US, Part 2.7: Sioux Falls, SD

When you come from the east coast, you don’t get the chance to appreciate wide-open expanses of land that seem to stretch out forever. I had no idea that there was this much un-fooled-around-with land out there, all tranquil and serene. To get to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, from Aberdeen you have to pass through some pretty interesting cities. Riding along in the tour bus, I would see places like, “Arrowhead, Population 12.” and 30 minutes down the road you’d see another sign: “Custerville, Population 4.” Right afterwards you’d see two or three random houses, side by side. Then you’d come to the realization that in that split second you’d seen the entire town of Arrowhead or Custerville pass by the window, and that would make your head hurt a little, because you'd try to wrap your brain around questions like, “Where does the state get all that money to replace the sign every time someone either moves away from, or is born in Arrowhead, South Dakota?” and, “If you live in Custerville, and your house is on fire, how long does it take for the fire department to show up?” and even more perplexing: “If there are 4 residents in the town, and two of those residents are under the age of 18, and the other two residents are married, how do you choose a mayor?”

The day we reached Sioux Falls was one of the busiest travel days we had on the tour. After Marv and The Other Guy That Particular Week parked the buses, we all piled in to a gym connected to a church, and were instructed to sit in the middle of the floor. After we went through the week’s schedule and found out that we were sponsored by Burger King, they told us that this was the week of the Hometeam Olympics. Every cast is divided up into hometeams who get together periodically and do group activities or discuss things going on that week. So, we split up into hometeams and were informed of the events that we would be competing in: Musical Chairs, Tug of War, Pictionary, an alphabet game whose name escapes me, a statistical quiz about the numbers involved in the tour, and a special outdoor activity that would decide the ultimate winners. They passed us the quiz and told us to fill it out during the course of the game.

First up, it was Tug of War. The organizers of the hometeam olympics thought that just regular rope would withstand the force of teams with a combined total of 24 people pulling on it in opposite directions for a long period of time. Well, the rope stood up for the first round. The second round was off to a good start when all of a sudden we heard a big snap, and both of the teams went down with a thud. Little did we know afterwards that when Kirk hit the floor, he landed wrong and ended up breaking his finger. I think next time they had a better rope.

Then, it was Musical Chairs:





Let’s have a moment of silence for the three folding chairs that perished during the course of the game... It turns out that 107 people shouting at the same time can get pretty loud. I think they could hear us screaming all the way in Arrowhead.

After all of that, the third event was Pictionary, which was interesting, because instead of playing one word at a time, we played it like the end game of Win, Lose, or Draw, where you have a certain amount of time to draw ten words, and the team that ended up with the most words guessed moved on to the next round where the winner would be determined. Naturally, the team who was lucky enough to have Chihiro, the graphic designer from Japan, ended up winning. It was really interesting to see how much talent this cast had when it came to visual arts. And it was also interesting to see how some people just have absolutely no talent whatsoever. But we love them, anyway!

The next game we played was something I’d never seen before. I am not sure what they called the game, but the object was to be the first team to make formations of certain letters and numbers on the gym floor without talking. I’m not sure if I was an advantage or disadvantage to my team. Even though we were pretty darn quick, there always seemed to be a team that was slightly quicker than we were, and it always seemed to be the team closest to the head judge... Anyway, our team lost, and all we had to do was find out what the outdoor challenge would have in store for us.

Because I have only so much space, and this activity is really hard to explain, I’ll just post a video of what we had to do, and showcase the speed with which my hometeam won this particular activity.





After everything was tallied up, and scored, it was a hometeam that I wasn’t a part of that won. Oh well... the games were fun, and a wonderful change of pace from the normal day to day activities on the tour.

Then we were told to clean up and get into our number 2s for a press conference and host family pick up. Up with People has a special dress code that dictates what we wear. Number 5s are the crappiest clothes that we own that we usually wear when we’re out painting walls in exotic locations. As the numbers get smaller, our clothes get nicer. So, therefore, number 1s are our nicest clothes that we wear when we meet really important people like governors and mayors. Whenever we’d get off the bus, we’d have to be dressed in our number 2s so that we would look presentable to our host families and to any kind of media and paparazzi that happened to be there as we got off the bus. I remember one time Angela forgot to put her number 2 in her backpack for our trip to Albuquerque, and had to wait on the bus until the news crew had left, because she was in a number 3. I have no idea why I went on this little tangent. Apparently I have a lot to say about our dress code. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah... the press conference.

