US Part 2.1: Sahuarita/Tucson, AZ

Well, we made it through the Mexican leg of our journey, and it was time to start all over again in the United States, which, for me, was an adjustment. It was a weird adjustment. I went from constantly hearing Spanish being spoken around me, eating tortillas filled with whatever meat was for lunch, and taking cold showers to English, wheat bread, and warm showers. It was pretty sweet. It was also weird seeing speed limit signs in miles per hour again. Our destination was Sahuarita, Arizona, which is just about an hour outside of Tucson, which is where the original Up with People headquarters were before they moved to Denver, Colorado in 1993. This is a bit of random trivia that will become important later in the post.

Anyway, this city was extra special because I was hosted with my two best friends on the tour, Jochem, my roommate in Denver, and his now-girlfriend, Angela, and her parents Lucia and Lorenzo Montebello. It was really cool to see where one of our castmembers came from, and where she grew up. Almost immediately upon arrival, Lucia pulled out a whole bunch of Angela's school photos, and some of her artwork from school. It was really cool to see how Angela grew up, because we really don't get to see those kinds of things of our castmates while on tour. In Mexico, Angela had asked me what I had wanted when we got to our house, and of course, with me being me, I said, "macaroni and cheese." And so, when we got to the Montebello residence, Lucia's three-cheese macaroni and cheese was waiting for us on the stove. I could tell this was going to be a really, really, really good week.

During the day, we did some really cool Community Impact work for the city of Sahuarita. On the first day of CI, we went to a place called "Casa de Esperanza," where they have a multi-generational program for both pre-school aged children, and elderly people. It was really cool to see how these two worlds melded together. All of the pre-schoolers called the elderly people either, "Grandma," or, "Grandpa," and so all of the older folks that were there had nametags that said, "Grandma Barbara," or, "Grandpa Bert."

Our task for that particular day was to paint a water feature that the children used on their playground. First, we had to sand everything down so that the new coats of paint would adhere to the wood. This gave Sarah and Katrin of Germany the perfect opportunity to show us their power tool prowess. Not only that, but we all got safety glasses that made us all look really super cool.

After we all got done sanding everything, it was time for lunch, after which we all went into the pre-school part of the building and introduced ourselves to the kids. I loved the looks on all the kids faces when we said who we were in our native languages, and pointed to where we were from on the globe. Then we all sang Frère Jacques in each of our languages. Judging by how the kids just stared at us, I'm thinking that this visit will stick with them for a long time to come.

When we were all finished, the Casa de Esperanza pre-school water feature was once again a brilliant red, white, and yellow.

The morning of the water feature CI, one of our Edcation Coordinators, Aoife (pronounced: EE-fuh; I think Gaelic is much worse to try to read than English), had come up to me to say that they had mentioned me to one of the people who would be working with us the next day at Madera Canyon, one of our CI sites in the Arizona mountains. It just so happened that he's been working on getting that particular site more ADA compliant, and requested that I speak to him. Aoife said that it was totally my decision, and that I didn't have to go down there if I didn't want to. I didn't really have to think much about it. To get a chance to help other disabled people enjoy the beauty of the canyon, and to give my feedback from the point of view of a disabled person was a great honor.

When I got there, I met Phil English, an octogenarian volunteer for the "Friends of Madera Canyon," which is a group of volunteers that work closely with the Forest Service of Arizona in order to do the upkeep for Madera Canyon. While the other people were hefting big logs out from under a bridge, Phil was taking me on a tour of the Canyon and the surrounding area, telling me everything possible about its history, its wildlife, and its future. When he wasn't talking about the Canyon, he was telling stories about how he grew up across the street from Dick and Jerry Van Dyke, and told me that it was Dick that got him his first job on the radio. Being the pop culture freak that I am, it was really super cool to hear those stories. After I got a tour of the entire canyon, he showed me the trails that needed work. He pointed out where the trails were leading to, and then he told me how he planned on making everything accessible. He asked me what my opinion was, and I said that his ideas were really good ones. It was so great to see someone who was so devoted to one thing. This place is his world, and he obviously wants to share it with everybody.

