Hey all

So last week was completely CRAZY!! The Macy's Parade was so much fun and exciting and made me nervous all at the same time!! Plus, my mom, dad, sister, and little brother came to visit me in NYC and it was fun to hang out with them, tell them about my adventures, and do some sight seeing!! It was sad to see them go back home, but easy to say goodbye because I know I will see them in just a few short weeks. It is sad to say that my trip has almost come to an end. Also, to all of yall out there that I didn't get to spend Thanksgiving with, HAPPY B-LATED TURKEY DAY!! I can't wait to see so many of my family and friends when I get home and as the christmas season approaches so quickly!! So anyways, back to New York... While my family was there we spent a lot of time sight seeing and that was great!! We went to time square, Little Italy, China town, Rockafeller Center and many more places! It was fun to explore the city. It was also great to have my actual family in the audience for our performance as well, because although I love performing for my host families, it is just extra special to have my actual family there, supporting me, and being able to take in what I have been doing for the past 5 months!! So it was great!!
I am now currently in Bernerdsville, New Jersey and will be here for the rest of the week!! My host family here is great, especially the kids because they have so much ENERGY!! I don't know how they get it, but I wish they could bottle it up and give some to me!! Today we had our last BTS, a mini show that we usually perform at schools for kids that we work with, and it was weird to think about. I guess all good things come to an end and it is just proof that this entire experience will eventually end as well. Another cool thing about this week is that we will be spending all of Thursday and Friday in NYC at the United Nations! I am so excited for this because we will get to hear from some incredibly intelligent people that have passion for issues that we as a cast are just learning about and finding our passion for!! Don't know if that completely made sense, but it did in my head before I wrote it down so I am just going to leave it. Well that is all for now, I will update soon again!! Peace out!

Late as usual!

SO it has been FOREVER since I last updated! Life has continued to fly by and with only about a month of my trip left, I cant quite grasp how fast it has really gone and how in the blink of an eye I will be done and returning to life as usual, but it wont be 'as usual' because I am not 'as usual' anymore and so it will be like experiencing everything in life again, but through different eyes! Crazy right! By the way, I am sorrz if my z and y are switched up because although I am in the states, I am on a German computer. :) So basicallz I am not readz for this incredible experience to be over, but I am getting excited to take all of mz experiences here and get the opportunitz to applz them all to real life experiences!!! yay!!! So anzwazs, here is the update! Get READY, SET, GO!!!
So the rest of Winston-Salem was great!! Mz host familz was incredible, as usual, and we spent the week in the cast doing a lot of preparation for the MACY'S Thanksgiving daz Parade!!! It was so crazy to actuallz be working on it becasue it ment that it was getting closer which is alwazs exciting! For our regional learning in the citz we went to a place called Old Salem where we saw one of the biggest organs (the instrument, not body parts) in the world, at least I think that is what thez said. Anzwazy, so it was crayz big! For our communitz impact during the week, we went to a salvation Armz store and worked in the back arranging and hanging clothes and stocking them out on the floor I wont lie when i saz that it wasnt the most fun CI I have ever done, but it had its moments. For instance, NC has been going through a drought, along with manz other states on the east coast, and so it was cool to come out of the back room to move the clothes to the floor and see that it was POURING rain outside and it continued like that for the entire daz!! So we joke that Up with People brought the rain!! :) The show daz for this week was crayz!! We has so manz things going on. in the morning the new rotation of interns was announced and I found out that I am the new lighting intern so I get to work with all the lights for the show and will eventuallz work up to programming the lights for the show and actuallz running them during the show!! Crayz cool!! Also, we had a 'show me' before our show. This is a chance for the students to work on a piece of music or dance from the show and present it to the cast! I sang a song called 'one to one'. It went ok but I was soooo completelz nervous at first that it made it hard to concentrate! Then after that we actuallz had rehersal and performed that evening.
Next update tomorrow!!

An update finally!!

So to update all y'all!! I know it has been awhile, but here goes... Belgium continued to be great and my host family there was INCREDIBLE!! It seems that every host family I stay with is so different and yet they all are wonderful!! To highlight Belgium a bit, we performed two shows on our show day there and I think the first show was my worst by far. I remeber being told in the beginning of our trip that we will all have a bad show at one point or another, but I never believed it and for the most part was pretty consistent. Then came Belgium... during the first show I did so many things wrong and I seriously felt like my body was detached from my brain at moments. So to fill you all in, the show started and everything was going great until before the rythm portion of our show. I had been moved to mic groups for the song before rythm and then during rehersal my enterance for the bucket portion was switched to the other side, so I got off stage after mic groups and was saying something to a cast mate when all of a sudden I heard the intro music to rythm and got this look of "oh crap" on my face and sprinted to the other side of the stage so that I could grab my bucket and go but by the time I got to the other side I was way late so I instead got to watch everyone else do buckets instead. I know this doesn't sound that bad, but believe me, it gets better. So I was really mad at myself for not paying attention and not having my head in the game as well as it could have been but it was not a big deal cuz it happens to everyone at some point in time or another and so i tried to brush it off and just continue with the rest of the show. Then we get to the Culture Jam portion of our show and I am in mic groups for the American swing dancing song. So I am up on the mic platforms jamming out because you are suppose to just have a good time with the song and so I was really getting into it, then we came to the part where we all throw our hands up in the air repetidly from one side to the other. So as I go to do this I forget that the mic is in front of me and completely knock the mic over and see it fall in slow motion and hit Yui (one of the main dancers) in the head and then hit Chris (her dance partner) and then proceed to fall on to the floor with a loud thud and a high screech....ooops :( So at this point I would have loved a picture of my face because I am sure it was probably one of complete horror and then turned quickly into an "oh my gosh, what do i do now!" face!! Then I recomposed myself and kept jamming out on the mic platform, trying to pretend that nothing had happened when in fact I thought that after the show I would be killed by Gaby (the head of the tech team) because in staging they gave us all a big lecture on how to properly carry a mic, and how you treat a mic which definitely didn't include throwing it on the floor... But thankfully they didn't kill me cuz otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell this story to all of you today. I did however feel so bad after the little incident that it was hard to get back into the rest of the show, but what made it even more wierd was that the tech team never said anything to me... Seriously not a word, like nothing ever happened... I expected to never live it down or to get a rediculous nickname out of the entire situation, but seriously, nothing. the next show however did go 85 times better than that show did, I guess we are all just allowed a bad show at some point and I had mine. So that was Belgium and I think my host family would agree with the fact that it was probably my most clumsy city. I seriously dropped something on an hourly basis there.

