Up With People Cast A 2012!

Sooo.. yeah. Haven't really updated anything in a long time.. a month? It's kind of hard to find time with our exhausting schedule (and my last 2 families didn't have wireless internet..). But I'm here now! So here we go:

Since Fort Collins we've been in 3 different towns in New Mexico (all of which are really small): Farmington, Silver City and Ruidoso!

In Farmington I lived in a really cool family, nothing like I've ever seen before: My host parents, Shirley and Francisco, have 12(!!) kids and 39(!!!!) grandkids, the 40th on its way (we went to the baby shower with them). None of the kids lived at home anymore, most all of them had gotten married at a pretty young age and had a whole bunch of their own kids. My roommates were Mathilde (the same as in Fort Collins, fun!), Katie and Naoko and every night at least one of the family's kids would come over for dinner with their own family, so it was always pretty busy but definitely very 'gezellig!'. I had a lot of fun We did a CI at another Boys & Girls Club, building a pond, so we were pretty much just throwing rocks in a big ditch the whole day long. Sounds boring, but it was actually a lot of fun! Very relaxing to just focus on a very easy, hands-on task like that, and then working together with everyone else. While we were in Farmington we also had one Regional Learning day, where we learned about the Native American tribe that lives in the area, the Navajo. We visited "Shiprock", a really cool rock formation in the desert. It was beautiful to see the sun set from there, I took a lot of pretty pictures!

In Silver City I lived with a Mexican family: Kelly and Paul, and their 2 adopted kids Cecilia and Benito (10 and 11). They were really nice and had a beautiful home, I had a lot of fun with my roomie Angela (from the Phillipines)! Kelly and Paul are both teachers and one of their former students (also from Mexico) brought us to the university (where we did our activities) every day in his really small truck, listening to some awesome rap and reggaeton at a nice and high volume.. it was awesome! We did a CI-day at Fort Bayard, a place where old people can come and live in beautiful houses around a park. We made the pathways through the park, again some pretty touch manual labor, but I find to really like these types of Community Impact projects, where we get to be outside all day. It was a beautiful day too!

In Ruidoso I had a new roommate again: Mika from Japan, and we lived with two older people in a beautiful wooden house in the woods just outside of the town of Ruidoso. Their names are Jim & Vicky, he a reporter & she a teacher, who are planning on retiring in the coming 2 years and traveling the world. We did a Culture Fair at the Native American (Apache tribe) high school there, which was interesting because these kids are really shy and act very differently then other kids because of their culture and upbringing. One of the other days we had a very emotionally heavy day, because a group of UWP students had prepared a Global Topics presentation on Human Trafficking to share with the rest of us. It really opened my eyes to the immensity of the problem that is Human Trafficking, I never really knew anything about it. I will share some links about it on my facebook wall sometime soon, because one of the most important things in stopping this is making people aware of the fact that it's happening. The next day I did a CI at 'Parks & Recs', removing a lot of dangerous barb wire and old fencing from the woods in an area where kids come to play. It was fun!

Of course, we've also done our show in all of these places, and it went well every time! Last week was a bit of a challenge, since the stage was smaller than ever (we were all trying not to hit anyone during the dances) and we had some technical problems, but we all worked together to really make it work, it was awesome!
We have started working on new songs and dances for our tour in Europe (the Scandinavian medley is really cool!) so we're all getting super excited to fly to Belgium in only 11 days! Here in Tucson we're going to be part of a very special Gala event, benefiting the Up With People archives at the University of Arizona, which is going to be really cool as well! There's going to be alumni joining us and we heard today that there's going to be 3 different stages on different sides of the room, all with awesome lighting as well, so I think it's going to be an awesome experience! Can't wait

Well, I should really go to bed now. Tomorrow another CI day, I'm going to work with people that have addiction problems, I bet it'll be really interesting.

Good morning to everyone at home and hopefully see you soon in Belgium!
xxxxxx

Hi friends,

Just a quick little update to let you know I'm still alive.. we've arrived in Fort Collins and have already done 2 CI-days (community impact days). So far, so good! Yesterday I went to Boys & Girls Club, a place where kids can go after school to play and do their homework, and they can also have dinner there if their families aren't able to provide enough for them. In the morning, while the kids were at school, we cleared out some storage closets and helped them organize some things, which we did pretty quickly so we had about 2 hours of free time during lunch to spend just playing pingpong and pool.. it was fun! After lunch the kids came, I was in the art room making some little handicrafts with them, and some of the girls got their face painted by our very creative cast member Anna (from sweden)! I think they really enjoyed it After that it was 'power hour', the time they had to do their homework so we just walked around to help some of the kids that needed a little support. It was kind of fun ending the day by doing a game of 'international trivia' with them, where we asked the kids to guess where we were from and asked some questions about our countries.. some of the answers were really funny. Apparently Dutch sounds like either Russian, Spanish or French to them, and when we said that our country was a small country in Europe, they guessed "Afrika?!".. haha. So we ended up just telling them that we're actually from the Netherlands. (We were coincidentally with 3 dutch people, and also 2 belgians, 2 swedish people, a mexican girl and a paraguayan ;p)