Now back to the part of the post where I said that Tucson, Arizona, was the UwP headquarters for much of its history. Since we were near the old headquarters site, we got to meet with J. Blanton Belk, the founder of Up with People. This man has led the most incredible life of anybody that I have ever met. He was personal friends with the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Jesse Owens, two of the most influential African Americans in history. He has also had dinner with kings and queens, and after all of this, he still remains securely grounded, and extremely down to Earth. I had the fortune of eating dinner with him that day, before the show, and he talked about having dinner with Martin Luther King Jr. the night after he delivered the immortal "I Have a Dream" speech. He also talked about how the UwP song, "What Color is God's Skin" influenced that very speech. That will probably go down in history as one of my most interesting dinner conversations that I will ever get to experience.

Mr. Belk was not the only VIP that was going to see the show. The Caldwell Brothers and Herb Allen, the very people who wrote the Up with People song were going to see the show, and perform a couple of songs at the end of our show. Then there were all of the original creative team that made UwP what it was in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. But to top it all off, Pieter von Vallenhoven, the Dutch Queen's brother-in-law, was there watching the show. It was so cool to be around my Dutch friends as they met a member of their Royal Family. It turns out that not only is Professor von Vallenhoven a member of the Board of Directors for Up with People, but when one of the casts traveled to the Netherlands about 10 years ago, he hosted a couple of the students. After my dinner with Mr. Belk, Jochem came over to me and asked me if I wanted to meet the Prince. And the only conceivable answer to that question is, "Duh!" So, Jochem introduced me to him, and he asked me where I was from. I said, "Maine, in the United States," and the Prince nodded knowingly. Then he asked me if I was looking out for Jochem. I said that we were like brothers, and that we were looking out for each other, and that made him smile. We joked around for a little while, and then it was time to get ready for this VIP performance and try to put out of my mind everyone who would be seeing the show, which was hard to do.

The show was probably one of the most memorable shows to date. The tension was palpable. I always love it when we go into cities where there are large pockets of alumni, because the whole cast could go up there, sing every note of the show wrong, light the stage on fire, and we'd still get a thunderous standing ovation. Anyway, the show was one of the best shows we had ever put up, and we were rewarded by hearing the Caldwell Brothers and Herb Allen do their stuff on stage. Part of their stuff on stage included Mr. Allen masterfully playing the xylophone. I had never heard anything like it. But what was great to hear afterwards was that the original creative team loved the show so much that they said that they were no longer worried that UwP would make a strong comeback onto the world scene. Knowing that my cast, my family, was a part of that, makes me proud beyond words.

After the show, and striking the set, it was time to go back to the Montebello's house to take it easy for a couple of days. It was so nice to be able to sleep for twelve hours. That's one of the things I've sorely missed while being on this tour. I think I may sleep the entire month of January away when I get back. My really cool week ended when Lucia, a Reiki Master, did a session on me. The session was quicker than expected because she said that when she did the scan, she found that my chakras were perfectly in line. "Not only are you well-adjusted, but you don't see yourself as a victim at all," she said. The only real Reiki thing she did was to wake up my root chakra, which was apparently really asleep. Right afterwards, I went to sleep, so that I could wake up really early in the morning and travel to Albuquerque, to do some more incredible things, and meet some more incredible people.

See you guys on da flip side, yo!

Mexico, Week 5: Hermosillo, Sonora

The last city on our Mexican tour started out with a boom. Literally. Actually, Hermosillo started out with a 12-hour bus ride that included four checkpoints where men with machine guns checked our buses for fruit and drugs. It wasn't a big deal for me, because I was allowed to stay on the bus, which lead to very interesting conversations:

Machine-Gun-Wielding Mexican Officer {all serious and menacing}: ¿De dónde es? [Translation: Where are you from?]

Me {trying to act calm}: Los Estados Unidos. [Translation: The United States.]

M-G-W MO {still serious and menacing}: ¿Cómo se llama? [Translation: What's your name?]
Me: Stewart. [Translation: Stewart.]
M-G-W MO {all smiles}: ¡O... como el ratón Stuart Little! [Translation: Oh... like the mouse, Stuart Little!]
Me {breathing a sigh of relief}: Exactamente. [Translation: Exactly.]

Never in a million years did I think that E.B. White would help me break the ice with a guy that could blow my head clean off my body just for having some mango in my backpack. Mexicans take their fruits and vegetables very seriously, it turns out.