The press conference was a time for the cast to get oriented on what significance of the week was and what we were going to be doing, and to meet our host families. First, we found out that we had the potential of having the biggest US audience since Up with People was reformed, since our show facility had a capacity of 2,000 seats. So we needed to do as much as possible to get the word out there and raise money for our sponsors. Then a couple of people spoke about the history of Sioux Falls, including the mayor, and he told us that having so many young people from all around the world in Sioux Falls was a momentous occasion and he welcomed us all.

Then it was time to meet our host families. This city was unique in that instead of host codes, we had differently shaped keys that would only fit in our host families’ locks. This was good because we kind of got to meet everyone else’s host family before we met our own. My roommate that week, Colin Duckett from Texas, searched frantically for our host family, trying everybody’s lock. Finally, we saw a woman on the other side of the room that looked like her lock colors matched our key. Sure enough, it was a match. We were to be staying with the Roberts family, Judie, her husband, and their son and daughter, Sarah and Andrew. This was a unique family in that Sarah used a mobility scooter like mine, and so I had no problems getting around the house. What I particularly liked about this family is that every night after dinner we each would have an ice cream sundae with whatever topping we wanted on it. I would naturally drown mine in butterscotch and hot fudge to the point where that’s all you’d taste. Another cool thing about this family was that there was a old fashioned player piano in the basement that Mr. Roberts played for us. I had never before actually seen a player piano play all by itself. Colin and I spent at least 2 hours down in the basement listening to Mr. Roberts play. When you live an itinerant life, and you go from place to place, and live with a whole bunch of people from a varied array of lifestyles, you have no idea what is going to happen from one week to the next.

And that is no truer than when you are traveling in Up with People. If someone had asked me if I thought the cast would be performing during halftime at a high school football game in 15˚ weather, I would have responded by asking them if they were on psychotropic drugs. But I would have been wrong... So painfully, awkwardly, wrong. You see, it turns out that in order to promote the show that week, we were asked to perform a couple of songs for an O’Gorman High School football game. In sub-freezing temperatures. In our thin show costumes. And we had to act like we were enjoying ourselves, and not at all pre-hypothermic. I hope you know where I’m heading with this, because I could continue if you really want me to. I have never been that cold in all my life, and I’m from Maine. Luckily we were only doing three songs, so it took all of 15 minutes to perform. However, 15 minutes is a long time when the vitreous humor in your eyeballs is freezing solid. Did I mention it was cold? Anyway... all of the South Dakotans in the stands certainly understood our plight, and cheered us on, and waved signs at us. And it was kind of cool, because the scoreboard had a mini-Jumbotron (a Minitron?) on it, and I was told later that during a whole chorus of Up with People, I was on the Minitron, frozen eyeballs and all. It was probably my first and last time on anything with “tron” in its name... After all of that, my host family’s house had never looked better, or warmer.

Our theme in Sioux Falls was poverty in the world. This one we really understood, because we had had a taste of extreme poverty in Cabo. To really drive the point home, we had a couple of things planned. The whole cast was split up into small groups, and had to do various activities. I was in a group of 6 people and we were told that we were a family in Africa and then we were given 5 or 6 cardboard boxes and told to build a structure under which all of us could sleep at night, and this is the finished product:





After that was all said and done, we went back into the gym where there was a makeshift museum set up along the walls where there were pictures of what extreme poverty looked like, one of the pictures showed an african boy that was so starved that his stomach was distended and you could see his ribs, and it was plainly obvious that he hadn’t had water in days, or even months. It really hit home to me that I could have just as easily been that African child, and really all it comes down to is where you are born and who you are born to. There were other pictures of people scraping by on $1 or less a day. Then I thought of some of the very generous people who donated money so that I could go on this trip, the people like you and me who can afford simple luxuries like clean drinking water, or decent-quality fresh food and the oven or stove or microwave to cook it in, or a flushing toilet, or a bed... And I think of all of the frivolous things that the people who have an overabundance of money spend their fortunes on. The $10,000 pieces of jewelry that walk out of my Cabo host brothers’ store, the yachts, the big flat-screen HD TVs, and I think of how much of a better life all of these people in the pictures could have if they could get some of this money.

