking with my bus date, Sara Persson from Sweden. We arrived in The Woodlands, a planned community (not a city), at about 1:30-2 pm, toured a welcome center to get a better idea of the community, and then went to our allocation site to watch a speaker. The speaker, who's name I sadly do not remember, was a man working in NASA on designing space suits for the Constellation project NASA is doing. Basically, he's trying to combine a bunch of the different suits that NASA uses on its astronauts into just one suit. A tall order, I realized, after he explained some of the basic mechanics of all the suits. In the end, it was a facinating lecture. Finally, we all deciphered our host code (which was the answer to a space oriented crossword clue) and found our host families. I found mine with my roommate, Leo from Venezuela, and we drove back to their place to have dinner and settle in. I surprisingly, was still able to carry on conversation and be presentable, despite the fact I'd been up for about 33 hrs at that point. After dinner, however, I did excuse myself from them and I crashed in my room. Needless to say, it did not take me long to fall asleep. All in all, though, I was surprised at how long I was able to go without sleep. No doubt, I felt very goofy at points, but I still managed through everything.

Today was our first CI day here in The Woodlands, and I was at a site tearing out a deck. We tore it out, leveled up the foundation a bit, and begun digging trenches for the "foundation" to sit on. Long story short: because of different licensing things, we have make the deck very low to the ground and thus build it the hard way. It's sort of hard to describe. I'll try and get picks to add to this :) On top of digging this, we had to cut through the webbing roots that were interwoven throughout the ground. For those who've tried to cut through thick roots with a shovel understand my pain. But, by the end of the day we'd made some progress, and we'll be going back to finish the job tomorrow and Thursday. I definitely want to finish this project with time to spare -- it's kind of UWP's em-oh to do more than our CI's think we can. So. That's our goal.

Tomorrow, as I mentioned, will be CI day, as will Thursday. Friday is our regional learning day, and we're traveling to Galveston, Texas to check out the beach along the Gulf Coast, which the cast is absolutely stoked about!!! Myself included! Saturday will be our show day, set in the amazing amphatheatre here in The Woodlands, which can hold 17,000 people. So. Kinda big. And finally, Sunday will be our host family day. Plenty of fun things to do in the next week, so I'll be sure to keep you all up to date!

Until my next post!

Dan

And the Adventure Continues....

Hello all!

Well, as promised, now that the cast has arrived, I will continue posting in my blog, and also fill you all in with the comings and goings of the past few weeks. In order to keep this posting manageable in length, you’ll get a brief summary of advanced work, and a back to the different things we set up for the cast as they happen. I think the story will tell better that way anyway :)

Okay, so I last left off with I and Maiken’s arrival in New Braunfels, Texas, after waiting in customs and splitting up our luggage and other things. Fun times. But, we went right to work the next day (Tuesday, April 15th) with a meeting with the Key Club of Canyon High School in New Braunfels. We talked to them about our program, trying to get them interested in it (admissions work) as well as soliciting some help from them to put up posters for our show. They were more than welcome to help us, so that started off my visit in New Braunfels with a positive note! After this meeting, which sadly was quite early in the morning, the four of us (Karen, Ryan, Maiken, and I) went back to our temporary office in Peace Lutheran Church and went to work on different things. We split up tasks – I took on a couple CI sites, as well as Admissions and Promotions. I really don’t know how much it really meant for me to take these – in the end I was just helping out with them, not really in charge of them. Anyways – Maiken took a hold of the schedule and went to work on it. By the middle of the next week, it was looking very fancy. It had a laminated cover with windows for a picture of our faces on the next page to show through. Quite fancy. Throughout the next two weeks, the four of us pulled together the different elements of the week – admissions, logistics, schedule, host families, allocation, facilities, food donations, and so on and so on. One of the host families, the Wiggins, donated the use of a private island for the cast to arrive at on the 28th after crossing the border from Mexico, where they could swim, relax, canoe, play volleyball, just to name a few things. It was an amazingly beautiful location on the Comal River, one of the two natural spring rivers in New Braunfels. The river was shallow and had a slow, SLOW current to it, so it allowed for perfect conditions to tube on it (and natural lazy river) and the temperature was at about 70-75 degrees. Beautiful! We were all really excited to have the cast come.

Arrival day came. After two weeks away from the cast, I found myself antsy. The night before, it took me a few hours to get to sleep. You know how a little kid is so excited about Christmas on Dec. 24th that he/she can’t go to sleep, won’t settle down, and is extremely impatient? Yeah, that was me the day before, and all throughout arrival day. Pretty sure I was getting on people’s nerves. The cast was set to arrive at 3 pm so as to have about 3 hours to swim and hang out before host families started showing up and food began to be served. However, it took the cast a lot longer to get out of Mexico than anyone had planned. Three hours longer, in fact. So, the Americans didn’t get to New Braunfels until about 5 pm (which was because they could cross the border with relative ease), and the other bus full of international students didn’t arrive until about 6:30. The first bus, thankfully was able to swim and relax for a while, but the second bus was not so lucky. It was really disappointing for me since I was looking forward SO much for the cast to enjoy some much needed R & R – heck, they’d just been on a bus for over 12 hours! And, this place was absolutely amazing – one of our best arrival sites. To not be able to have the cast enjoy that was a big disappointment and frustrating. But. That’s how it goes I suppose. The cast did still have a good time when they got here, and I was on such a high from being reunited with them. I don’t think I quite realized just how high until it fell away :) It was SO good to see them again. There’s a certain amount of energy, I realized, that is gleaned from the group as a whole – something we all feed off of and add to, a strange symbiotic relationship where its members receive back ten-fold what they put in. It’s hard to explain, and so I’m left with cliché and overdone adjectives like, “amazing” and “awesome.” Perhaps you, the reader, understand what I’m talking about, or perhaps you don’t. Our tour guide today at the caves made the comment, “Ya’ll are sure energetic,” which gives you, perhaps, a sense of how infectious and far-reaching this feeling is.

I moved out of the host family I’d been staying with for the past couple weeks into a new one on arrival day as well. A friend of mine, Annette Hunthrop, lives only 20 minutes from New Braunfels on the Texas State University campus, and I couldn’t miss the opportunity to live with her for a week – especially since she’s starting an adventure of her in own in the Peace Corps before I get done with Up with People. And while the host family I’d been living with were amazing – Georgia, David, John Ross, and Ricky – like I said, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to hang out with Annette. So here I am!

Today was the cast’s first FULL day in New Braunfels, which actually was mostly spent in the nearby city of San Antonio. We all visited the Alamo in the downtown area, getting to watch the 45 minute IMAX movie about the Alamo beforehand, which was cool. Then we got about three hours to tour around the area, check out the Alamo and the nearby Riverwalk – a shopping and restaurant area that is very popular in San Antonio. After this, we all loaded the buses and went to the Natural Bridge Caverns, which is located between San Antonio and New Braunfels. We went on an hour tour of the place and got to see all the cool formations of stalagmites and stalactites in the caves. Very cool.

The next few days will be busy for the cast, and for me as well since this is mine and my fellow advance teamer’s city. Tomorrow and Thursday will both be CI days, working at the four different CI locations. Friday is show day, which will be cool. I get a chance to watch the Up with People show for the first time, which I’m extremely excited about. Saturday will be another CI day for the cast, and Sunday will be host family day where who knows what will happen? Should be fun, and I’ll be sure to keep everyone up to date on it all!

Until my next post!

Dan