Anyway, what made this city so special was that our arrival day, September 15, was Mexican Independence Day, which meant that the whole city of Hermosillo lined the streets and partied hard. It also meant that we had to make our way thorugh the dense crowd of partying Mexicans just to get to our headquarters. That was a bit challenging, but we eventually made it. After we took care of business, we had to walk to the Palacio in Hermosillo, where the Governor of the Mexican state of Sonora lives, and go to a reception there with a whole bunch of official-looking people who we had no idea who they were. After the reception, and shaking hands with the Governor and His Lovely Wife, we stood outside the Palacio, waiting for him to ring the bell, and shout things in Spanish (in an Eva-Perón-Don't-Cry-for-Me-Argentina-type style) after which the whole town cried, "¡Viva!" Then, when all the ringing, shouting, and "¡Viva!"-ing had taken place, the fireworks display began. This fireworks display put all of my previous fireworks experiences to shame: The whole thing lasted a solid 45 minutes, and the fireworks were right over our heads, and then the whole thing was punctuated by mass quantities of green, white, and red confetti shot out of confetti canons.

The whole thing went until 12:30, and by that time everybody in the cast was exhausted, and wanted to go home. But in order to do that, we had to meet our host families. This time around, our theme was Disney characters. And to make it more challenging, all of our host codes were in Spanish, which made it really hard for Seung Beom (my roommate) and me to find our host family. Our host code was Campanita, which I had no clue who that was. If I had known that 'campa' was the Spanish word for 'bell,' I probably would have figured it out, but alas, I was left clueless.

The first person I met was my host mom, who was holding a helium-filled Tinkerbell balloon. Meeting your host family on a travel day is the most interesting experiences you can have when you're on tour with Up with People. Imagine meeting someone for the first time knowing that you are going to live with them, and eat what they eat, and sleep in a bed that they have prepared for you. This is why I get nervous on Mondays. The unknown can be a little disconcerting sometimes. But once you meet with them, and you put your stuff in the trunk of their car and get to know them on the way home, a sense of ease washes over you, and you're just so excited about answering whatever question they might have. I also met Aarón, my host brother, and his fiancée, Joana (pronounced: yo-AH-nuh). As soon as I was in my Hermosillo home and it was so easy talking to them, I knew it would be hard saying, "See you later!" at the end of the week, which, by the way, is the second reason why Mondays are always the hardest days of the tour.

I don't have a lot of stuff to write about this city, because Tuesday was the day that Montezuma decided to get his revenge on me. I guess that's what happens when you don't drink water on the bus, and then you sweat profusely for 5 hours afterwards. So, I had to stay home and miss the last day that the cast hung out at the beach in San Carlos. I heard it was amazing. [Sigh] But my day off afforded me the pleasure of talking with my host family and realizing just how much my Spanish had improved over the past 5 weeks. I went from not being able to understand my La Paz Host Dad Hector to having a really good conversation with my Hermosillo host family about the Up with People program. All in Spanish. It helped that Aarón spoke really good English and could translate whatever I didn't understand.

I also loved my living situation in Hermosillo because it was the second time that I was hosted with Seung Beom from South Korea. But it was even cooler because he was my only roommate and therefore I could learn a whole lot more about Korea. For instance, I learned that when a child is born in Korea, they automatically are one year old. In Korea, they believe that any living being should have an age, and so it is impossible to be under a year old over there. Another weird thing about Korean age is that everybody automatically is a year older on January 1st. So, a Korean baby born on December 31 is automatically two, two days into its life. It's interesting because when anybody asks Seung Beom how old he is, he says that he's 23 in Korea, and 21 everywhere else.

Okay, I could talk about my living situation over there for days, but I'll move on. One of the things we did in Hermosillo was attend a conference about issues surround sex and drunk driving in Mexico. The whole day started when we got up on stage and started singing Viva la Gente, Then we saw a drama about different issues that the Mexican people have to face in regards to sex. It's pretty much like the United States. Then, we had a selection of Viva la Gente people come up and speak about what their attitudes are about sex in their country. The most interesting part about the discussion was when Cecile from Denmark said that there are no real taboos surrounding sex, and that everybody over there was really open about it, which is the reason why Denmark has one of the lowest rates of STD transmission in the world. Nobody is ashamed to talk about it, because it's no big deal over there, so people are therefore more aware and able to take care of themselves more. This caused a stir in the audience because it is really not like that in Mexico. Sex is still a really hard topic for a lot of people over there, and they have a lot of work to do in order for people to be more open about it.