After the museum, we sat down to dinner. As far as the tour went, this was a very out-of-the-ordinary dinner. Earlier in the day, the poverty committee tossed a bunch of coins in the air, for people to catch. There were people who caught a whole bunch of coins, there were people who caught a couple of coins, and there were people who didn’t catch any coins at all. The people who caught a whole bunch of the coins became the Upper Class; the ones who caught a couple of coins became the Middle Class, and the rest of us were under the poverty line.

Dinner that night had three things on the menu: for the Upper Class diners it was a full 4-course meal, complete with a salad course, a bread course, an entrée, and a desert course, with a selection of carbonated beverages. For the middle class it was rice, beans, and a jug of water. For the poor people it was half-cooked rice and a glass bottle of water, that turned out to be salt water. I was in the group of people living under the poverty line. Here’s the set up of the gym floor:



The middle class were on the far left, and had the circle of folding chairs and the plastic table. The poor people sat in the middle of everything, and only had cardboard; the upper class on the far right had two tables with tablecloths and centerpieces and all of that stuff. They also had a staff of people taking their orders and serving them food. On either side of the low class people, there were blue jump ropes that signified oceans, and whenever one of the poor people’s feet would accidentally touch the rope, a member of the upper class wait staff would curtly bark out, “You are disturbing or guests! Move your foot!” This happened so often that the wait staff decided to stand tables on their sides between them and the poor people so that the upper class wouldn’t be disturbed. That was fine with me, because it somewhat blocked the delicious smell of the food that I wouldn’t be eating that night.

A couple of moments later, I saw the very environment-savvy, non-wasteful Ellen Enebo slide the garbage can in full sight of the middle and lower classes, and very purposefully scrape all of the food that the upper class people didn’t end up eating into the trash. The worst was when the garlic bread all went in the garbage can. I think at that moment, my heart did a reverse Grinch and actually shrank two sizes. I looked down at my bowl of undercooked rice, and finished the last of it, trying to forget the gruesome image that I had just bore witness to. But, one very cool thing happened during the hunger banquet:





When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade!

After the whole hunger banquet had ended we all sat down as a cast and processed the events of the day. What began as a discussion turned into an outpouring of emotion as people started sharing their personal stories of the poverty they had witnessed in their own countries. That is when some things started to click for me: I was so lucky that I was born where I was born and that I had two loving, fairly well-off families that could support me if I needed it. I am from one of the richest countries in the world, and would never face living in a cardboard box, and looking around the room I realized how fortunate the whole cast was to be able to have this experience of traveling the world and actually going out there to help the people that most desperately needed it.

When they announced at the end that our host families were given explicit instructions not to feed us that night, my stomach started doing flips, and my mouth got a little dry as it wasn’t going to be enjoying an ice cream sundae that night. But hey, despite the extremely loud protests from my digestive tract, for the first time I had a clear picture economically of where my place was in this world, and I knew that I’d have a good breakfast in the morning.

The show that week was amazing. We reached our goal of 2,000 people, and the gym that we performed in was packed! It’s so great to look out into the audience before the show and not see one empty chair, and know that they all came to see us entertain them. It’s also great to look out in the audience and see some of the friends you had made that week and get their reactions after the show, and know that you added a little something to their lives.

Sioux Falls was definitely one of the most memorable cities of the tour, and this was particularly poignant as it would be our last travel day completely within US borders, and soon we’d be in the tropics.

As Marv and The New Other Guy That Week pulled the buses out of the driveway, we all waved to our host families, and thought of what North Platte, Nebraska might bring us.