Today was very different; I went on another CI-day to "Realities for children", an organization that provides for children that suffer from abuse. They hold a big fundraiser every december called Night Lights, where they build up a giant christmas tree with about 6000 blue lights (the color blue represents children) and people from the community can 'sponsor' some lights by making a donation. Anyways, since its february now, it was time to sort out all these lights. We tested all the lights to see if they still worked, took them apart when they didn't, and packed up and stashed all of the working lights in a couple of boxes that we put in the garage to be used for next year. The woman that worked there told us that it usually takes them months to do this job, so she was very surprised when we were done after 2,5 hours! I guess when 10 people work together on a project like this it goes pretty fast..
So then we had to figure out what to do with the rest of our day. We ended up splitting up the group into two smaller groups that both went to other CI-sites to help the others that were already there. I went to H.E.L.P. international, where we had lunch and started to work. I ended up sorting a HUGE pile of technical stuff, from random adapters and power chords to printers and old computers. There were tv's, radio's, separate keyboards, loose computer mouses (mice?) and a whole load of stuff I didn't even know how to identify. It had all been donated to the organization and will be sent out to people who need it around the world, and if found useless, they will recycle them. And the electronics was just the section I worked on, there were also children's clothes, medicines and other things like that. Some people were packing boxes that were going to be sent to Haiti to children that lost their parents during the earthquake.
At the end of the day there we got to do a pretty fun activity: a wheelchair race with all the wheelchairs they had there, it was really funny trying to race through this warehouse (my team won! YAY) So that was cool too.

So this was pretty much my day, right now I'm writing this from my bed (/air mattress) in Tom & Karen Salzman's house, my new host family! They're really nice and have a cute little dog called Stuart, he's adorable. My new roomie is also really great, it's Mathilde from Belgian and we're already having a lot of fun together. Actually, we're gonna watch a movie now.. so until next time!

xxo love, Anne Linde

IT WAS AMAZING!

Yesterday we performed our first 2 shows of our UWP journey, it was so much fun! I really had the time of my life singing and dancing to all the songs we learned in only a month with all these amazing people and new friends I met here. It was a really exhausting day too, with one show at 15.00 and the other at 19.30. I was also a merchandise assistant, which means I got to sell some UWP t-shirts and other cool stuff to the visitors.. but it also meant I didn't get a whole lot of time to rest. It was cool though, all of the adrenaline kept me going throughout the day, and when everything was finally packed up and ready at 23.45 I collapsed onto my very soft warm coat until I was picked up to go home. All in all an amazing experience, I'm so ready to get on the road and start doing this every week in different places! Only now do I really realize how awesome it's going to be :D

Today was a little sad too though, because it's my last day with my super sweet host mom Sara and roomie Karianne.. we just had a goodbye sunday night pancake-dinner and I packed (almost) all my stuff already, so I'll be ready to hop on the bus to Fort Collins tomorrow. I'll miss you Denver!

xox

Hi friends!

You might be wondering why I have the time to write this blog entry, since I'm supposed to be doing my dress rehearsal for our first show right now.. But the beautiful snowy weather here in Denver has made it impossible for everyone to get out of our houses to the Pinnacle Center (and if it were possible for us to get out, our first show would probably have very few visitors ;p). So today is an official snow day, I must say I was actually pretty happy about being able to sleep in, although of course also a bit disappointed about the cancellation of the show. We'll make up for it tomorrow though, with a 3 o'clock matinee performance before our evening performance at 19.30! It's gonna be a busy day..
Also, I've been chosen to be a merchandise assistant along with 2 others, which means I'm going to be selling our UWP merch in the break and talking to all the visitors I'm excited!