After Belgium, we boarded the plane and headed to Atlanta, Georgia! We actually stayed in a suburb of Atlanta called Gwenitt County. My host family here was also very great! To highlight what happened in Atlanta, for community service, we did our first Stand for Peace in Creekland Elementary School for a bunch of 6th graders and it was FABULOUS!! I had such a blast with the kids there and I can't wait to continue doing SFP in other schools in the states. After SFP, we performed a mini show for all of the 6th graders and it was so great! Officially one of my favorite noises in the world is a gym full of kids performing Stomp on the bleachers with us!! I think it just goes to show how easy it is to have a positive impact on young kids if you just take the time to spend with them. Also in Gwenitt County we spent some time at the Boys and Girls clubs in the area. My favorite time there was playing touch football with a bunch of 10 year old boys that didn't think I would want to play or could play!! I am glad my coordination was working on that day because I really needed it! I had such a blast with those kids! And one final highlight of Georgia was going with my host family to Stone mountain and seeing the lazer show there. One of the very first songs they played at the lazer show was the song by Bon Jovi and the girl from Sugarland and I think it is called something like "Who says you can't go home" but in the song it talks about going all around the world and that no matter where you go or how far you travel, home will always be there when you want to go back. The song made me really think about how by the time the program is over and I fly back to Minnesota, I will have traveled all the way around the world and how i will go back to my home looking at it through different eyes knowing what I know now, but I also think I have gained more of an appreciation for it and the people there! So it was such a great feeling to know that I have loved all the places I have been, will continue to love all the places I have yet to go, but still have a love for where I have came from!! So that is great I think!! That caps up Georgia and from there we headed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina!

I have been here for just 2 days now and haven't gotten the chance to do or see much, but we had a discussion today about tobacco companies and the positive and negative affects on people and communities that tobacco has had and continues to have. We discussed this because Winston-Salem was built on tobacco companies and so it is a topic that is interesting for this region! But that is all for now, my hands are exhausted!! Lots of love to all and goodnight!

Belgium!

So to update all of you... Crazy busy here all the time!!! Erfurt was great and it was so nice to see the city and really get to know my way around!!! We walked everywhere and it was great! Some highlights from there.... I think I had the coolest CI project so far when we were asked to paint a self-portrait of ourselves, not how we see ourself on the outside, but rather how we view ourselves from the inside out!! The coolest thing about this was that I had always thought I was horrible at painting, drawing, and basically anything artistic so when I was able to paint and it actually turned out better than I had hoped for, I realized that maybe I am not as bad as I thought I was! :) Next, the show was great and we had some guest break dancers perform in our show which was very cool and they were incredible! The only disappointing thing from the city was that the evening before the show I had my wallet and my camera stolen. :( But there is always a lesson to be learned and so it really brought me back to the reality that life is full of good and bad and that sometimes it takes a while to see the reason behind things that happen. The only thing that is really disappointing to me is that I had taken a picture of my painting and now I can never show it to the people I love back home, but such is life.

I am currently in Hasselt, Belgium and it is great! My host family is great and it seems that everyplace I go my host family is wonderful in thier own way! Today our CI consisted of going to a school for children and young adults with physical and mental disabilities. It was great because our job there was just to interact and play with the children! I completely had a BLAST and was continually amazed at how much life and energy these kids had! But that is all I have time for right now because it is time for dinner! Peace and love!

Wow, long time no post!!

So sorrz about the long time between posts, but I am currentlz in Germanz and would like to update all of zou on mz life so far!! First, the kezboards here have the z and the y in the opposite places than American kezboards and since I don't have the time or the patience to switch all of them, zou will just have to bear with me. So startíng with Vimmerbz, Sweden... After the cast arrived, the week flew bz with so much to be done but it all went off verz well with onlz some minor problems, which we sloved with ease!! I think the best part of the week was the end. Getting to watch all of mz cast members perform the show was incredible and it was great to sit in the audience and see the reaction on people's faces. I think it was especiallz cool to get to know so manz of the people in Vimmerbz and then get to see them react to the show and be moved bz it. It reallz brought me back to whz we do the show and gave me a renewed energz and spirit for performing it!! It was incredible to have people we had been working with for the past couple weeks come up to us with tears in their ezes after the show and tell us how much thez loved it and how important it is to have a show like this for people to see and understand. The next best thing was Sundaz which was a host familz daz and Sokheoun and I actuallz got to relax for the first time in what seemed like FOREVER!!! Our host familz took us on a walk through the woods, which was beautiful; then to the biggest Oak tree in Europe, which we weren't suppose to climb, but did it anzwazs; then to thier lake cabin, where we enjozed coffee and some treats; next we went to another host families house, where we got to have dinner, sing, plaz games, and just relax! After all of this, we went home and hung out for hours before finallz deciding to go to bed. It was seriouslz the best daz in Vimmerbz I think because I didn't have to think about anzthing work related and just got to enjoz mz host familz. The following morning we had to saz goodbze and this was so hard because I had gotten to feel so at home in mz host familz that I didn't want to leave and even though I was onlz there for 2 and a half weeks, it felt like much longer!

So we boarded the bus and headed to our next citz, Uelzen, Germany. While here we did manz things, but to highlight, mz host familz was intimidating at first but once I got to know them I reallz enjozed them and all that thez had to offer. the CI I was involved in for the week was working at an immigration house, which is a place that mainlz zoung immigrant children can come to and get help with thier German and their homework and just to socialiye and hang out. While we were there, we helped them prepare for a partz that thez were having the Major attend to trz to get more funding for their facilitz. It was cool helping them set up and get readz and I have now decided that if I am adding "partz planner for non-profit organiyations" to mz list of potential occupations!! So anzwazs, the show in Uelzen was great and it was fun to be back in it. Mz renewed spirit and I were readz to put on a great show! The next daz we spent with our host familz just relaxing and having a good time.

Finallz, zesterdaz we traveled to Erfurt, Germany. I have come to notice that I think it is funnz that I still get nervous before I meet mz host familz for the week. One would think that I have had so manz that I would be comfortable with it bz now, but I think a little nerves are good sometimes. So we got to Erfurt and met our host families, mz familz is great and thez have hosted UwP students manz times in the past (6 in total i think not including mz roommate and I). Thez alreadz seem like a lot of fun!! Also, zesterdaz we found out that when our cast is in New York in November, we will get the incredible opportunitz of going to the United Nations!!! I am completelz stoked about this and I need to start doing research on it so that I go in informed!! But that prettz much sums everzthing up for now!! Till next time, peace!

