up with kady

okay. update. today is my last day in europe. not in my life. but in up with people. last night i did my last european show. wow. i never would of guessed that i'd ever say i'd done a show in europe. let alone like eight. and now it's done. and so now i'm going to attempt to finish describing these weeks. i may not finish in this amount of time. twenty minutes. but i'll make whatever little dent that i can.

vimmerby, sweden. a quaint little town. very storybookish. which is ironic because its the birthplace of the stories of pippi longstockings. we were reunited with netta and sokeoun - who were the advance team for this city - and then sent home with our new families. mark, therese, ellinor and isabelle. i was by myself again - sharing a home with this amazing family. mark is from california, and theresa met him there so the two of them were fluent in english. bonus!!! and their daughters, 4 and 1.5, understood everything that i said, although they spoke the language very little. it was my first host family with really young host siblings. and ellinor reminded me sooo much of rebekah. very independant! they were an awesome family. i loved staying with them!

for ci in this city we did a conference with high school student about global warming. it was awesome. we watched this documentry called 'the planet' and it was awesome. i learned a lot. and it got us all veryconcerned and motivated. then for the next two days we were given groups, an issue/question and we had to prepare and small presentation on how to solve it. my groups was 'how do our lives effect the natural environment?'. it was really cool. we made our own statistics, going around the group and sharing how long we spend in the shower, how many lightbulbs there is in our homes, how often we do a load of laundry and such. it was really cool. and then we presented these facts and then offered alternetives. like did you know that swiching just one regular lightbulb to a compact flourecent one saves enough energy to power an entire city. i don't remember from memory for how long or how big of a city, which makes this a little less impressive to say the least. but just cool stuff like that. i have a lot of ideas on what i can do when i go back home that will make a little difference.

tim lane, the ceo of up with people, was with us for this week, talking to the staff and getting to know our cast a little bit. it was really cool and i got to talk to him for a bit about potentially working for up with people in the future. i'm really excited! oh and we had a guest speaker that worked for ikea and during her talk she was like 'hey i'm an alumni, andi had my reunion last year'. so i went up to her after, cause dad had his reunion last year, and asked her if she knew matthew brown. she said she did and i was like' yeah i'm his daughter!' hhaha so they travelled together and actually did advance work together for four weeks in switzerland. cool!!!!!! its so awesome meeting people that travelled with dad. oh legacy kids. (which is kids of alumni)

so although this was a really cool city, it was a bad week for the cast. on sunday i found out that someone back home is pretty sick. and it really sucks hardcore that i'm not there. and then brodies grandmother died. and olga's dad, whom she doesn't see often, died. and then to top it all off. faith's mom died and she left in the middle of the night to fly home. and we didn't get to say goodbye. it was a really rough week. and it took me this long, although it did happen, to start a prayer list. on the bright side, everyone seems to be okay now. olga went home for a week, her and her mom sorted stuff out. and we just found out that faith will be returning to our cast in atlanta. we'll see her tomorrow. yes!!!! we really weren't sure if she was going to come back - and i can't even decribe how excited we are to be getting our sister back! cause thats what its like here. what hurts them hurts you. and someone is always there for you. when you just need to cry about something, theres always someone there to hold you. learned that. it may be the last place that i wanted to break down (ie the bus), but it happened, and i got loved. by more then one friend. but one that really was above the rest was jeff. and let me just say on the record that i love jeff. i love everyone here. agh! what am i going to do in december?!?!?!? its a damn good thing that i'm going home to some incredible people - cause otherwise i think i'd go through awesomepeople withdraw. agh. not going to think about it.

oh but a cool thing. astrid lingrid world. if you look at my pictures its the place were everything was either really big or small. sooo fun. astrid was the woman who wrote the pippi books. and it was just a cool place. and then before the show we had a fun rehersal. we all dressed up in pippi like costumes - like pigtails, really bright unmatched clothes, and just funness - and did all the songs in a funny way . . . like ounce of positive, which is like blues-ish, techno style. hahhaa. and one to one, which is r+bish, rocker style. i nearly lost my voice screaming that one!!! it was a lot of fun, a good break from our usually long, detailed rehersals. i loved it.

anyways that was basically vimmerby. wow. i need to learn to keep these shorter. bah.