So this week has gone by very very fast.. we've pretty much just been practicing our dances, vocals and doing a lot of run-throughs. Its cool to see how much better we've gotten in just this one week, comparing our first run-through (a lot of confusion and people looking around with questioning expressions on their faces- including me, of course ) to this last one yesterday, where I felt like I now know where to go and when.
The only other thing we did was a diversity meeting on tuesday, where we compared ourselves to a big sack of potatoes (I know this sounds weird, I swear it made sense ;p) with all our different personalities and experiences. We divided the stage into two sides and read out these different statements, about our family, beliefs, experiences, etc, and if this statement was true for you, you had to cross the line to the other side of the stage. It sounds pretty basic, and it started out like that, but towards the end it got very emotional when people were sharing their personal experiences and struggles. Lots of people ended up crying, but I think it was a great way to learn more about each other and to realize that we're all different, yet all going through the same things, and we're here to support each other. For me it sparked a lot of very interesting conversations!

So I think I'm gonna go practice for tomorrow now, I'm not really nervous yet but I'm sure that'll come tomorrow, right before the show!

Love you all! xx

Helleuu people,

I ended my last blog post on sunday talking about how we were going to Casa Bonita that night, the mexican restaurant in town. IT WAS AWESOME. People had told me I shouldn't go for the great food (and they were right, it wasn't exactly haute cuisine) but that it certainly would be an experience.. and it was. I wouldn't even really describe it as a restaurant, it was more like an amusement park where you could eat- or Disney, only mexican, as I described it to some people already. Our dinner table was right next to a big waterfall where every couple of minutes this guy would dive into doing cool tricks, and after dinner we walked through a hunted cave (I was super scared, haha) and there were lots of other cool things like that. I put some pictures on facebook if you want to see!
So the next day it was monday, Martin Luther King day! We walked in the Marade (march/parade) in town, some people made posters about UWP and peace and we handed out a lot of show flyers to the people on the sidelines. It was really cool (both actually cold and awesome).
Wednesday was really cool as well, it was the day of Culture Jam! Everyone got to present a little act about their country and all our host families could come visit. 'The American Dream Team' performed an amazing dance to a mix of american songs, there was an awesome Norwegian performance, an Irish dance, a funny Chinese song, an amazing mix of one of the Up with People songs, and many more cool cultural things! I got to represent my beautiful country as a stoner smoking marihuana, one of the biggest stereotypes about Holland.. it was fun! Haha.
Thursday we went on a little trip to Las Vegas: they changed the stage into a casino, with several game tables, and all the staff were dressed up as dancers and casino guests, and Hans, our cast manager was singing some soothing background music! It was awesome. We then all sat down at one of the 13 numbered tables and got to read the instructions to the card game that we would be playing the coming our.. in silence. If you won, you got to move up to the next table, if you lost, you had to go one table down. The goal was to reach table 13, where you would get special treatment from some of the staff ladies (like back massages, or they would hold up your hand of cards for you ;p) So, after a couple of minutes reading the instructions and practicing at our first table, the instructions were taken away and we had to keep playing in silence.. no talking allowed! It was fun, only became very very frustrating while changing tables and noticing that not everyone was agreeing on which cards would allow you to win.. and we couldn't talk about it to figure it out. At first I would get a little angry because the card I was sure would make me win, didn't, and no-one agreed with me, but after a couple rounds of observing I figured out what was the difference, and moved on to the next table.. where the rules were different again! In the end, we were told that, indeed, every table was given different instructions, so thats why not everyone agreed on the rules. The whole game was a type of metaphor for the different cultures and host families we're going to be visiting on our tour, where we'll find that we have to adapt to different rules than we're used to..
Friday morning was also really interesting: it was Leadership Round Table. UWP had invited different types of leaders from around the Denver area to come talk to us, to give us tips about leadership and tell us their stories. It was very inspiring! I got to talk to some really interesting people

Ok, I don't really feel like describing this last week word for word as well (it's been too long since my last update, aaaaah!!), but we've basically just been practising A LOT on all our songs and dances, it's really coming together now! I do want to mention this overly exhausting workout we got the other day, when a UWP alumna came in to work with us, i literally felt like I had to puke afterwards.. it was a little bit too much for me haha. Also, we've been doing blocking; basically learning where we need to be on stage during what songs, it was a little tedious but also kind of cool to see everything coming together. We still have a lot of work to do though!
These last couple of days my parents have been here to visit, it was really nice (and great timing) to see them, I had some great dinners at restaurants with them and we went to see Boulder on saturday, this really cool student city close to Denver. Great to get outside too, I kinda felt like I hadn't been out in the air in months :p.

Now Sara, Karianne and I just finished our sunday night tradition; pancakes! jummy. I can't believe this time next week I'll be packing my bag to go to Fort Collins! Time has flown by so quickly.. excited to get on the road though!

Hopefully I'll have some time to write again next sunday, when I'll have finished my first two shows.. WISH ME LUCK!

xx Ali