Execution is key!

So the cast arrived and oh what a great feeling!! I don't think that i have been hugged so much in one daz ever!!!! It was so great and I didn't realize initially how excited I would actually get to see the entire cast!! I could describe the feeling at first until a staff member came up to me and asked if it felt like Christmas and at first I was confused, but then it totally made sense!! I completely felt like a small child at Christmas! Like you spend so much time waiting for the day to come, and when it finally arrives, you can't believe it and all of the emotion of that day and the time that has been spent preparing for it just comes rushing forward and bursts out of you! And all of the things that you struggled with throughout the week doesn't really matter anymore because the cast is here!
It has also been great having the cast finally here in Vimmerby as well, and letting them experience the things that we had planned and set up thinking of them and how they would enjoy it or what they would get educationally from it! I was originally very nervous to run the city with the cast here and to be responsible for a group of 70 students for an entire week, but now that I have a couple days under my belt, I have gotten comfortable and really enjoy the pressure and the hard work! But can't add much more now, gotta go!!

Vimmerby - T-minus 1 day!

So it is officially one day before my cast arrives in Vimmerby and I am so excited!! It is a unique feeling because I am so excited to see my cast but I also know that things will really get stressful when they arrive and it will be sink or swim time! I am nervous now that the students will not like what we have planned for them or that someone will back out of our plans and it will cause everything that we have worked for to spin out of control! It makes me just a little nervous I guess. But anyways, planning for all of the students to arrive has been hecktic and hard but also a great learning experience for me. We did not have enough host families until yesterday! Crazy right, and we had been working our butts off to get them! I don't think there was ever a time in our advanced work when we weren't soliciting for host families!! But they are taken care of now so we are all breathing a bit easier. Also, the host family that Sokhoeun and I have been staying with has been WONDERFUL! They are so helpful and excited to have us staying in their home and are also taking 2 more students tomorrow! They are so great and our host mom keeps telling us that she is going to apply to be a road staff member because UwP sounds like so much fun and it would be cool to travel around the world with such energetic students! Personally I think she would be a great staff member because she has so much energy and vivacity for life, but also has that mom appeal and would keep all of the students in line!! (not that we as students misbehave) Our host family also consists of 3 sisters as well, not all of them are here becuase 2 have left for university, but so far we have met 2 and they are great! They all sing and dance together and are well known in the Vimmerby community for their talent! So we have had a blast here in vimmerby and are continuing to enjoy all that Vimmerby has to offer and I can't wait for the rest of our cast to get here to experience everything that we have in the past couple weeks. But that is all for now I guess, I have to get back to work!!

Oh Sweden

So I just realized that it has been FOREVER since I last posted anything! So to get you all caught up to date. We left Nampong, Thailand on the 4th and once again prepared for an incredibly long trip, this time to Espoo, Finland. We arrived in Espoo on the 5th and while the rest of the cast headed to thier host families, a fellow cast member and I boarded a plane to Stockholm, Sweden. We arrived in Stockholm and there we spent the night will UwP alumni! In the morning we boarded a trail to Vimmerby, Sweden where my cast member and I were to start our Advanced Team work. Advanced team is where students are chosen from the cast to go ahead of the cast and set up the cities that they are going to. Anyways, so we got to Vimmerby and I have been in a wonderland since. The area of Sweden that I am in is almost identical to Minnesota! It is crazy because everywhere you turn there are apple trees and pear trees and woods and lakes! It is so beautiful here and I feel like I am back home. One of the first things I did with my host mom was go for a walk in the woods behind thier house and we walked to this lake that was so calm you didn't want to touch the water cuz you were afraid you would shatter the glass that layed on top of it! Also, the town of Vimmerby is only about 8,000 people and so it is a very quaint town and when we walk down the streets it feels like you could be part of a fairy tail! In the summer, however, Vimmerby is full of tourists because Astrid Lindgren (the writer of Pippi Longstocking and many other children's books) grew up here and she themed most of her books off different places around Vimmerby! So everything and everyone here almost revolves around Astrid and Pippi! It is crazy!! I am having so much fun here planning things for the cast to arrive and I am really enjoying finding host families, figuring out the Community Impact Projects, and completing everything before the cast arrives. Every day that brings me closer to when the cast will come, gets me more and more excited! I can't wait for them to experience Vimmerby!

HOT HOT HOT!