US, Part 2.6: Aberdeen, SD

After being in a big city like Cheyenne, Wyoming, it’s good to be in a place that has much more of a small-town feel to it. Our next stop, after Cheyenne, was Aberdeen, South Dakota, where we were welcomed because of the diversity of our group. It so happens that ever since Aberdeen has existed, there really has been no diversity to speak of. Recently, there has been talk of people from other places settling in Aberdeen. It seems as though the city has been resistant to other cultures and backgrounds, and so a Diversity Committee was formed to help the town make adjustments by learning about what other cultures have to offer through learning about the other cultures themselves.

Aberdeen, in fact, was so diversity-phobic that they had a really difficult time placing us into host families. Thank God for the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, because if it weren’t for them, 14 of us wouldn’t have had a place to stay. At first when I saw that I’d be living with nuns, I was kind of weary about it, since a) when I think of nuns, I think of Catholic school nuns whose main idea of discipline is a ruler against the knuckles, and b) I disagree with a lot of what the Catholic church teaches. But, being an Uppie, I decided to keep an open mind about everything, and I am so glad that I did. The Sisters welcomed all of us with open arms, and were really interesting to talk to. One of the Sisters’ families was from Orr’s Island, Maine, and when she found out I was from Maine, she almost started crying. It so happens that her family had been there forever before they settled in South Dakota. All of the Sisters were really interested in Up with People, and what the mission of the organization was. But more than that, they really enjoyed getting to know us all and hearing about the different places we called home.

That particular host family day was particularly memorable. The Sisters decided to give us a tour of the convent and show us the history of their order of nuns. One of the Sisters that gave us a ride to the facilities and made sure we were fed and warm was the Archivist for the Sisters of the Presentation. So, she gave us a tour of the mini museum that was enclosed within the convent. Then she showed us the convent itself. When you’re a member of a convent, especially the Sisters of the Presentation, you are very well taken care of, and when you get so that you aren’t able to take care of yourself, because of your age or whatever, there’s a staff of nurses there that make sure you get the care you need. It was great to see some of the older Sisters, and talk to them. One of them even let us in to their room and showed us around a little bit. I never dreamt in a million years that I’d ever have the opportunity to tour a convent.

After getting the tour, they showed us their chapel. It was one of the most beautiful chapels I’ve seen. Granted, I’ve only seen about 3 chapels in my life, but that’s beside the point. There were high ceilings, and really nice hardwood floors, and over in an alcove of the chapel was a bookcase of big red-leather-bound books that listed the information of all of the Sisters that had ever been in the Order, and it’s customary when a Sister dies to put their name in the book to memorialize them. What amazes me about these Sisters is that they sacrifice so much in order to serve God and help their communities out in whatever capacity.

In the evening, the Sisters gathered us all together, and we had a board game night! Finally, I got my board game night! The first game we played was a game called Apples to Apples, where you have 7 noun cards in your hand, (such as Cher, chicken pox, hot water heaters, strawberries, the Boston Tea Party, etc.) and each player takes their turn drawing an adjective card (e.g. icky, suspicious, rare, etc.) and the rest of the players have to put down one of their noun cards that they think best matches the adjective card. Then, the person who drew the adjective card chooses the winner, and then at the end of a pre-determined number of rounds, the person with the most points wins. During one of the rounds, the adjective was ‘boring,’ and one of the nouns that was put in was ‘church.’ And all of us Uppies looked at each other, like, “Woah! Somebody actually said ‘church!’” And ‘church’ ended up winning that round, and when one of the Sisters cried, “That was mine!!” we all started laughing so hard. At the other table, they were playing Dominos, and one of the Sisters playing that game was blind. After that game had finished, Cheryssa, from New Jersey, asked the Sister if she could read the braille note that Jess Rojas had written to her at the end of our Mexican tour. (Jess was the blind person who traveled with the previous two casts, and who was our ‘Special Guest Star’ for the Mexican tour, and Arizona.) It was really cool to see the sister translate what was in the note, because it was kind of surreal hearing Jess’ words coming out of a nun’s mouth. And it was also great to watch the interaction between Cheryssa and the Sister. I could tell it was a neat moment in Cheryssa’s experience, and it was for mine, too.

