US, Part 2.3: Colorado Springs, CO

In order to get to Colorado Springs from Albuquerque, you have to pass through Denver, and for the cast, it was like visiting home. As we were whizzing along the highway, I saw the Lightrail stations that I would take every morning to go to the Sherman Center. And then I started thinking about the very beginning of the tour, and how far the cast had come since the days of 12-hour rehearsals, and how people who hadn't danced a day in their lives were thrust into intricate dance lines, and people who had never been on stage before being petrified about the first show. Now, 11 weeks, and 13 shows later, all of those once-amateur dancers can do every single dance routine forwards and backwards, and every stage shy person doesn't bat an eye when performing in front of 2,000 people. That is what is incredible about the UwP program: it takes you to the limits, and changes you forever.

Even though our tour schedule says, "Colorado Springs," we spent most of the week on Fort Carson, which is an Army post within the limits of Colorado Springs. It was a little city inisde a big city. Because of the international nature of our program, all of our host families were in Colorado City, and Jochem and I were hosted again for the third time, which was cool because we were so comfortable with each other. As soon as we walked through the door, our host parents talked to us about Xoçai Chocolate, which is a special kind of Belgian Chocolate that a square of only has, according to my Host Dad, "more antioxidants than 12 pounds of tomatoes." And after 5 minutes of being there, Jochem and I knew more than we ever thought possible about the Xoçai business, antioxidants, and how the chocolate had changed not only their lives, but the lives of their friends. I loved this host family, because it was the first, and most definitely last, time I would hear phrases such as: "You have to eat your chocolate before you go to bed," or, "Have as much chocolate as you want." My host family rocked. Their names: Dan and Esther Sallee, he was a chiropracter with his own massage therapy school, and she was a cosmetologist/massage therapist. When Jochem and I were there, he was about to close his school and his chiropractics business, and she was not taking any more clients because they were going in to the chocolate business full-time. Needless to say, I loved everything about this host family, other than the fact that they were Republicans. But hey, nobody's perfect, right?

I digress. In this particular city our contribution to the community was our Stand for Peace Program where we go into the elementary schools in the area and teach the students about diversity and choices they make when they're faced with conflict. It's a really awesome program. Each classroom has 2 to 3 people from at least two different countries, and so they get so much culture on top of the things that we try to touch upon. It was great in this city because my partners in crime were Crystal from Wisconsin, and the Sioux Nation, and Veronika from Sweden. Veronika and Chrystal taught the kids all kinds of Sioux and Swedish games. What was different about this city was that most of the kids had at least one parent in either Iraq or Afghanistan. There were some points in the program where we ask if anyone has questions, and some of the younger kids raised their hands and instead of asking something, they would say, "My Mommy's in Iraq," or "My Daddy's in Afghanistan." It just put the whole war thing in perspective. Since this isn't a political blog I won't go into everything, but I just hope that all of the soldiers from Ft. Carson come home safely.

One of the highlights of the week was that we went bowling at the bowling alley on the post, and it was super fun. For the first string, I decided to let the other people in my group bowl for me, and they ended up bowling a 100, and winning the game for me. The second string, I decided to bowl for myself, and I bowled an 11. I never realized how hard the sport of bowling really is. In my mind, I'm an awesome bowler, but in practice, my aim is all off. I think that if I had gone to that lane where the gutters are blocked off with foam padding, I might have bowled a 300. I'm just saying.

I don't know if it's because a lot of our cast members equate guest speaker time with nap time, or if it because of another reason, but it so happens that we don't have a lot of guest speakers on tour. This week was an exeption, because we had an economist come and speak to us about the economic theory behind globalization, how it works, and what the future of it is. After his speech, he answered some questions on that topic, but most of the questions we had pertained to the US financial crisis. So, it was thanks to him that I understand how everything works, and why it'll still be years before a bank will ever approve me for a credit card. This speaker was special because he happened to be our Cast Manager's 90-year-old grandfather. It was great to see a man of his years with a mind that was still razor-sharp.