So to update you all...It has been a complete rollercoaster the past couple days! Thursday we spent most of the day rehersing for our shows on Friday... It was especially interesting because we found out that we would be performing in a big alumninum shed. The acoustics were quite interesting and you would hear yourself after a 2 second delay...kinda funny actually. Also, there was no Air Conditioning, which in case you were wondering, the show is a naturally high energy show and I usually sweat a lot during a show in a 'regular' building so I was pretty drenched after the three shows on Friday. We performed 2 in the afternoon for school students and 1 in the evening for the general audience. We found out in that day alone we performed for over 10,000 people!! It was so crazy during the school shows because the kids we were performing for had never really gotten to see anything like this and so we were like rock stars in thier eyes which was cool but you had to be careful after the show so you weren't mobed by tiny Thai children!! The girls went especially crazy for some of the boys in our cast and everytime they would come out on stage all the girls would erupt in a high pitched scream! It was like being at a boy band concert! I realize now that I have sympathy for actual celebrities when they are mauled by their screaming fans!
I started Saturday by being completely exausted after all of the energy that I used up at the shows on Friday, but somehow found the energy to get into what was in store for us. We started the morning with a local speaker who had some incredible insight, and I think the best thing I took away from him was the difference between Western culture and Eastern culture and how in the east life is more focused on harmony and that the earth is very sacred. He also touched on how the trees are considered extra special. This really hit me as I started thinking about the rest of the week and how on Monday we are going to plant trees around the community with Monk. So we get to be involved in something that is considered a very spiritual and sacred act. Another thing that our speaker touched on was the fact that in Eastern culutre they worship the moon and so back when the US first walked on the moon, we saw it as a great accomplishment but while we were celebrating people half way around the world were crying because we had placed our feet (something they consider very dirty) on something they worshiped. This got me thinking about how so much of the US culture is about achievement and sometimes we get so caught up in what is happening around us we forget to consider how it will impact the people around us, or the people half way around the world.
After the speaker we went to the King Cobra Village and I was so excited to go and see the huge snakes but when I got there I was very suprised with what I saw. We got there and were told to go look at the animals and what we saw really hurt my heart. There were monkeys trapped in these tiny cages and you could tell they were full of anger from being trapped in such small cages. If you put your hand to close they would swat at it and try to grab things from you. I was watching one of the monkeys with a girl from the cast and she got too close trying to take a picture and the monkey grabbed the cord of her camera and started tugging on it full force. Then one of the workers came over and raised a hand to the monkey and it immediately cowered down like dogs do when they have been beaten and abused. This just tore my heart out. After that I moved on and kept looking at the animals when I came upon a big black bear that was sleeping in a cage that was probably no bigger than a 10'x10'x10' cage. It made me wonder how it got there because there aren't bears in Thailand. After this I had seen enough so I sat down for the show. When the show started 4 women came on stage and did a dance with the snakes around thier bodies and toward the end of the dance put the snakes' head in thier mouths and played it like a flute. It was especially hard to watch because the womens' eyes looked so lifeless like they hated what they were doing but it was a way to make money. After the women were done these men came out and started to do 'snake boxing' which was not what I expected to happen. It was so hard to watch because these men would make the snakes angry so they would flatten their 'necks' to look good for the audience, and then they would get the snakes to lunge at them, but many times the snakes would try to flee and the men would drag them back by the tails and make them fight. It was so hard to watch. I am still trying to process how I feel about everything because I know in my heart that it is wrong to treat animals like that, but if it is the only way for these families to make enough money to survive or to put their children through school, then is it tolerable?
Later in the afternoon we went to the local school and had cast olymics! I was so completely drained of energy that I was not excited at all to have to run around and act like I was enjoying it, but I was completely wrong. We ended up having wacky relay races (like potato sack races and coconut races)! It was so much fun and it had rained so the grass was muddy and we got so dirty. We then had an extreme eating contest where we had to dig things out of a pile of flour and eat bananas handing from a rope without our hands, etc. By the end it turned into a huge flour fight and we were all covered in mud and water and flour! It was so much fun and I think we all needed it after the more serious morning we had!! That is all I am writing for now because this post is so incredibly LONG!! Sawadee kaa! (goodbye in Thai)

Nampong oh ah ah!

On Monday we packed our bags and left the beautiful, sunny Phuket for Nampong, Thailand! It was hard leaving my host family in Phuket because I felt like I really got the opportunity to connect with them and I promised myself that some day I will travel back to Phuket to see them again!! From Phuket we had about a 15 hour trip to Nampong. During our travels, our flight to Bangkok was delayed and so we ended up arriving at Nampong around 11:30pm... Because we were so late our host family couldn't pick us up and so we ended up staying the night in a meditation room at a Monastary. We slept on bamboo mats on a tile floor. It was quite the experience.
Tuesday we started our CI and I was assigned to one of the hospitals in Nampong. This was absolutely INCREDIBLE because we were given a tour of the hospital and also got to speak with the head physician and I learned so many things about the main illnesses that affect the people in the Nampong area and it was also great to see how general hospital care here differed from hospital care in the U.S.A. Also, while I was there we got to color and play games with some of the children and gave them bed baths as well!! The entire experience was really great and it showed me how much passion I do have for health care. Also, during lunch Wiebke and I had a radio interview about UWP and I can now officially say that I was on the radio in Thailand!! It was also a good prep for my advance work in Sweden coming up and I hope it got all of the first time jitters out of the way.
Today was our 2nd CI day and I spent it painting a building at a boarding school for under privileged young boys. We painted an entire building inside and out and it felt great to accomplish so much for the school in just one day. I feel like every CI I do I find some sort of lesson that I wasn't expecting and I really appreciate the "ah ha!" moments that I have when I realize the lesson in front of me. After CI today we got together as a cast and discussed the issue of human rights. This was a very interesting topic for our cast and we had many different opinions which was great. I think that this was one of our harder education periods for our cast, but it was so good to have because it just affirmed the fact that UWP is hard and that you learn new things in very different ways and nothing is ever really spelled out for you because it is all about building your own opinion and having proper information to be able to defend your position. I still am unsure about some things concerning human rights, so I don't know if I have a definite opinion yet, but it is something I will continue to work on over the next couple days. So that is all for now! More next time!!

From Thailand to home

So itis crazy that in the past couple days so much has happened, not only for me here in Thailand, but for many family and friends back home. Here we continued to work with Habitat for Humanity and by the last CI day we had the entire foundation and the beginnings of the walls completed. It was such an incredible feeling to work so hard on something and it made me realize that I would have never worked this hard if I was building something for myself. The days spent at the site were absolutely PHENOMINAL and I would get done every day feeling completely physically drained but oh what a great feeling that was. Another great thing about the site were the men that were working with us... They spoke very little English, but yet throughout the days we would laugh together, and we learned to really work together. I think it was cool because they would stepped back and let us do as much as we could and then would step in and help us when we needed it. It was a great feeling when we got to the end of the last day and I realized that I was going to miss all of the men working with us. It was in this moment that I really understood the fact that actions speak louder than words! WOW!! Then today was the first day I heard about the flooding that has been happening back home and I haven't quite processed all of my feelings about it, but I think there is something to be said about how I am working so hard to build a home for people here and so many houses back home have been destroyed but that it will be ok because people and groups like UWP will come and support the communities and the families in them and they will work together to rebuild what has been lost. Through this, opportunities like the one I have had will be created and lessons will be learned. I can tell I am still processing everything, but I continue to count my blessings that my family is safe and I pray for the continued support of the people in the communities that have suffered.
Now on a lighter note, we performed our first show in Thailand today and it was absolutely wonderful!! It was crazy because all of the young Thai girls were going crazy over some of the guys in our cast. It was like they were famous rock stars or something!! It was so cool, they signed autographs, took pictures, it was a real celebrity event!! The show went well, and it seems like everytime I perform I think to myself, "oh I wish my family could be here to see this!" Anyways, Phuket has continued to be great and I continue to be pushed to my limits and am learning to really appreciate some things about home that I wish I had here... like cold weather!! :)

More from the other side of the world!

