First off, let me tell you that this week doesn't seem like a week, it seems more like a month. I hear that this is what is called 'Up with People time,' where 1 week = 1 month, apparently. So, in theory that means that I'll be half-way done with my thirties when all is said and done, and will have paid off my loan. A man can only hope. By the way, this is a very long post, so you may want to read it in instalments.
Day 1
My first travel day went pretty much without a hitch. I made my flight in Boston in plenty of time, and made my connection in JFK with literally 3 minutes to spare. But it was all well and good, and I actually managed to take a nap on the plane on the way out to Denver. When I arrived at the airport, which is one of the most beautiful airports I've been in, (which isn't really saying something, by the way) I grabbed my bags, and started my wait for the official start of the semester. The Up with People greeters should have been there at around 11:30, but they ended up getting there around 12:30.
While I was waiting, this rather tall rocker/surfer dude came up to me, and introduced himeself. It turns out that this surfer dude was Russ Reiter, from "Baltimore," Maryland. we asked each other the customary UwP first questions, such as, "What got you interested in the program," "Are you excited?", and "Would you like fries with that?", etc. The next person I met was fellow New Englander, Brittany Rousseau from Rhode Island who was really cool. As she was waiting for the greeters to show up, she noticed a person that possible could be part of our group, and it turns out that he was Arnab Dewan from Bangladesh. By the time noon rolled around, we didn't see any greeters, so we took it upon ourselves to make our own "Up with People" sign.
At 12:30, I was so excited to see Dave Penny, who I met in Bangor when his cast was there in December. I felt that it was at that point when my Up with People experience began. We all piled into a tour bus and made our way to the Montbello Recreation Center where all of the UwP office staff was there to greet us. The first table we went to was the name tag table. My experience may have begun when I saw Dave, but I was on official "Uppie" when I put on my nametag. It was so cool to finally meet so many of the people in person that I talked to on the phone. When I saw my admissions counselor, Jen Moody, we gave each other a huge hug.
Right next to her was Jeff Ziegler, who also in the cast that came to Bangor. He told me that I was the first student to arrive in Denver, and that when 10:05 came around he yelled, "Hey, Stewart's here!" which made everyone look at the door for me. You should hear him tell the story. He's a better raconteur than I am.
For the rest of the day, we sat around in the rec center, played games and got to know each other. About 20 of us gathered around the pool table and played a really cool game of Jenga. We went around the twenty or so people 3 times before everything toppled over, so towards the end it was really cool, and by I was person number, like, 15, so by the time things got to me, the game was almost impossible. Towards the end of the night, I played Bullshit with three Ethiopian girls, two Japanese girls, a girl from Thailand, and several Americans. It was interesting to explain the game, because there were a couple of people from our group that didn't really peak English all that well. But as the game progressed, things got smoother. I learned that in Japanese playing cards, they have an 11. Pretty interesting stuff, right there.
Then, Martin Brennan spoke to the cast. It was really cool to look around and see everybody that I'll be traveling with for the next 22 weeks. Cast B was finally all together, ready to start our crazy semester.
It was time to meet my very first host family, the people whose home I'll be calling home for the next month. My roommate, a then-18-year-old vegetarian from the Netherlands, Jochem Gunster, and I had to find the people with the spyglass. In Up with People, they give out different codes so that the students can find their host families well. The theme this time around for the codes was pirating, and Jochem and I had to find the spyglass. We looked around, and finally spotted a man with a rolled up piece of paper, looking through it like a telescope. His name is Charlie Fountain, and his wife is Agnes.
When we got home, I was welcomed into a really nice, 3-level home, and found out that I would be sleeping in their basement, which you could hardly call a basement. It's more like a fully-furnished apartment. I even have my own bathroom, shower, and double bed. It's pretty sweet... That night, I went to bed and did my first video diary that I will post once I get uploading pictures to my camera figured out...
Day 2
Day 2 was spent getting a tour of the mountains, and walking around Downtown Boulder. It was really strange looking out the the left side of the car and seeing nothing but flatness, and looking to the right side of the window and seeing the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. We drove into the canyons, and it was really cool to look into the windshield and see nothing but a wall of pine trees ahead of me. "These are nothing like the mountains in Maine," I thought to myself, "these are real mountains." The mountains that I'm used to in Maine are more like really large hills.
After the Purple Mountain's Majesty Tour, we went walking along the pedestrian mall in Boulder. There we saw a whole cornucopia of street performers. We saw a man who could play the drums, the steel drums, and the didgeridoo at the same time. It was insane... then we saw a guy named Dereck Dereck that was a pretty cool juggler/stand-up comedian. After that, we decided to call it a day, and go back home for dinner.
Dinner that night consisted of one of my favorite foods on the Planet Earth: baked beans. If you know me really well, you can note the sarcasm in that sentence. But before I came here, I told myself that I would try everything, and broaden my culinary horizons, after all, these were homemade baked beans, and not ones from a can. These baked beans were actually palateable. The main ingredient was barbecue sauce, and so it was something I could actually enjoy. We had a great time at dinner getting to know each other. It turns out that Agnes is a pharmacist at the local hospital, and Charlie is a mechanical engineer. We also found out that Jochem and I were #59 and #60 of the Fountain Host Kids. In fact, it was the Fountains that hosted Bob Sloat, the husband of Anke, who was the woman who conducted my telephone interview. It's crazy how things like that work out. There has been talk of inviting Anke and her husband over for dinner one night. I hope that happens.
