Community Impact: El Salitre

On Thursday in Queretaro, I was a part of the group who went to a place called El Salitre to work in an impoverished neighborhood to help clean up and beautify a park area. We had quite a long bus ride because we had to drop off other Community Impact groups, but we eventually pulled up to the community and unloaded. We started by painting over a wall covered in graffiti so that we would have a clean slate to start our project. 

 

 As we were working, we unearthed a TEENY TINY little bunny! So sweet!! He was so terrified, though, because of all the work going on around him!

 We spent the morning painting a "Tree of Hope" on the wall in preparation for the little hands of kiddos in the community. Before we knew it, tons of community members were out and about helping with the project, and we had tons of little ones ready to have their hands painted! I had so much fun painting "manos" of all the kids and holding them up so they could add "leaves" to the tree! Everyone was SO eager to help out and contribute!

 

Community members helped out by painting, too, and they were INCREDIBLE artists! Just check out what they whipped up!

 

We added our Viva la Gente logo to the wall, in addition to various sponsor logos and "Haz un Cambia" which means "Make a Change" in Spanish.

We had some downtime, so some of us played games with the kids!

We waited around for the Governor's wife to join the site and help out a bit. We'd interacted with her a bit on Monday when we arrived in Queretaro, so it was nice to see her again. She helped plant a tree and placed her hand on our tree as a gesture towards the community.

 

It was an INCREDIBLE day and definitely my favorite CI of the entire semester. It was amazing to work with community members and really feel like we made an impact. Painting with the kiddos and playing games were definitely the highlight of my day!

Naucalpan, Mexico!

What a great first week in MEXICO!!! We arrived supremely late on Monday evening after traveling for more than 24 hours, and we met our host families. I stayed with a great mom, Silvia, and her two daughters, Paulina and Mariana. On our first night, I'll admit I was a poor house guest and requested to go to sleep IMMEDIATELY upon arriving home. I was simply too exhausted from traveling for such a long time!

Host code was Ceviche. I had to laugh at the irony...I HATE seafood! Bleh!

Our first day in Naucalpan, half the cast hosted a Culture Fair for elementary-aged students while the other half of us stayed at Academia Maddox to do school projects with classes grades K-12. I worked with Beyah, Sage, and Alicia in a 3rd grade, 6th grade, middle school, and high school classroom that day. We also got our first taste of 'Viva la Gente' stardom. All of the littler kids followed us around asking for autographs and photos! It was crazy! Brian was one of my favorite examples. The kids were rushing him, so he took a minute and told them to please organize themselves in a civilized line...haha

Photo credit: Misa

Photo credit: Misa

I loved how welcoming the students were- it was truly amazing (and laughable, at times! Why did they think WE were so famous? haha)

That night, Paulina and Silvia picked me up and we went to the mall so Paulina could by Mariana a present for her birthday on Friday. While at the mall, we ate Tacos al Pastor which everyone has been raving about! I think I'll need to try them again - they were good, but nothing to write home about. Maybe another sampling will change my mind! =) I also tried frijoles charros and Agua de Jamaica (hibiscus water). I liked both of those a lot! =) Note to my fellow spice-avoidant eaters - Pico de Gallo in Mexico is NOT the same as the U.S. Normally the U.S. pico is mild and not hot. Here? They put raw jalapenos in there - my mouth and throat were on FIRE!

The next day the study abroad students traveled by taxi to our study location. We were spoiled with a great facility and lots of snacks from our sponsor!

That afternoon, our cast engaged in a really amazing education workshop about world hunger. To read my blog about our Hunger Banquet, CLICK HERE

The next day was a day out of the ordinary for our usual UWP schedule. Typically we only rehearse the show on show days, but due to our crazy schedule this week, we rehearsed a day before our show...and a good thing we did (you'll find out why later!). We did some crazy workouts and practicing in the courtyard outside in the morning before moving our rehearsal inside to the stage in the afternoon. Needless to say, we had quite the audience of little ones staring at us the whole morning!

If you look closely, you can see some of the kids staring at us from the windows. They were only a small percentage of the audience we had all morning! Photo credit: Ambrea

Photo credit: Ambrea

I went to see Star Trek later that night and enjoyed popcorn for dinner (OH how I've missed popcorn!). I might have nodded off a little, but it had nothing to do with the movie and everything to do with my exhaustion level! =P

Show day was on Friday, and what a show day it was! Our tech team discovered our dimmer (which controls all the lights) wasn't working and that most all of our lighting wires were fuzed on Thursday, so they spent all day and all night attempting to fix the problem, but to no avail. When it came time for our first show of the day, our lighting technician and tech manager both worked some incredible magic to cover the fact that our normal lighting wasn't working! I honestly didn't notice that much of a difference from our regular lighting design...they did a fabulous job! We were performing for a huge audience of children and my favorite moment of the show was at the end when we sang "De Que Color es la Piel de Dios?" (What Color is God's Skin?) and they ALL SANG ALONG! I was crying on stage I was so happy! (Yes, I'm a nerdy music teacher who can get emotional over kiddos singing, get over it!)