Towards the end of the week, our host family invited us to a couple of family get-togethers which was really cool, because both Seung Beom and I got to meet the rest of our host family. They were the nicest people, and they treated Seung Beom and I just like we were a part of their family. We sang songs, and we talked to them about where we were from, and told them about our tour of Mexico and what we thought about different things.

We also discussed the different things that had happened during the week in Hermosillo, like when Seung Beom wanted to say, "Buenas noches" to Joana, and it came out "Buenas nahcas" instead. Apparently in Spanish saying, "buenas nachas" to someone is the equivalent of saying "You're bootylicious" to them. I think we'll all be laughing about that in the years to come.

On travel day, we had to take our bus to the Mexican border, unlaod everything, walk across the American border and load onto American buses in Nogales, Arizona. It was really eay for the Americans, since all we had to do was get our bags x-rayed, and show the border guard our passports. It took the non-Americans much longer to cross, and some people's bags had to be searched. It was kind of a bittersweet moment of the tour because the Mexican portion of it was over, and it was back to normal as far as being in the US where everybody spoke English again. Looking back on everything, it's really hard to believe that I actually lived in Mexico for 5 weeks and became somewhat of an expert on the culture, attitudes and traditions of the Mexican people. I know that there are many of my host families that I want to see again, and will stay in contact with for the rest of my life.

So thank you, Mexico, for opening my eyes to so many things, and for the churros that I got to enjoy week after week.

Next stop: the good ol' U. S. and A!

Stay tuned!

Mexico, Week 4: Culiacán, Sinaloa

Our next stop in Mexico was Culiacán, which the cast was kind of nervous about going to because Culiacán had been in the Mexican news for quite awhile before we got there, due to drug-related violence. The story that we got from host families and from others was that during World War II Culiacán was vital in the manufacturing of drugs that went out to the troops over in Europe. But long after the war was over, the sale and manufacturing of drugs remained, and Culiacán, over time, has become a major midpoint between the drug cartels in South America, and the dealers in the United States. In recent months, there has been some deadly skirmishes between the drug people and the local law enforcement, resulting in the deaths of over 300 police officers.

So, needless to say, some of the people in the cast were worried about being in the city, but at the very beginning of the week, the staff assured us that they would never put us in harm's way. They likened Culiacán to any US city with violence, telling us that there are safe and not-so-safe places for us to go, and to always stick with the group or with our host families. That made all of us feel better, and honestly nothing happened to the cast while we were there, and Culiacán ended up being one of the nicest cities on the tour.

My host family in Culiacán was a really cool older couple named Manuel and Celia Franco Ramos, and my roommate was Gijs (pronounced: [clear your throat]-ice) from the Netherlands. This was a special week in regards to my host family because my host parents' daughter hosted Colin from Texas and Frederik from the Netherlands. I joked to Colin and Freddy that they had to call me Uncle Stew throughout the week. So, in essence I had two host families in one; it was sort of like a "buy one host family, get one free" sort of deal. Our second night in Culiacán, we had the best spread of food to date, and it was extra-special since that spread of food was mostly seafood, so I kind of felt like I was home. The best part of the meal was the pulpo, which is octopus with lemon juice. Once I got used to eating the suction cups on the tentacles, it was smooth sailing for me.

It was in Culiacán that I had my most favorite and interesting CI. We stopped at APAC, which is a day school for children and adults with Cerebral Palsy and various other disabilities. It was so interesting for me to see what was going on because it was so different from what happens in the United States. First off, there were people there from the ages of 5 months to 45 years old. Secondly, they were using therapies that I had never seen before, (they had a swing-like contraption that they strapped their clients to and swung for three minutes. There are circles of thought that says that motion helps people with CP with their development) and they were using therapies there that I thought hadn't been in use for decades, such as the electric shock therapies.

It was cool, because while my Cast B compatriots were busy pulling weeds and painting walls, I had the honor of observing the classroom with the really little kids and helping them with some of the therapies. I also made really good friends with the workers there, who, I could tell, thought of these children as their own. At the end of the day, it was the litte kids' turn on the swing, and the staff invited me to get on there, which I thought was really cool. So, for three minutes I was swinging, and who knows if it helped me, but it was an unforgettable experience nonetheless. Thanks to everyone at APAC-Culiacán!

