UWP!

Hey again! I have some time tonight, so I'm going to try to get caught up on this week! Scott is listening to music and Kyle is practicing his dancing in the living room, so it's the perfect time for me to blog! I'm just going to start from where I left off last time.

Friday 24: This morning, we had our Jai Ho dance work shopped by a really great Bollywood dancer. It was so cool to have her teach us and we polished our routine a bit more. I still can't believe we have our first show in just couple of weeks! We had singing (mic group plus cast vocals) from before lunch until the end of the day (5:15) so it was a long day of singing! Tonight our host parents took Kyle, Scott, and I to a Rockies game. (That's baseball for those of you like me who didn't know.) The game was really fun! Our team lost, but I had fun singing "Take me out to the ballgame"!! I was SO tired tonight, I fell asleep in the car ride home!

Saturday 25: We had today off!! Our host parents went to a wedding today, but before they left they dropped us off at the bus station. We took the bus to Boulder, Colorado where we shopped on the beautiful Pearl street. I had delicious pizza and bought some interesting chocolate (dark chocolate with Goji berries and sea salt = interesting!!). Kyle bought a fun board game/card game called Curses and we had fun playing it with Cecilia, Ronja, Tinna, and Bernward. We laughed so hard!!

Sunday 26: Today was a great day!! Kyle, Cecilia, Ronja, Tinna, and Berward went white water rafting today!!! Can you believe it?! I had so much fun (once I got over being scared)! The rapids were levels 2-4 so we had a variation in difficulty. It was challenging, but I felt so proud of myself once it was over! We went out to a restaurant for dinner. I had been wanting chicken fingers all week for some reason so I finally got to have them!! We went over to Tinna's to go in their hot tub. All in all, it was a great day!

Monday 27: Today was quite the day. This morning we had a session about culture shock. We learned about the four stages of culture shock: the honeymoon stage, crisis/confrontation, adjustment, and adaptation. We tied a small piece of yarn to a large U shaped rope to track the overall culture shock level of the cast. It was very interesting to see that everyone was at a different place. We're all adjusting in our own time. After break, we all gathered in our 2's (business casual) in the auditorium for our cast photo!! I'm really excited to see this (plus the funny picture!). We had another fun, yet challenging mic group workshop. I found out that I'll be doing one or two of the poem/speeches for the show in at least the USA part of the tour. I'm really excited for this because the poems are so powerful and I want to be able to share their message. Then we had probably the most intense moment of our entire staging process. We had a session on diversity called "Crossing the Line". A line was drawn in tape across the floor of the auditorium and JC would say a statement. If we identified with the statement, we were to cross the line to the other side. We were encouraged to explain our choices and ask questions. The statements started easy: Cross the line if you like chocolate. Cross the line if you are an only child. They got a lot deeper with Cross the line if you identidy yourself as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Cross the line if you believe in a god or gods. Cross the line if you consider yourself physically attractive. There were lots of other statements in between. There is so much diversity in our cast. It's incredible to see how we are so different, yet so much the same. I can't describe the feeling in the room, but it was truly moving.

Tuesday 28: This morning we wore our 2's again because UWP alumni came to talk to us and hold smaller sessions with us about their UWP experiences and how they apply what they learned when they travelled to their lives today. It was really informative and made me get even more excited for the rest of our semester!! We made a cast newspaper today with a page for each continent, news back home, pop culture, sports, and 'good news'. We had lots of rehearsing today too. We had UWP neighbourhood dinner at our house. It was really fun. I get to practice my German and Swedish which is sweet!

I should write about today, but, like last week, I just want to go to bed! I'll blog again soon! Enjoy and I'll talk to you again soon!

Melissa