Host Family Day: Disney Day 2

After our first trip to Disney, Edward told me that for our last host family day, we'd have to go out like we began...WITH DISNEY! =) We headed to Hollywood Studios for our last host family day...and we had a BLAST! =)

Tower of Terror: 2 times

Rockin Roller Coaster: 3 times

Toy Story Mania: 2 times

Star Wars Star Tours: 1 time

Beauty and the Beast Show

Fantasmic Show!

1st time ride for Sifan! These two were a little scared.

But Jessica and I LOVED it! =)

Mickey ice creams at the Fantasmic show

After Disney, we took Sifan to a Chinese buffet so she could understand what Americans think Chinese food is. She was...shocked. haha

 I tried new things...like mussels. Ew.

Thanks for all the memories, Jessica and Edward! Love you guys!

First Show Day!

Well, we did it! Cast A successfully performed our first show in Lakeland, FL! It was awesome. We had 1,400 people in attendance and had a blast finally performing for an audience!

Let's back up to that morning, however! We arrived around 12:30pm and started our "morning meeting" at 1pm. We finished up business, but then our Education Coordinator announced that we were going to play "Wheel of Fortune." What? Before I knew it, I was being summoned to the front of the cast to play! I assumed it was going to be some kind of message giving us words of encouragement for our upcoming show. But the more letters I called out, the more I realized that wasn't it at all! The excitement in the room erupted as we all realized that "WE WILL GO TO DISNEY EPCOT!" as a whole cast!!!

 After that excitement, we warmed up and went into rehearsal. After some stop-and-go rehearsal, we did a full run-through and then broke for dinner. It was TASTY (pulled pork sandwiches and sides). Then it was time for our very first Green Room! We had a bit of a party, then introduced and thanked guests. Many folks had family fly in from various locations...even all the way from Australia and Norway!

We had some sentimental moments in our first Green Room, including awesome messages from our staff, and then it was time to get ready for SHOWTIME!

With my roommate, Sifan

Love this girl! Sage!

Here are a few pictures from the show!

Pre-show Loop!

Oh yeah...I'm the Emcee for the United States! haha. I love it!

 

After the show

After the show, we did strike/other tasks until midnight. Our host families picked us up and our first show was officially done! I was so hyped up on energy, however, that I couldn't sleep until 1:30am! haha. Great first day! Here's to many more!

Roomie Blog: Sifan

Even though I stayed with the same wonderful family the whole time I was in Lakeland, some folks were shifted around 2 weeks into Cast A's staging. Because my first roommate, Jolien, left about a week in to staging to go set up our first city on the road, Ft. Myers, I was an only child for a little while. At the end of the week, I found out my new roommate would be Sifan Liu from China! I was SOOOOOO excited to spend more time with this lovely lady!

So, fun facts about Sifan:

From: Shanghai, China

Age: 21

Favorite color: Red

Favorite activity we did as roomies: "Um...lots of things! But...maybe...cookie dough?!?" haha. For those of you who don't know, I introduced Miss Sifan to the goodness that is cookie dough. We actually made an egg-free "just to eat" cookie dough, and I didn't think it was as good as the real deal, but this girl was in heaven! =)

Some other fun facts about Sifan:
- She can sleep anywhere, anytime! It's amazing the talent this girl has! I've watched her sleep standing up on a bus before! haha
- She is learning Spanish...she even has a Spanish book in Chinese...how's that for confusion?
- She is an AMAZING artist. She sketches in her journal and her work is stunning
- She has now been fully introduced to how messed up "Chinese food" is in America...sorry Sifan!
- For the first 6 weeks of tour, she is a Stage Assistant and helps operate many of the "behind the scenes" things for our show!
- She is very patient in explaining her culture...especially the language and its MANY characters! (We had way too much fun with this at dinner tonight trying to read our fortune cookies! =P)

Sponsor A Day: Greta Ehlers

Today, February 9th, OUR FIRST SHOW DAY, my travels are sponsored by UWP Alumn Greta Ehlers! I’ve only met Greta once, but she came to support my UWP Vocal Recital fundraiser back in June 2012 with my dear childhood friend, Annika. Just from my brief time talking with her, I could sense her passion and love for the UWP program! I am thrilled to be joining the ranks of being an Uppie (aka and Up With People person!) It’s great because I will forever be connected to Uppies worldwide, like Greta, and it is so wonderful having such an amazing support system!

The Night Before...

It's the night before our FIRST SHOW! I can't believe this is all becoming a reality! I've seen UWP shows before and now here I am...IN one! It's insane how this whole process works. We work day in and day out for 4 weeks, and here we are...with a show that miraculously came together. My friend Isaiah (who's a 2nd semester student) told me at the beginning of this week that UWP has a way of always sprinkling some magic on shows to make things come together, but I didn't believe him. I was completely set on thinking that our show was going to fail. But tonight, we had a long day of rehearsal from 8am-9pm, and in that time, we pulled it all together! I can't tell you how many times this journey has felt like an emotional yo-yo/roller coaster with some major HIGHS and some EXTREME lows, but now, it finally feels like Cast A 2013 has a show...and a show to be proud of! It's awesome to look back on the journey we've traveled since January 11th! Here's to an awesome opening night, cast mates! I can't wait to do this time and time again this semester...all over the world! =)

Here's a quick look at our dress rehearsal tonight as we practiced the 2nd song in the show...Party Around the World.

