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.
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.
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