Day 3
This was the day of the opening session of the semester. We started out in the auditorium of the Sherman Street Center, and it was really cool to see some of the songs that we'll all be sick of come December. I hope I'm joking, but from the sound of things, I'm not. After that, we had a little reception downstairs in the cafeteria. The European students that arrived late were there, so I met most of the German friends I had talked to on Facebook, which was pretty cool. I talked to a woman who works in the office that had read my article in the Citizen, and complemented me on my hard work with raising the money to get here, which was really cool to hear.
At the end of the day, I couldn't wait to get the show on the road.
Day 4
This was the day where everything started to happen. During our first morning meeting, we met all of the office staff, and all of the staff that will be on the road with us. I can't wait to get on the road and actually work with them and learn from them.
The first order of business for the day was to act all silly to break the ice with everybody, and we ended up playing a couple of cool games. There was a really cool version of Paper, Rock, Scissors where everyone started out as an egg, walking around the auditorium acting like an egg, and then they would search out other eggs to do get into a head-to-head Rock, Paper, Scissors game, the winner of which would become a chicken, where you'd walk around, clucking like a chicken and would search out other chickens, and the loser would stay an egg. In the game between two chickens, the winner would become a dinosaur, and the loser would go back to an egg. After winning the dinosaur round we'd move on to the Ultimate Being round, and after that, you'd win the game and watch everybody else act like total idiots. I was so good at playing the game that I never lost once, and the whole thing took me 5 minutes to complete. If any future students are out there: Play rock every time, your opponent will most likely play scissors.
The rest of the day went really well, and it was a great introduction to the Up with People program.
Day 5
This was the day where we had modules, or 'Mods' for short. This is where all of the performing arts staff could take a look at us individually and see where our strengths are. The first day I had vocals, tech, and speaking. I totally rocked the vocals and the speaking. The tech mod was basically where they told us, "Don't be a dumbass and pay attention to where you're walking so you don't block the screen, and you don't end up impaling yourself." It was also a time to hear interesting stories about people blocking the screen during the performance and impaling themselves. Good times were had by all.
I also got my show costume all straightened around. When I showed the costume designer my blue button-down shirt, her response was an: "I don't love it." So, she pulled a really super cool green button-down, with a brown shirt with a green psychedelic print on it. It's slammin'.
Day 6
Day 6 was more of the same. In the morning, I had my dance module, and I decided to go in there with my crutches so that they could see me off of my scooter. I think that was a wise decision because then they could see what kind of movements my legs were capapble of. Yui, our dance captain on the road said she was wondering if I'd come in on my crutches or if I'd ride in on my scooter, and she said that she was really happy to see me come in on my crutches., and that made me feel really good.
Let me take the time in this monstrous post to thank all of the Dance Team for their support. They are trying their best to try to incorporate me into the choreography in the show, and I think they're really excited to have me because I present a unique challenge to them.
That day, our cast movement was three hours long. And we spent the whole time learning the 'Keep the Beat' dance. It was a little frustrating for me, because I'm not used to learning choreography, but by the time everything was over with, I had the hand movements down, which is the important thing for me. I talked to Kayliegh, one of the dance instructors, and she said that they are working hard to get me incorporated into the show. She suggested that I decorate my scooter basket for the show, and I told her that I thought it would be neat to put a 's2e cam' on there and record a performer's eye view of the show. Actually, I can't take any credit for that. Fenna from Germany had that idea, and I thought it was a great one. I'm going to talk to the tech people to see how I can make that happen. Thank you, Fenna!
We also had our first day of vocals, and let me just say that I love our vocal instructor, Bill. He is really cool, and he's been with UwP for years, and is son just happens to be the lead guitarist for the Fray. Pretty cool, if you ask me. We all know which water bottle is Bill's because he has a Fray sticker on it. All of the tenor parts are in actuality alto parts, so I am working in my upper register for a lot of the songs. But if I can improve my range by a half an octave or so, that would be super cool. At least I'm not a soprano. They're singing mostly in the alto range. Gotta love contemporary music.
Day 7 & 8
Days 7 and 8 brought more of the same thing, except on Day 7, Eric Lentz, who is one of the producers of the show pulled me ot of movement to give me a couple of spoken word pieces to memorize. He said that he passed them out to three or four people, and the most prepared person will end up performing them for the dress rehearsal and for the US and Philippines shows. I've gotten the first one down, and hopefully by the end of this week I'll have the second one down so that I can knock Eric's socks off. I'm really using everything I learned in Oral Interpretation so that I'll have everyone in the aisles bawling like a schoolgirl by the time I am done. That would be sweet.
Today
Today, the whole family piled into the Saab and went to Mt. Evans, which is the highest peak accessible by car. It was really interesting, because Charlie's Saab is equipped with an external thermometer, and it was really cool to see the temperature go from 100° to 50°. But before all of that excitement happened, we went out to the Red Rocks Amphitheater, where tons of really cool acts get to play. This week John Mellencamp is playing, and the handicapped seating is in the front, and by "front," I mean "the first row." So, needless to say, I'm super stoked about that. Maybe I'll end up getting a picture with Johnny himself, but I'm not holding my breath.
Mt. Evans was so cool. The road we went on was the highest auto route in the United States, and it was crazy because we rose 14,000 ft. in elevation in only 14 miles. It was nuts, because the road had niether a shoulder nor a guardrail, and so if you had the misfortune of going off the road, you would pretty much be done for, since the 14,000-ft. drop is almost certainly unsurvivable. That trip took most of the day, and we ended up getting back to Littleton at around 8:30, but it was well worth it.
Well, that's my week in a nutshell. A very large nutshell. I hope you got through it all. I'll be better at keeping up with things now that I have my laptop all set up. The only thing I have to do with it is figure out how to upload pictures and videos. Once I do that, I'll post all of my pics for you guys.
Until next time!