The show in this city was really special in that it was dedicated to not only all of the military families on the post, but also to all of the troops that are giving their lives overseas. I was a little nervous about doing my spoken word pieces, especially the seond one, because it actually mentions the war. But my worries were totally unfounded because after the show, Martin, our Cast Manager came up to me and said that I did such a god job that one of the Generals on post wants to use the second poem as part of his training. That felt really awesome when I heard that.

That's what happened in Colorado Springs... stay tuned for (drumroll...) Salt Lake City!

US Part 2.2: Albuquerque, NM

Before actually going there, whenever I heard Albuquerque mentioned, I always thought of it as the place where Bugs Bunny should have taken that left turn. Now, it is so much more than that. I met some wonderful people over there, did some incredible things, and gained yet another family. I also had to carry my trash around with me wherever I went for the entire week. But that's another story.

The host code theme for this week had to do with zoo animals since we were going to be performing at the Albuquerque Zoo. When I got my schedule, I got two surprises: a) that my roommate that week was going to be Abeba from Ethiopia, and 2) that I quickly had to find out what the heck a naked mole rat looked/sounded like, since that was the way Abeba and I were going to find our host family. I think I asked just about everyone in the cast that might have the slightest clue. Most of the cast just pointed and laughed at me, while the rest of them told me about Rufus, the naked mole rat character on some Nickolodeon cartoon that escapes me at the moment. With the vast amount of knowledge that Abeba and I had gathered about the naked mole rat, it was time to try to look for the owners of the house we'd be living in for the next week.

It wasn't too hard to figure out that the people standing around in bathrobes (and were thus "naked") were our host family. This week we had Miryam Miller, a medical student at the University of Arizona, her son Benjamin (8), daughter Maysie (6), stepdaughter Corinne, 18, and an orange cat, named appropriately enough, Orange Cat, which they didn't bring in to the Events Center. Usually I'm not hosted in houses with pets, but I think they made an exception this time because the cat had some thyroid problems, and therefore didn't shed a lot, so I wasn't allergic to him. I knew I was going to love this family when our first meal consisted of lasaagna. The stimulating conversation was definitely a plus, but if you ever want me to be a friend for life, cook me a pan of lasagna. It'll work every time.

I love it when there are kids under 15 in my host family. It adds something really cool to the whole dynamic. For instance, thanks to Benjamin, I learned all about the Eyelash Viper. Yes, they do actually exist, and they are Benjamin's favorite animal. I personally think 'Eyelash Viper' should have been our host code. They really impressed me when they were telling me about a movie they saw where one of the jokes had David Bowie as the punchline. I asked them if they knew who David Bowie was, and right away Maysie mentioned that he was the Goblin King in the Labyrinth. Now that is good parenting. Bravo, Miryam!

Now let's get back to the whole carrying-my-trash-around-with-me story. The theme of that particular week was the environment, and to illustrate how much waste each person of the cast generates, they had us carry our trash with us (minus our bathroom trash, of course.) This made the week really hard for me. At the beginning of it all, I made myself eat everything tat was on my plate, but then as my stomach started rebelling against me, I develloped the "find whoever is hungry, and give them the rest of the food" technique, which ended up working really well. It was a strategy that worked really well for the rest of the cast as well. At the end it was really interesting to see how much trash the cast generated. Unfortunately we couldn't get into a lot of detail because we had run out of time, ut we generated a lot of recyclables, which was awesome.