So the past couple days have been great! Sunday we had a regional learning day in which we went to a place called Gypsie Village which is a poorer area of Phuket. There we got the opportunity to talk with one of the leaders of the village and learned a lot about their way of life. After that we got to play with the children there and we had a blast teaching them one of the songs from the show!! I think the thing that amazed me the most about this was that the people in the village seemed relatively content with what they had and the children were so excited to spend time playing with us! I think it is amazing how much some people who have many many things are not satisfied and are constantly wanting more compared to the people we met who have very little and yet they seem so happy. I think it really proves that life is not about how many things you can afford.
After the Gypsie Village, we took a ferrie to Coral Island where we got the chance to relax on the beach and do some snorkeling. The Indian Ocean is so completely beautiful and so green and the snorkeling is fantastic because the fish will eat banana right from your hand!! After this we went to dinner that was provided for us by the Rotary club here in Phuket and gave us the chance to get to know some of the Rotary members in the community here and we got to learn about the kind of things they work on here in Phuket. Lastly, we went to a show, compliments of the Rotary club, called FantaSea which is like a circus that told a story. There were elephants, tigers, and roosters (oh my!). It was great to see and the costumes were BEAUTIFUL!!
Monday was our first CI (community impact) day in Phuket and I was put in the Habitat for Humanity group and we started building a house. So far it has been extremely strenuous and completely tiring work but so worth it when you think that you are providing a place to live for someone who doesn't have one! We also worked on the house today and will continue to work on it until Thursday!! Also, building a house here is nothing like building a house at home. It is completely made out of cement, and there is not big equipment to help out with the labor. For instance, there are no wheel barrels to transfer rocks, cement or anything like that, instead we use small gallon buckets. Also, we had to dig trenches the past couple days, and instead of useing a trench digger or even a shovel, we use these things that look like big hoes. so it is very interesting but fun all at the same time!! But more later... Peace out!

Thailand

So I am currently in Thailand!!!! Today was our first full day here and it was great!! The trip from Los Angeles to here took a total of 42 hours from the time we got up to leave for the airport until the time we arrive in Phuket Thailand!! We flew from LA to Tokyo and from Tokyo to Bangkok and then took a bus to Phuket!! It was a long trip and I was exausted by the time I arrived!!! We arrived at a school where we were greeted by beautiful leis and many smiling children. We then met our host families and were fed a meal while we watched beautiful Thai dancers! It was so amazing!! Afterwards we went home with our host families; I am staying with 2 girls from the school and their parents. They own a small hotel on the outskirts of Phuket and so we are staying there because during the slow tourist season this is where they live. Both the parents and the girls speak good English and so it has been fun communicating with them and learning about their culture!! Today we went to a mall and did some shopping. It was interesting to see how modern the mall actually was because I wasn't expecting it. (it had a McDonalds inside of it) Also today we listened to a speaker on the South Thailand culture and prepared for our Community Impact that we will be doing Monday - Thursday of this week. I am working on building a home with habitat for Humanity. The tsunami hit here in 2004 and many people still don't have homes and so we are helping with that. It is the rainy season here currently and so we it isn't that hot yet. To me it feels like a Minnesota summer becasue it is so humid. Like this morning I walked outside with my glasses on and they completely fogged over!! It cools off nicely here though in the evening during this time of year! This evening my host mom cooked us a FANTASTIC Thai meal and I am hoping that later in the week she will show me how to cook one so that I can cook it for my family when I get home! :) That is all for now!!

Alumni Mania

So these past couple days have gone by in a whirlwind!!! On Friday we got the opportunity to perform for a full house (approximately 2,700 people) which included 1,200 alumni of UWP!!! It was so incredible and thier enthusiasm for us and our show was probably one of the best experiences I have had so far on the trip!! The show went very well and we were all very proud to call ourselves the future alumni of up with people!! After the show we ended up getting home and in to bed around 1:30 AM and then had to be back up and at 'em at 6 AM so we had a very short night of sleep! I figure it is going to be like that the entire trip though so I might as well get use to it now and that I am just going to have to sleep once the trip is over!
On Saturday we got the chance to hear from many great speakers, including the founder of UWP and his wife! It was so great to hear his continued passion for UWP and what it does and the great history of UWP!! One thing that I thought was the most incredible was the story he told us about how UWP was in Russia when the Olympic games masacre happened in Munic (sorry if that isn't spelled right) and that after the masacre, UWP was the very first people that were allowed into the olympic village and they performed for the athletes! It was an absolutely AMAZING story! After all of the guest speakers we got a chance to hang out with Cast B because yesterday was the last day we were going to see them and so we all had a pool party and a grill out and just got the chance to relax and chill one final time before we wend our separate ways!! Later in the evening we again met up with the alumni but this time we got to watch them perform their ERA SHOW!!! In this show, each cast that wants to gets together, refreshes their memory on the dances and songs they performed and puts on a mini show of a couple of songs from thier travel days!!! It was absolutely HILARIOUS to watch!! I think my favorite part was cast....'67... I think... but they did this little number where they all did the ROBOT!!! It was so great to see a bunch of 40 and 50 somethings get up and do the robot!! I commend them for their performance and I for sure give them credit for enjoying doing it!!!
Today we just got the chance to hang out with our host family which has been great so far and we are currently getting ready for dinner!! My host family has been great and I feel like I have just gotten here and I already have to leave tomorrow!!!
Lastly I have posted some pictures from our opening show so I hope you enjoy them!!!

Tucson, AZ!!!

So much has happened since the last time I updated and yet it has only been a couple days!! Our first show was absolutely AMAZING and we really rocked the house!! We had so many amazing moments on Saturday from our first green room, where we all laughed and cried, to our actual first performance for a live audience!!! It was a great day and it was crazy for me to think that we all just met each other a month ago but yet it was crazy to realize that a month was already over and that there are only a little over 4 months left!!!
Sunday was filled with rest and relaxation with my host family on our last day together!! My roommate Suzanne left early Sunday morning with her cast and it was hard on my host mom to see her leave! She and I both were rather mopey that day and so my host dad decided to get us out of the house by taking us to the Harry Potter movie #5! It was a great movie and it was nice to just spend the day relaxing and enjoying their company!
Monday we left early in the morning for Gallup, NM! We got there and immediately met our host family! There ended up being 6 of us “uppies” staying with one family and it was great! Our host family was so much fun and I think their favorite part of having us there was the fact that they got to feed us all of their food!!! They use to own a small bakery in Gallup which their son now owns and so we went there for breakfast on Tuesday morning and ate Mexican pastries and Mexican breakfast burritos!! Everything was soooo good!!! Tuesday we worked on preparing for our show and then preformed Tuesday night!! It was great and even though Gallup is a fairly small town, we had a good sized crowd at our performance!! So it was a lot of fun to see!! Then Wednesday morning we had a guest speaker come and talk to us about the Navajo Code-talkers that helped the US win WWII. She was very interesting and I had no idea that our country came up with such a thing but I thought it was very cool!! We then boarded the bus and headed to Tucson, AZ!!! We arrived in Tucson at 5pm and immediately met up with our host families and went home to spend the evening with them! I am staying with Emi from Sweden who is part of the cast and my host mom is actually her mom’s best friend which is really cool!! I never thought I would come to Tucson and learn so much about the Swedish culture!! It is so great because they are teaching me some Swedish so when I go to Sweden on advanced work I can say a few things in Swedish to them!! This makes me really very excited!
And finally, today was great!! We started by having some Advanced Team Training and then we went to the resort that the UWP reunion is at all weekend and got the opportunity to mingle with alumni!! Also while I was there I got to see a friend from home that traveled last semester and her mom because they came all the way to Tucson to help with the reunion!! It was so great because I didn’t realize how excited I was to see people from home until I saw them!! It was so wonderful because even though I love what I am doing and am so excited for where I will be going, it was great to have a piece of home come to me and comfort me a bit!! So today was great and when we got back to our home we ate dinner and then got to go swimming in our host family’s pool! It was so relaxing and needed because today and the upcoming days have been and are going to be CRAZY!!!

