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 sh
ow. 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
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 sh
ow. 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
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