Signing more autographs!

We had our second show later that night and it was another great success. Paulina and Silvia came that night, and so did every boy-obsessed middle school girl, for that matter! haha. Those girls LOVED to talk to, get autographs from, and take pictures with the boys of our cast! =)

Saturday was our host family day - which I'll write another post about - and then Sunday we did yet ANOTHER double show day. One of my best friends, Brian, announced to the cast that he was going to be leaving to go home the next day and I was in shock and completely saddened. I set out to enjoy my last day with him! We warmed up and got right to work to do the quickest rehearsal of our lives before our first show at noon. Unfortunately, many cast members were getting overheated, tired, and sick backstage, so we lost quite a few folks before and during our first show. It made for quite the adventure, but we pulled together and supported one another in every way we could to still produce a great show! Mariana, Pepe (her boyfriend), Paulina, and Silvia all came to see the show!

We went to the Police Station to have lunch that day, and then before we knew it, it was time to head back to the show facility to get ready for our second show. I've never been so hot in my life during the shows here, and I've heard it'll only get worse...yeesh! Our second show that day was a private show for one of our sponsor's, but not many folks showed up. That's ok - we still perform our hearts out for the audience, regardless of the small group! =)

Oh, that night I ate a cricket! That was fun! Yay Mexico!

 

That night I came home, ate some quesadillas, and packed before going to bed! Paulina and Silvia dropped me off the next morning to head to Teotihuacan to see the pyramids before traveling to Toluca, Mexico!

Tielt, Belgium

What a great last week in Europe. I had such a wonderful time in Tielt - it was one of my favorite cities. We arrived Monday after our free time in Bruges and had our host pick up. I was going to have a roommate, but she was currently with the rest of the second semester students on their mini-trip to the south of Belgium, so I had host pick up alone! We had all sorts of crazy Flemmish words as our host codes, and I had no idea what my code meant until a Belgian Alumni told me it meant Wheelbarrow! I waited and waited and never saw a wheelbarrow, but then a woman came up to me and said she was my host mom! She didn't have her wheelbarrow because she brought it to the wrong location and then biked over to the Europahal. Whoops! An was very sweet and very nice. One problem - she only had her bike and I had a TON of luggage to lug back (since I had Bettina's luggage, too!) She left me to go get her car, and then we were off!

 An is ALSO a music teacher - in fact, she teaches teachers how to be healthy with their voices. Perfect for me? I think so! It was so great staying with her because she always had music playing and she understood my passion for teaching! She was such a sweet lady! We had a fantastic week, and An's house was in the perfect location! We were able to walk to everything - in fact, it wasn't until Sunday on Host Family day that I got in a car again! I absolutely loved walking through town every day and REALLY getting to know the city.

My amazing backyard for the week. It was unreal!

I had a great CI on Tuesday at the Sint Andreis Hospital working with some nursing home residents. We went for a stroll around Tielt so the residents could have a morning out in the wonderful weather! In the morning, I got to push Christiana around and I learned so much about her life! She was wonderful and reminded me a lot of my Grandma Stewart, so that made my heart happy! She was born and raised in Tielt, and we got to see the Catholic church that she was baptized and married in, as well as the cemetery that many family members are buried in.

 That evening, Kevin (who lived close by, yet again! haha) and I went for a lovely walk around town. I had a little fun on the train tracks...

 We also discovered that An had a HUGE world map in her garage with pinpoints of all the places she and/or her ex-husband traveled to. It just confirmed I want one of my own someday!

We had a good study abroad day on Wednesday and welcomed the 2nd semester students back.

The morning after Bettina showed up!

On Thursday we had a cool opportunity to go to Gent to see the Belgian National Special Olympics! Our sole purpose of the visit? To cheer on the athletes! We had a great day enjoying the sunshine, each others' company, and supporting the great athletes. 

photo credit: Ambrea Peterson

 That night, we had a wonderful dinner with An, Robrecht, An's daughter Analies, and her fiance (I forget his name...oops). After dinner AND dessert, An heard the ice cream truck drive by. She dropped everything, shouted, "WHO WANTS AN ICE CREAM?" and went running out the door saying, "YOOOHOOOO!" to flag down the ice cream man. Even though we were stuffed, we enjoyed our 2nd desserts of the night and had a lot of laughs over how cute An was! I hadn't had ice cream truck ice cream since I was little living in Naperville, IL! Yikes! =)

We had our shows on Friday and Saturday and a lot of us went out after our show on Friday night to a bar in town called La Terraza. It was fun spending a night out in town with our Uppies! =)

Me, Simone, Amilee, Dylan, and Kevin

They had a cool section in the back that was all a lounge area. They were like big beds!

We celebrated Tori's 19th birthday out!

We had a great host family day! I'll do a separate post for host family day because it was quite the adventurous day! We had to prepare to depart Europe and leave for Mexico.