Thoughts

I should be doing homework, or memorizing lyrics to our insane number of songs in a ridiculous number of languages, or SLEEPING, but nope! I decided to blog! Go figure.

It's pretty darn impossible to sum up all the emotions that go into Up With People...and we're only in staging! Goodness gracious. It's hard to believe I've been here a month already. Time has flown by, but it's been an amazing, EXHAUSTING experience full of many new challenges and opportunities. No doubt I've already changed and grown quite a bit, but in other ways, old habits are hard to break, especially when you come from a performing arts background and are used to things going a certain way. This whole staging process has definitely tested my patience in more ways than one, but I have no other choice than to learn, adapt, and go with the flow. It's a do or die kind of situation!

We're now 4 days away from our very first show, and BOY am I a nervous wreck! haha. I've had some nerve-wracking pre-show experiences before, but none that quite compare to this. We've essentially jam-packed learning an entire 2 hour professional production into 4 weeks, and it's the most exhausting, trying thing ever! To try and summarize all my emotions at this point would be impossible, so I'll just leave a few thoughts. I really wanted to record my state of mind before our first show to one day look back and realize it was all worry for nothing! (at least we can hope, right?)

- I'm most nervous about dance lines. We just don't have the time we need to practice them and perfect everything, and so what happens, happens! I've been working individually on things, but still feel foolish when I can't get a certain move or remember the specific sequence, so here's to praying it all comes together!

- Nothing is set in stone in our production. Things change from minute to minute, especially concerning soloists and performers. One day you could have a solo, the next day, another cast member could be singing it. I appreciate this because it takes away any kind of territorial ownership to songs, but at the same time, it leads to false hope and frustration because you never know what the staff is going to do. Yikes!

- Catching up on all the little details is what's getting to me right now! For all those moments I was out of cast vocals or movement, we're now on stage and I'm realizing I really don't know what's going on! I'm having to learn on the spot and have a severe fear or being the one who screws it up!

- Sometimes the monitor feedback is really hard to hear, so I feel like our cast gets way off rhythm or pitch. Hopefully all the sound goofs will be fixed so we can hear!

Ok! Phew. Enough negativity. Ultimately, we'll be able to do this. There's just a lot of anxiety about not feeling prepared for a show. But! With a lot of hardwork these next few days...and a *little* bit of magic, we can do it. Just send really happy, awesome vibes our way! =)

Even during the chaos of "Hell Week," the ten of us FSC students still have class! We decided to make Monday a pigtail themed day...so here we are with our piggy-tails, Frank, too! haha

Geocaching: Guest Post from Jessica!

I've been a LITTLE busy lately (nah...throwing together a full show in this short of time is no big deal. Who am I kidding? I've got LOADS of free time! =P), so I asked my host mama to write a guest post for me! She loves reading my blog and LOVES geocaching, so I figured she was the perfect person to ask! She jumped at the chance to write for me! =) So, without further ado, here is Jessica's post explaining her favorite pasttime...Geocaching! Thanks for writing, Jessica! =)

From Jessica:

"Chances are, you've been within feet of a geocache in the past and didn't know it!"

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunting game using a GPS-enabled device. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (also called a cache) hidden at that location.

Geocaches can be found all over the world (currently there are 1,986,244). It is common for geocachers to hide caches in locations that are important to them, reflecting a special interest or skill of the cache owner. These locations can be quite diverse. They may be at your local park, at the end of a long hike, on the side of a city street, even the local Wal-Mart parking lot.

The great thing about Geocaching is the adventure on the way to the cache. Because of Geocaching my husband and I have traveled down roads and ventured to places we might not have otherwise gone. We have made friends and created memories that will last a lifetime.

Minimal to no investment is required to enjoy this hobby. Most people already have the tools needed for participation. Access to the internet, a GPS enabled smartphone, and a pen (to sign the log in the cache) and you are ready to go Geocaching!

Geocaches come in many shapes and sizes. The traditional caching container is “the ammo can”. But of course it is hard to hide larger sized containers like that in heavily populated public places, so a common hide is “the micro or nano”. Larger containers have SWAG (Stuff We All Get) like small toys, tradeable items, and travel bugs (visit the geocaching website for more information on TB’s). Micros & Nanos generally require you “bring your own pen” (BYOP).

Proper geocaching etiquette requests that if you take something from a cache you leave something of equal or greater value. But generally the trade items are for kid-cachers. Also when you post your find on the Geocaching website, please share your adventure, what did you see or do along the way? Did something funny happen? Share your story so the cache owner will know how you enjoyed the adventure.

My first cache!

A happy lil' froggy we found one night while night caching!

Edward and Jessica's favorite cache! In Oklahoma!

A nano cache. It's SOOOOO tiny!

You've got to get creative when looking for the cache hiding places

A steep, STEEP path made out of roofing shingles

The name of this cache? "First Finger" - the finger was on the back of a tree, and the log is in that Bison tube dangling off the finger. Some caches are VERY creative.

Some of Jessica's favorites! Slugbugs and geocaching!