Aberdeen was packed with interesting stuff to write about. Now is the time that I shall talk to you about Up with People Land. The original purpose of Up with People Land was to be a simulation on immigration, since that was the theme of that particular week. On the way to the cabin, my friend Phil from Denver passed me a piece of paper and told me that they were going to do an immigration simulation, and I was to be an undercover member of the Border Patrol, and if anyone found out about this little twist, he’d have me drawn and quartered. Not really, but I saw you falling asleep and thought I’d spice up the blog a little bit.

Anyway, after I read through the paper, I knew this was going to be a very interesting education week, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Education Team passed out different immigration papers to people signifying different immigration statuses, from ‘Migrant Worker,’ all the way up to ‘Citizen.’ What made this game interesting was that if you were a citizen, you had first dibs at lunch, you got to sit wherever you wanted on the bus, and you had the power to make laws come before the people. If you were a migrant worker, you basically had no rights at all. At the beginning of the week, it was stated that only citizens could elect officials, and vote for laws. And that if you had a status below citizenship, you could “marry” a citizen in order to gain that status.

When the game was introduced to us, it was stated that in order to win the game, you had to have a job and a place to live. When I opened my “passport” up, I worked for the Border Patrol, and had a house with a room to rent. I had basically won the entire game without even doing anything. It just goes to show you how incredibly awesome I am. The duties of the Border Patrol was to make sure that the Citizens’ rights were being upheld, and to enforce laws. My job as an undercover Border Patrol officer was to make friends and get inside information so that I could report any wrongdoings to my colleagues, and have the wrong-doers arrested. So, this meant that I really had to trudge up all of my improv skills, and pretend like I was playing the game like the rest of them.

As soon as that game started, it was like the cast was transported to an episode of The Twilight Zone. After the game was introduced, it was a free-for-all for the immigrants to find a citizen to marry so that they could have rights. During the first five minutes of the game, Cathrine from Denmark asked if she could rent my room, and thirty seconds after that, Anika from Germany asked me to marry her. I really liked being super popular.

In order for Anika and I to be married, we had to schedule an appointment with one of the Justices of the Peace so that they could verify the veracity of our intent to marry. So, that night at the campfire, I saw the Right Honorable Russel Reitter, and asked him if he had time for me and my future Frau. He said that the first possible time the next day was at breakfast, right before morning meeting. And Anika and I both agreed. The next morning, Anika and I decided to have breakfast together to compare notes, like our favorite colors, how many brothers and sisters we had, etc., and waited for Judge Reitter to interview us. He came over and whisked Anika away, and in a few minutes came back to me:

Judge Reitter: Okay, sir, it’s your turn.
Me: Okay.
J.R.: Does Anika like to put bananas on her cereal?
Me: Yes.
J.R.: What is Anika’s favorite Star Wars character?
Me: Princess Leia?
J.R.: If a tree fell in the woods, and no one was around to hear it, what kind of car would Anika drive?
Me: A Volkswagen?
J.R.: Uhhh... Congratulations! You’ll make a fine couple!

Because I haven’t posted any video on here, I’ll post a video of my wedding to Anika. Enjoy!


Video courtesy of Katrin Skora

That was the nice and flowery side of Up with People Land. In and amongst all of the “weddings” that took place, there was some pretty hardcore politicking going on as well. There were arguments all over the place about the unfair treatment of non-citizens, especially since we as citizens got the good seats on the bus, and got first dibs on the food, yadda, yadda, yadda...

Then there was all the drama surrounding the election of the Mayor of Up with People Land. Before the election, there was a vote to let people other than citizens run for the highest office, and it passed. When Ryan Aguirre of Texas, (who was a migrant worker) ended up being elected, there was a huge uproar and rebellion that rose up in the group, led by Martin Brennan, our Cast Manager. This group mustered up quite a following, so therefore I thought it was my duty as an undercover member of the Border Patrol to protect the Mayor at all costs. So, I decided to join this little group, and find out as much information as I could and report it back to Ryan via facebook so that he could be one step ahead of the game at all times. Things just got so out of hand: people got assassinated, the Japanese were targeted and kept getting thrown in jail, and Mayor Aguirre ended up stepping down, and giving the position to Fenna from Germany, who ended up being Mayor for all of two hours.