Regional Learning for Albuquerque was amazing. We drove to the Acoma Reservation, where the Acoma tribe lives. After a tour of the lovely Reservation Gift Shop, we all boarded a bus and went up on the mesa where the Acoma tribe has called home for millennia, give or take a couple hundred years. The English name of our tour guide was Gary, and he was such a dynamic speaker. What struck me was the culture that I experienced while on the mesa. I was definitely no longer in the United States. The Acoma tribe have their own culture, customs, values, ceremonies, and cuisine. When Gary took us to the cemetery, he told us that there were four layers of people burried, dating back to approximately the 1300s, with the latest addition to the cemetery being a couple of weeks prior to our visit. After going thrugh the cemetery, we toured the church which combined Catholicism with the tradional religion of the Acoma. It was actually one of the oldest chuches in the Southwestern United States. He gave us a tour of the whole reservations, and along the tour, there were various merchant booths set up where the natives sold their pottery. Many people in the cast stopped and bought some of it as souvenirs. I was afriad that if I had bought any, it would definitely break in my suitcase, so I decided against it. But I did sample some of their baked goods, and they were wonderful. I had one of their cookies, which is a cross between a dinner rool and a cake. It was deifintely different, but it was delicious.

One of the high points on the tour was being able to do a recording of Shine the Light for the cast. An alumnus who traveled in the '70s had seen a video of him performing a song for the cast, and it made him nostaglic, and he thought it would be awesome to give Cast B the gift of nostalgia as well. He was so passionate about this project that he started tearing up when he was explaining everything to us. His recording studio was state-of-the-art, and there was a whole slew of professional artists that had been there before us, such as Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey, and Outkast. We did tree takes of the song three, and then he had us record the names of us and those of all of our castmembers, which was our way of personalizing the recording.

For the entire week, we were dreading our show day because we knew that when we got done with our show, we'd only have a couple of hours to sleep, because we were volunteering at a 'trash fiesta,' which took place in a landfill, and was designed to make Albuquerquians more aware of the stuff they were throwing away. Everybody on the cast that I talked to really didn't think it was worth it to wake up at 3 in the morning to go tell people about the wonders of waste reduction. And we all thought it was a bizarre time to be having something like this, which was open to the entire city of Albuquerque. The morning of show day it was revealed to us that the trash fiesta didn't really exist. We were all going to help out with the annual Balloon Fiesta! The Balloon Fiesta is an event where balloonists from all over the world come and do various things, such as a balloon glow, where throughout the evening the fully inflated balloons turn on their gas and the whole balloon lights up. But the event the cast helped out with was the Mass Descent, where 200+ balloons all take to the skies together. There were some of us that helped crew the balloons (which includes inflating the balloons and getting them ready to fly; some of the people who helped crew the balloons actually got to go up with the pilots.) and there were some of us that helped the Make A Wish Foundation's New Mexico chapter seel Balloon Fiesta calendars and programs. I did the latter. It was great helping out an organization that did so much for children with terminal diseases, and it also allowed us ample time to scope out all of the food vendors in the area.

For the actual show day, we performed at the Albuquerque Zoo, where some pretty big acts have played. My host mom said that she had seen the Indigo Girls play there a couple of years ago. The facility definitely had it's pros and it cons. It ws such a nice area to preform because it was outside, but we the stage had a roof, and it was actually in the shape of a hippo's mouth, which ws hella cool. Not only that, but if any one of us had fallen off the stage, we would have fallen into a duck pond that was filled with hundreds of different varieties of water fowl, and a pair of swans. Unfortunately, the stage wasn't really designed for shows with 100 performers, and it was hard for me to get around backstage, with everybody all back there at the same time. But everyone went crazy at the show, and really got into it. My host family liked it, and it even inspired my host sister, Corinne, to apply.

Travel day was probably one of the lowest days of the tour. One of our castmembers' fathers had passed away from a heart attack the night before, and she had to fly back home for a couple of weeks. It was ironic, because hte host family that I was staying with had lost the father from a heart attack in April, and so my Host Mom became a single parent. So, my host mother went over to my castmate and talked with her for a little while, which I thought it was awesome. It was really sobering to realize that our lives do go on back at home, and that things you never thought could happen can take place. We all hugged her and told her that we would support her no matter what. That is what is so great about the Up with People program: when you are finished, you end up with a global family. She originally thought that she'd meet up with the cast in the Philippines, but we found out this week that she'll be coming back to the cast on Tuesday in Sioux Falls!

Next stop: Colorado Springs, CO!