My first month with UWP...wait...first week.

Hey everyone!!

SORRY that I haven't written in such a long time! I'm so busy that when I have a speck of free time, I spend it journaling, eating, and sleeping. I'll try my best to tell you about this week and I'll try my very best to write more regularly from now on! This is going to be reeeeeeeeeally long. You can take your time reading it! I won't let it get this long again! Enjoy!

As you can see in the title of this blog, it feels like I've been here for a month, not a week. So much has happened! I can't even imagine what 6 months will feel like! Now, where did I leave off?!

Monday: This was our first day of staging. Some of the Uppies in my neighbourhood and I rode in the Disco Van to the Sherman Centre for a fun filled, yet busy, day! We spent a good part of the day getting to know each other by playing fun games and talking in smaller groups. There are around 70 students from 17 different countries, which is amazing! We learned about different levels of comfort. I'm going to try really hard to stay in the 'challenge zone' throughout the course of the trip so I can get the most out of UWP. We started singing today!! I'm so excited about this part of UWP! The songs are so inspiring and powerful. It's such an honour to sing them. We had a hot tub party tonight at our house with friends from the neighbourhood!

Tuesday: Today we had modules, which are basically auditions for the show. We had 5 different modules: Technical, Costume, Dancing, Singing, and Speaking. It was nerve wracking (especially dance!), but really fun! Met lots of new people today and got even closer with people I had already met.

Wednesday: Today we learned about our Mexico tour! I'm soooo excited for that! We also spent a while learning about different cultures and differences between our cultures. This is especially relavent to UWP because there are so many cultures represented and because of the traveling we'll soon be doing! We have intense cast fitness/movement everyday. Today we did a thing called Zumba which is like aerobics/dance done to Latin music. It was so fun, but really challenging! We spent time thinking about our long term and short term goals. It's really important to make goals for the semester and try our very best to keep them! We staged three songs today too. Oh! Tonight Ronja (who I've been speaking German with) said my German was good! I was so pleased!

Thursday: We sang a lot today! We learned six songs. I'm really happy to be singing so much! I missed singing in choirs, so it has been great to be singing everyday. Funny sidenote: "The Sound of Peace" UWP recording was sung by Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid. Pretty cool! More dancing today. We're dancing to "Jai Ho" from Slumdog Millionaire! It's soooo cool! I love it so much and my dancing is getting a lot better! We did Pilates today too. I swear we'll be so fit by the end of this! We made S'mores tonight at Tinna's (from Sweden!) host family's house!

Friday: We learned a new song (plus choreography) today - "Shine the Light". We learned about internships and advanced work. I am hoping to do an internship or two over the course of the tour. There are lots of options, but I'm most interested in the Show Manager internship and the singing internship. More INTENSE fitness today - push ups were included at one point. Then we roughly blocked the entire show! We have under a month until our first performance, so we've been really busy! We had a UWP BBQ block party tonight. I think we're going to a Rockies (baseball) game next week. Hahhaha Kyle and I know so much about baseball, but Scott's super excited!

Saturday: TGIS. This is the last day of the UWP week and boy what a week it was! We had a session about barcodes, aka stereotypes, today. The ballroom had big sheets of paper all around the room - one for each country. We all walked around and wrote something about each country. It was really interested to see what people thought. Then we presented our thoughts and impressions about what the group wrote. It was really interesting. Some for Canada were Eh, Mounties, Proud, Polite, United States Jr (ouch) and lots of others - good and bad. It was a really interesting and intense session and I'm really glad we did it. Then we shared statements that were "I am ___, but I am not ___". It was cool. Then came one of the best parts of the week. Our staff performed our entire show for us (with the help of archive videos). I had goosebumps for the whole performance! It's such a beautiful, inspiring, powerful show. I can't wait to be up on that stage!! We met in smaller home teams today to discuss the week. Another hot tub party tonight!

Sunday: Today was our day off. We slept in and went on a 45 minute run (well, my good friend Cecilia from Virginia and I mostly just walked). Then our host family took us to the beautiful El Dorado Springs where we went swimming and had a picnic. We went to Cecilia and Ronja's and watched the UWP show from 1993! It was hilarious to see the show, hair, and costumes, but it was really great!

I know I should write today's entry as well, but I'm too tired to write it tonight! I'll include it with my next blog, which will hopefully be soon. Love you and miss you!!