We performed two shows in Culiacán, and it was kind of refreshing, because instead of being on an 8-foot-high removable stage, we performed on a basketball court that was the same level as the audience. This particular week we had two shows. On the first night, there wasn't a big crowd, but we gave it our best anyway. For me, it doesn't matter how many people are out there during a performance. They paid to see a show, and therefore we should be performing our hearts out, no matter what. The second night of the show, the audience was really cool, and had their cell phones out and waving for most of the performance.

Despite the reservations I orginally had about coming to Culiacán, I ended up having a really good time, and learning a whole lot.

Stay tuned to ¡Viva la s2e! for the conclusion of the Mexican tour.

Mexico Week 3: Tepic, Nayarit

After Los Cabos, the next destination was Tepic, which was the southernmost city on our tour. But in order to get there, we needed to board a ferry for a 6-hour ride across the Gulf of California to Mazatlán, and then it was an overnight bus ride to Tepic. This was one of the most memorable times on the tour because I got to see the sun set in the middle of the Gulf of California, and it was one of the most beautiful things I've seen next to Obama clinching the Democratic nomination.

In every city, we have what are called allocation meetings, where we get information on our host families, and a host code to be able to find them. This time around, we all had to dress up in silly costumes so that our host families would be able to recognise us. My roommate that week was Rafa from Brazil, and of course we both had to dress up as soccer players. After we got dressed, we took part in a fashion show which went down the center of the shopping mall. It was one of the most surreal things that I have experienced. The mall was packed full of excited people, and two people on stilts lead us down the hall to where the catwalk was. All along the way there were people with cameras taking pictures and waving excitedly at us. In Mexico, a couple of Viva la Gente songs have become a part of the culture, especially De Qué Color es la Piel de Dios, or What Color is God's Skin in English. It's a song that they teach to all the children over there, and so every time we sang it, the whole audience would join in. And wave their cell phones. It was pretty awesome.

And to talk about awesome, my host family was really cool. My host Mom in Tepic was Gloria, and it so happens that she requested to host me because she's a physical therapist, and she works with people with disabilities every day. My host Dad was Gonzalo who works for the government. He was like a giant kid: every time he would pick us up from our day, he always kidded around with us, and cracked jokes. It was really cool because when it came to Spanish, Rafa and I worked as a team. Everything he understood, I couldn't, and everything I understood, he couldn't, so we became each other's translators. My host brothers were really cool as well. The host brother that I met, Juan, is nineteen years old, and he's been all over the world conducting a youth orchestra in Guadalajara. His friends call him "Tucán," because he used to eat Fruit Loops every morning for breakfast. My other host brother, that I didn't get to meet, but I felt like I knew him, is Luis Ernesto Franco who is a model and has been in many television shows and movies in Mexico. I was told by my host mom that he's seeing the Mexican version of Jennifer Aniston, and it was so cool to talk with her about her sons because I could feel the pride that she had for them.

The CI that I helped out with was a college fair with numerous booths, and I spent 5 hours in the languages booth (naturally) writing people's names in Russian. It was really cool, because I sat next to my friend Yordi from Ethiopia, and she taught me some of the Amharic alphabet, which is really difficult to learn, but it was fun learning from her. After the college fair, it was time for the cast to pile in cars and trucks for our promotional parade. For about an hour and a half, we rolled through the streets of Tepic and sang Viva la Gente and Cielito Lindo at the top of our lungs from our cars.

Tepic was one of my favorite shows because instead of performing on a removable stage, we got to perform on a concrete stage that actually didn't move when everybody was dancing all at once. When you're performing on a removable stage, and 92 people are doing the same move at the same time, you kind of feel like you're surfing, so it was nice to be able to not feel like I was taking my life into my own hands during the show.

On host family day, they took Rafa and I to see the lagoon. It was like I was looking at a post card. The water was a combination of azure and turquoise, and I could harldy believe the beauty that was laid out before me. After seeing the bird's eye view of the lagoon, we ate at a resaurant that overlooked it. While we were there, Tucán noticed a girl that was one of Gloria's clients, and brought her over to the table. She was eight years old, and had CP, and had been mainstreamed since the beginning of school. It was great to see Gloria interacting with one of her clients, and I could see instantly that she was more than their physical therapist, she was like a second mother to them.

Mondays are the hardest part of the tour, because that is the day that we have to say goodbye to the family that treated us like one of their own for the past week. It was especially hard this week to say goodbye because I really connected to Gloria and Gonzalo. But I know that I'll see them again, and that we'll always keep in touch.