So... what did I learn from this whole Up with People Land thing? Well, I learned that the best job in the world is being an undercover cop, and that when marrying a foreigner, one of the most important conversations to have is about one’s favorite Star Wars characters.

Another really awesome thing that happened in Aberdeen was the annual UwP halloween party. This was a particularly interesting part of the week, since Halloween is typically an American holiday, so for many of my castmates, this was their very first time dressing up.

For a good part of the week, I racked my brain for a really good costume. One that was cheap, and that stood out from the rest. On our information board, there were various costume contests, from the most scary, to the most bizarre, to the most original. As I stared at the information board, which we called our “Wicky-Wicky-Wicky Wall,” wondering what I could be, it suddenly dawned on me: I could be the Wicky-Wicky-Wicky Wall itself! And that would make me a shoo-in for the Best Original Costume Contest. Amazingly, Ai, who was in charge of the WWWWall for that particular round, and Molly Robertson whose department handled the wall, let me take the whole thing with me and tape various pieces of paper from it all over myself and my scooter. I spent $0 on a totally original costume. I was so freakin’ psyched!

When I got to the party, I instantly saw that I had some stiff competition in my category. There was a huge green dinosaur rocking it out on the dance floor (Who turned out to be Brittany from Rhode Island.) Then I saw Nathalie, one of the Swedes, was dressed as a fork. She had a foil-covered box and tines spearing a cardboard sandwich cutout sticking out of her head. But I think that my favorite costume by far was Javi’s Mormon missionary costume. He had the whole thing figured out: the suit and tie, the Book of Mormon, and the bicycle helmet. The only thing he was missing was his name tag.

Another one of the contests was the group costume contest where a group of people dressed up in themed costumes. The 7 girls that lived with us in the convent were the Seven Deadly Sins, which was interesting, since we all were living with nuns. But they took it up with the Sisters, and they were okay with it. The road staff dressed up like dominoes, and throughout the night, they all get into a line and then toppled over onto each other. It was hugely creative, and showed that they could topple over as a team, which was an inspiration to us all. But the convent girls did us proud by taking the category.

After a few other categories went by, it was time for the Most Original Costume competition. I pretty much I had it in the bag, even over the dinosaur and Nathalie the Fork. The other competition I came up against was Elizabeth and Ben who were dressed up as Anthony our lighting guy’s lab assistants. The audience voted for the winner by cheering, and the people who got the loudest cheers won. When they went through everyone, I was in a tie with Ben and Elizabeth, so everybody voted again, and again it seemed like dead heat, and they ended up giving it to Ben and Elizabeth. I was so robbed! I was the freaking Information Wall! Anyway, I’m happy for them, and they were worthy opponents. My only consolation is that I totally won in an alternate universe.

Okay... enough about Halloween.

Usually we have Sundays totally off for host family day, but since the Aberdeen Diversity Committee invited us here to show the town different cultures, the cast put together a diversity fair with all sorts of booths. At one end of the fair we made a “metal detector” out of cardboard, and each visitor had to step through the “metal detector” to get a “passport” with pages that included questions on each of the booths. If you got a stamp on every page by answering the questions about the booth right, you won a prize. So it was a way to educate the residents on different cultures.

We had a booth on every different region of the world represented in the cast, as well as a face painting booth, and a greetings booth where people could learn various ways of saying “hello,” and “I love you.” As an amateur vexillologist, I naturally devised an, “Identify the World Flag” game for the face painting booth so that people could get a stamp in their “passport.” Mandy Shoaf from North Carolina came over and played my game: “Okay... there’s Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Japan, China backwards...” At those words, my face dropped, and I said, “No way!! I didn’t draw China backwards!” So, after I had confirmation from one of our Chinese castmates, I had to switch the Chinese flag... talk about an ego bruiser.

After all the faces were painted, and the passports were passed out, it was time to pack up and head off to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the penultimate city in our penultimate country of the tour.