Orlando, Florida

We arrived in Orlando, FL on Monday, February 18th and immediately met with the Mayor of Orlando. We then had some free time around the city and then met for our allocation meeting...aka meeting our host families!

My roommate this week is Myriam from Belgium, and we walked around looking for our host code "Pinto Beans," but we couldn't find ANYONE holding pinto beans! Finally, a nice lady named Laura said that she knew our host mom and that she was running late! We finally met up with Lisa and her daughter Kellen and took a quick picture of our host code!

We enjoyed a nice dinner that night with the whole family. Lisa, Alan, and Kellen Flowers. Lisa is a music teacher (voice and substitutes for choir at the middle/high school levels). Alan works for The Children's Place as a manager of sorts. He's been busy this week with travel and lots of out-of-town work. Kellen is an AWESOME 17-year-old who reminds me a LOT of myself with the activities she participates in. She's very involved in choir and theatre and is amazingly talented! We've had a lot of fun this week, and it's been great getting to share UWP with her! She had never heard of the organization before we arrived, and now she's planning on traveling in a few years! SO EXCITED! She's perfect for the program...I knew it the second I met her! haha

My Community Impact this week consisted of going to Edgewater HS (the school we performed at) and did workshops with various classrooms. I worked with Brekken (WY) and Hector (Mexico) and we facilitated the "Take a Stand" activity where we pose thought-provoking questions and ask that the students "take a stand" as to which side they choose. An example question would be "I believe men and women are more alike than they are different." It's a fun activity with some surface level questions and some REALLY difficult questions. Overall the experience was really great, but there were definitely some moments of frustration. The students really impressed me, though, so it was fun getting to do a different type of CI in Orlando!

This week kept us super busy, as usual, with shows on both Friday and Saturday nights (in the HOTTEST auditorium EVER! Seriously, I don't think I've ever sweat this much! Ugh!). Kellen and Lisa were able to come on Friday night which was a lot of fun!

For host family day, Myriam and I slept in until 11am (which was MUCH needed). Then Myriam Skyped with her family while I started laundry and spent some time talking with Lisa. Then us girls headed out to Downtown Disney to do some shopping and have lunch. We ate at Sweet Tomatoes (one of my favorite restaurants) and then headed to the Disney store and meandered the many shops around. We eventually treated ourselves to dessert at the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain.

Here are some other fun pictures of our time in Downtown Disney

I knew I had long legs...but never THIS long! =P

If I could have one job at Disney (besides being Belle) I would want to be the candy apple decorator! How awesome are these?!?

After Downtown Disney, we headed over to Ambrea and Rachel's host family for a cookout and firepit. Clemence and Sarah were hosted right next door, and Ambrea's parents were in town, so it was a FUN get together! =) We ate hamburgers/hotdogs, played Corn Hole (?) - basically where you toss bean bags across the lawn, and made S'mores!

I'm so sad to leave these guys tomorrow! I've LOVED spending time with the Flowers family!