Our first audience!

I am currently high on life as I write this tonight. We performed our show for an audience for the first time this evening. It was a dress rehersal for us and Cast B and some other Up with People people got to come and watch it! It was so amazing getting to actually perform for someone finally!! It is crazy thinking that less than 4 weeks ago none of us knew any of the show and now we are performing for people!! it was an EXILARATING experience!! It is so funny because I feel like we have been working and working and working on this show never getting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and tonight we finally got a glimse of that light and it was truely WONDERFUL!!! I was so proud of my cast tonight because we all came together and have worked so hard to get to this Saturday night when we perform for our first offical audience!!!! I can't wait for that moment and i know it is going to be FANTASTIC!! Yesterday we got to watch Cast B perform their dress rehersal for us and will get to see them again tomorrow when they perform for a live audience!! I think it is just so great to think about how far we have all came in the past 3 and 1/2 weeks! I know that there have been moments when we wanted to give up and just throw in the towel, but we all stuck it through together and tonight was just a taste of all of the fun we are going to have in the upcoming months. And I know that it has all been and will continue to be worth it!! Anyways, I feel like I am rambling, so i am going to go, I will probably post some more pictures after our performance this Saturday so make sure you check them out. Also, last time I called home my family informed me that I use the word incredible too often and that I should find a new word/words... I feel like i have improved at least in this post so far! C-ya!

More!

So i believe I left off with Friday... Well Friday evening came with TONS of rain, which is great for the Denver area, but actually made my travel to where my host family picks Suzanne and I up an interesting adventure! I found out that day that Suzanne hates thunder and lightning and I love it so everytime the thunder would clap or the lightning would illuminate the sky Suzanne would kind of jump and I would laugh! :) It was a great experience trecking through the downpour and the many puddles with her! By the time we got to the train station we were both drentched from head to toe! It reminded me of the time right before I left when my dad and I went running and when we started out it was not raining but looked kind of threatening and then by the time we got half way around the circle that we run it started raining and we were completely drenched by the time we got home, but we had fun with it!! :) [Love you dad!]
After Friday came Saturday, which brought about many events. We had our first Thai prep in which they told us a little about the places we were going. We are going to Puket and Nampong... Our travel day to Puket from the states will take approximately 27 hours and Nampong is actually a very small agricultural village in which very few homes have air conditioning! I am getting so excited for Thailand and I can hardly wait! After our Thai prep we went on another community impact day. We met up with Junior highschool students from around Colorado that are participating in a program called Leaders Challenge. We all were split up into smaller groups and went to different places around the Denver area and did a variety of things. I went to St. Francis, which is the only homeless shelter in the Denver area that is open all day. When we got there we were given a small tour of the facility and then began painting the walls to help give the place a more welcoming and pleasant feel. It was a lot of fun, especially getting the chance to connect with high school students who wanted to be helping their community and had the passion to make a difference. It was so awesome getting to know everyone! After the community impact project was finished and our day with UWP was done, Maria from Sweden invited me and a couple other girls to the Rockies vs. Dodgers game with her host dad! It was great, especially because Maria, Suzanne, and Kim had never been to a baseball game before, nor had they ever been in a stadium as big as Coors Stadium before!
Then today Suzanne and I went to the Japanese Dragon Boat races with our host parents!! Dragon boat races are where all these people pile into a long row boat shaped like a dragon and row together and try to beat the other team! Along with the boat races there were many booths about different Asian countries, and different performances from different cultures including Chinese Kung Fu (AMAZING)!!! So now you are all up to speed on what has been happening with me!! Also, you should all check out our cast blog at www.castc2007.com!!! It has bios of all the students traveling, information about the different community impact programs that we do, lots of pictures, and much much more!!! Also, I want to apologize for any spelling errors that I have along the way... but until next time... peace out!

More staging stuff!!

So the beginning of the week began with more singing, dancing, and blocking!! But we also had a guest speaker come and talk with us about working through cultural barriers and using our understanding of different cultures to help bridge gaps. He was a really interesting speaker and the week before he came and spoke to us with some of the representative of the United Nations!! It was way cool to hear about his stories and to get information from him. The thing I liked most about him was that it wasn't a seminar in which we just sat and listened to him talk about what we should be doing, he actually just gave us ideas and really let us think about problems and solutions on our own! I think this was great because it let each of us really take ownership of what we were doing and so even though we were all sitting in the same room listening to the same speaker, we each got something different out of it!
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent doing more dancing, singing, and blocking. (What a suprise) But on Thursday we got to spend the entire day in Boulder, CO. It was such a beautiful place and the day we incredible!! We started by doing a scavenger hunt around the city, which led us to the University of Colorado at Boulder's campus (also beautiful by the way) and also downtown. We learned so many little pieces of information about the area (Like the fact that it has a hotel named Boulderado after Boulder and Colorado) and it was just a good time to spend some relaxation time with my cast mates and get to know some of them a little better! After the scavenger hunt we went on a tour of Celestial Tea Factory! Oh man the smells I smelled!! It was so great! I think my favorite was definitely the Peppermint room in which the peppermint smell is almost overwhelming but still wonderful all the same!! It was an amazing time!
And finally today, we did more dancing, blocking, and singing as usual!! But more to come later!!

The past week...

So much has happened since I last wrote on here and my apologies for not keep all of you more up to date! I am going to try to recap this past week for all y’all so I can bring you up to speed. We have been dancing and singing everyday this week which has been a lot of fun! Starting with Monday though, as you know we were placed in casts and I am in Cast C!!! This means that I will be traveling to the East coast and to New York City for the Macy’s Day Parade on November 22nd. We have a 60 second time slot during the parade so you should all tune in!!! I am so excited for this!! Also, we are going to Tucson, AZ after our staging in Denver for the Up with People World Alumni Reunion!! This is going to be too cool and I am so excited to perform for a bunch of incredible alumni!! After that we go straight to Thailand for 3 weeks and we have been told that we should prepare for a real Thailand adventure because most of the host families that have been arranged already do not speak any English at all!! I am so ready for this challenge (I think), it will be amazing to learn how to communicate effectively without words!
Tuesday wasn’t quite as eventful, we did a lot of singing, dancing, and spend some time going over policies, and also got together for the first time as Cast C to develop some cast expectations. It was a busy busy day!
On Wednesday UWP brought in leaders from the community to come and talk to us about leadership in small round-table discussions. This was so interesting and definitely the highlight of the day! One of the coolest people I had the opportunity to talk to was a young woman who worked at the University of Colorado at Denver. She was one of the heads of a leadership program that is available for top students at Denver to develop their leadership skills. It is a program that is incorporated into a student’s curriculum. I just found it so interesting and I wonder if it could be applied to the NDSU student body?? I definitely think it is going to be something I look into when I am done with UWP! Also, I got the opportunity to talk to a man that works with the Guild Foundation focusing in Civil rights/justice issues. He was incredibly interesting to me! All of the people that I got the opportunity to talk to was incredible! ( I think there were 5 total) I learned so much about leadership and myself and I feel like the session really helped me to realize even more that I am going to be able to take the experiences that I have in UWP and apply them in my everyday life to become the active member of society that I wish to be!! I truly think that when I am done with my time in UWP I will have a different perspective and a greater passion to work toward different issues in the communities that I go back to!
Thursday we had our first cast blocking session. Cast blocking is where we learn where we are suppose to be on stage and when we move on and off, etc. It was interesting but a lot to take in all in one day. We will continue to work on blocking until our show so it should become like habit to me by the end. Also, I found out that I was chosen to do advance work in the 2nd city in Sweden that we go to, which means that I get to go to this city early and will set up everything for when the cast arrives!! I am way excited about this because that means that I get to spend 3 weeks in Sweden working hard, but also getting the chance to really immerse myself in their culture!!
Friday we had our first CI (community impact) day! We went south of Denver to what they call the Upper South Platte, which is an area where many of the rivers in CO run and it houses over 100,000 acres of forest! We spent our time building new trails, trimming plants that had overgrown onto the trail, and just cleaning up the area. It was quite hot but definitely rewarding work! The guides that we worked with told us that 75% of the Denver area get their water from the rivers that flow through this platte! I thought this was so interesting and all day I was constantly amazed by how everyone put all they could into the projects that we did even if they were hard work or not the most fun, like picking up trash. I think it is so cool how the people in my cast put everything they have into all that they do and am constantly surprised at the incredible things that are accomplished! So our first CI day was a real hit and I can’t wait for more!
Saturday we didn’t get the day off like last weekend, instead we spend more time blocking, dancing, and participating in a diversity program. The diversity program was so incredible! I was once again amazed by the incredible hearts that my cast members have and their abilities to have the confidence to really share intimate things with the entire cast! I feel so blessed that we have only known each other for 2 weeks and yet people are so willing to share who they are and continue to bring everything to the table! I sometimes look at the cast and almost feel as if I don’t deserve to have this many incredible people in my life for 5 more months! I just really admire each and every person in my cast!
Today we got up early and went white water rafting! It was sooo much fun and in order to get to the place where we were rafting, we had to drive through the mountains! The views were spectacular the entire trip. I think I am currently very smitten with Colorado! It is so beautiful and I have decided that in the future I want to be a rapids tour guide, have a horse farm, own a bed and breakfast in the snow covered mountains, and learn to rock climb! Big dreams right:) Anyways, I am continuing to have a blast here in CO and I think it will be sad to have to leave such a beautiful place. By the way, I think the best part about CO is that you can go so many places and see so many things for free (minus the price of gas). Anyways, that is all for now! I hope to post more frequently in the future!
Also, one last note, thanks so much to all of you that have made comments on my blog, I love going back and reading them and it is so good to hear from home!! Thanks again and I send my love!!

And the tour is...

So I don't have much time but I just wanted to let all of you know that I am officially a proud member of UWP cast C 2007!! This means I will be traveling to Thailand, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and the East coast of the United States!! I am so incredibly excited and just wanted to let all of you know!! But I have to go... I will update you on details soon!!! Till next time...

More about Denver!

Saturday morning our host family took Suzanne and I to the Renaissance festival on the outskirts of Denver! It was a lot of fun just hanging out in the sun and seeing all of the costumes and events. One of the coolest things we saw was this man who played a huge instrument made of many many bells. The contraption weighted over 4 tons!! It was very cool! then today we woke up and went to church with kay and Frank and just spent time relaxing the rest of the day. it has been a rejuvinating Sunday so hopefully it will help when I don't get much sleep in the upcoming days. Also, I am including some pictures of my trip so far so i hope you enjoy them!!

And since I have some time I will explain some of the picutres to you. the first is a picture of me, the rest of the Minnesotians, and Vannessa from New Jersey all getting fake tatoos when we arrived because we had to find something to do while we waited for all of the other students to arrive. the next picture is of the view from the back yard of our host families house!! great right! Following this is the picture of the front of the complex that we have been spending all of our staging time in!! It is a cool facility partially because it is so old and the arcetecture is so great!! Next we have Suzanne and I with Starbucks because Suzanne loves it and she doesn't have it in the netherlands so she likes to stop there almost every day!! She makes me laugh a lot!! Next is during the culture jam that I talked about in an earlier post... this picture is of all the students from Germany who got together and preformed the song "99 Red Balloons"! They had a lot of fun with it and it was very entertaining to watch. Next is a bunch of UWP guys that were board during auditions that put together a little dance number and proceeded to call themselves "Out of Sync". They are hilarious!!! And last there is a picture of Suzanne and I at the Renaissance Festival!!
So that is it for now... but I will be posting again tomorrow night because I find out what tour I get to travel in and so i will let you all know as soon as I do!! See ya later

More Adventures in CO!!

So the past couple of days have been completely CRAZY!!! We have been doing so much in so little time that it feels like I have already been here for a month!!! A friend of mine explained UWP time to me as one day feels like a week and one week feels like a month and it is totally true!!! I have already begun to learn things about myself that I didn't know and I am already being tested and pulled in directions that I didn't even know existed! First though, I want to recap for you some of the things that have happened this week. On Tuesday we had a workshop on stereotypes and it was very cool. we had paper all over the room with the different countries that the students represented and we all had to go around the room and write down the stereotype that we had of that culture or that country and then the people from that country would get together and pick 3 things they wanted to talk to the entire group about. the comments that were put on the papers were quite interesting and alot of people were very honest which was great because it really gave others a chance to see how their country is looked at from afar. Being from the U.S. it was interesting to see what people thought of our country and many things that were shared made me really think about the systems here in the U.S. and the fact that to me they had always seemed so normal but from the outside looking in they kind of look rediculous.
Wednesday we had our first Culture Jam. A Culture Jam is like a talent show were people can get up on stage and perform some sort of song, dance, poem, etc. from their country or from them personally. It was so great to see all of the incredible talent and us Minnesotians even got up there and did a little diddy about how to speak Minnesotian because since we arrived eveyrone had been poking fun at us for our "accent". It was a great experience and we got quite a few laughs which is always nice. Wednesday also brought about modules, which are a nice name for tryouts. Each student had to sing and dance for the staff so that they can get a feel of the talent that you can bring to the cast. It was good and in between tryouts we had a bit of down time which was very nice for me to just take time to reflect on everything that had been happening in the past couple days and really take time to talk to people about the experiences they have been having and the emotions that have been racing through them. I know for me that coming into UWP has been a culture shock in itself and I still have moments were I freak out inside going, "AM I REALLY DOING THIS!?!?!" and "CAN I REALLY DO THIS!?!?!" but those moments are slowly becoming few and far between.
Thursday brought about our first cast movement and cast vocals day!! We learned our first dance and a couple of songs. Learning the dance definitely made me realize just how much I miss dancing and I am pretty sure I got a crazy stupid grin on my face that wouldn't come off the entire time I was dancing!! I am so glad that I have a whole 5 months to continue dancing and singing!
And finally, today brought more cast movement and cast vocals along with some presentations about tips on keeping a journal on the road and other ways to document your experience, including keeping a blog! I just want to finish with the fact that I am having a wonderful time dispite all of the challenges and freak outs I have had. It is so worth it and I can't wait to experience more! So goodnight or good day depending on when this is read!!

Adventures in CO

So I arrived safely in Denver on Saturday morning. I made all of my flights safely and was excited and quite nervous to step into the beginning of my journey. I spent Saturday waiting for people to arrive and slowly getting to know people as they got in. The other 4 minnesotian and myself were the very first to arrive at the airport and we even got there way before UWP was suppose to start picking us up to take us to the check in. It was good because we all got a chance to get to know each other better and take in the whole environment before everyone else started arriving. We were so early that we actually were there for an entire 2 hours before any of the other cast members arrived, so we killed time by buying temporary tatoos from a vending machine and taking pictures of our bonding moment... I will post pictures of that at a later time, but my tatoo was of this evil looking snake wrapped around a skull... Sounds just like me right!?! After that we slowly started to meet people as they arrived and did this until we were picked up by our host families at around 9:30pm. I am staying with a great family that lives in Littleton (a suburb of denver) and with another cast mate name Suzanne from the Netherlands. On sunday we had a free day and we spent it going shopping with our host parents and going for a hike in the foothills. It was quite pretty until we learned that there are black bears and mountain lions roaming around and that it is not uncommon to see them while you are hiking!!! AHHHH!!! So that made for some exciting adventures! Which leads me to today... It was our first official UWP day and it was great fun!!! We played a lot of get-to-know-you games and even watched the staff preform a mini show for us!! it was wonderful getting to know everyone and realizing that these are people that are going to become like family to me for the next 5 months!! I still don't think that realization has hit me yet, but hopefully one day soon it will. But I am getting exausted right now so I am calling it a night because I have to be up at the butt-crack (compliments of my father) of dawn so stay tuned for the next edition!!

And I'm off!!

So I know some of you are just tuning in to my little adventure I am about to start and I can't wait to tell you all about my journey. I leave tomorrow, by the way, my flight flies (not the bug) out of Rochester at 6:10 AM tomorrow morning!! I am all packed and mostly ready to go, minus some last minute items that I need to find a space for someplace... As I was packing, I realized how hard it actually is right now to fit 6 months of my life into 1 suitcase and am hoping that this journey helps me to learn at least how to pack lighter! I am getting really nervous but quite excited at the same time!! I am so ready for this part of my life and I can't wait for it to start!! So wish me luck and I will keep you posted as I go!! DENVER HERE I COME!!!!!!!!

The first of many....

So I sat down today to get started on my blog and decided that not only am I getting super excited for this adventure, but there are so many undescribable emotions rolling through me that I can't even put them all into words!! I think this trip is finally becoming very real for me and I find myself going "Oh my gosh, I leave in 2 weeks!" Every 10 minutes or so.

Yesterday there was a get-together in the cities put on by Up with People alumni for the students who are traveling this coming semester and their families. There are actually 5 people from Minnesota traveling this semester!! I met them all last night and it was a BLAST!!! It was nice to bounce questions off the other students and talk to them about all the emotions that were running through all of us and it definitely helped put me at ease realizing that I wasn't standing alone and that I was going to at least know a couple people when I arrive to Denver in July. During the get-together though I had many 'is this really happening?' moments and I still can't believe that I am really doing this. I would not have guessed in a million years that I would take a leap like this and spend an entire 5 months traveling around the world with people I don't know yet! Oh man... what a thrill!! I am sooooooooooo excited and can't wait to jump into action. I am getting anxious just thinking about it!!

Also, I want to send out a HUGE "Thanks a million!!" to everyone that has supported me as I have decided to take this adventure!!! I am so very excited to start and especially excited to share all of this with all of you!!! I know that I would not be doing this had I not been so openly supported by everyone around me!! I thank God that he has put such incredible people into my life and I know that He is really leading me where He wants me to go because I never planned or booked this into my life plan but I am certainly glad that He has!! Anyways, a huge thanks again to all of you and there will definitely be more to come... So grab a seat, hang on, and get ready to take this ride with me!!!!

Also, I am including a slide show of some fun pictures so that I learn to get the hang of putting them on my blog so enjoy the pictuers below!!