up with kady

ummmm . . . what happened this week?

2008-10-19T19:16:00.002-03:00

hermosillo is hot. like on our show day it was about 50 degrees out. we needed a super set up crew that came in at 5am cause it would have been too hot to set up during the day.

i stayed with jessica rojas this week. and my host family didn't speak any english. i think that they were really confused by us. one girl who could speak spanish (therefore communicate with them), but couldn't see (ps. jess is blind) - and another who could see but couldn't communicate with them.

monday driving there was long. like a nine hour day. and then when we got there, we were invited to the city hall of hermosillio. cause that monday was the national independance day of mexico. and it was a huge deal to be invited . . . cause like the govenor of the state was there and we sang 'viva le gente' (up with people in spanish) for the first lady and everything. but it made for a really long day cause we were there til like 11pm. definitley a cool experience.

it was also intern city . . . so the interns run everything. pretty cool. laura ran her own workshop . . . taught a song that she had wrote. in dutch. pretty awesome. and . . . . i don't remember a whole lot else from this week. we had mcdonalds one day for lunch. like it was donated. THAT was a pretty big deal.

oh and hermosillo had an infestation of crickets. like they were everywhere. they hopped into everything you owned. and my host family this week . . . they would just step on them, and leave them on the floor. so there was squished crickets all over the floor. i won't lie, it was gross.

and that's all. peace out.

tepic =

2008-10-14T00:53:00.000-03:00

- catherine from denmark as roommate! costume fashion show to meet host families! they provided us costumes from their homes and we had to wear them and then the host families would just find the students wearing their clothes.
- really cool host fam.
- night out on the town. we got free enterance to this club and it was crazy hardcore. like fancy. like a little more hardcore then the wave. or a lot more . . . and it was fun. the majority of the cast was there and we danced and drank beer (carona was only $2!!!! holy moly!). we went with my host sisters who were only 14 and 16 (i know! crazy mexico ;) and they wanted to stay later then catherine and i. we got home at like 2.30am. and the roosters we already crowing. gross.
- baby turtles!!! one day our ci was cleaning the beach for this group that helps save baby turtles. and they had a little kidy pool full of em. and they were adorable. they were like this big. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CUTE!
- jungleness. tepic was gorgeous! like mountains that were super green and lush. which was such a nice contrast from the dryness of the rest of our mexican tour.
- the most incredible clouds ever. like really. pillowing over the mountains. i've never seen anything like it.
- storm stayed at the ice cream shop. one night the host fam took us out to this homemade ice cream shop. and it started thunder and lightening like crazy. so bad that the streets were flooded and everything. and we were stuck in the shop for like an hour. not a bad spot to be stuck though. and we met our host sister celeste's boyfriend there. but shhhhh her dad doesn't know. ;)
- host fam day at the laguna. it is really a volcano. like water collected in the mouth of the volcano. and you swim in it. CRAZY!!! and it's bottomless. they can't find the bottom. it's nuts. look at the pictures. absolutely incredible.
- egg drop. see video on fb.

and that's all. peace out friends.

a stay in cabo?? okay!

2008-10-14T00:50:00.000-03:00

okay cabo. first host fam!!! yeah! cause in denver i had the stonesmiths - who aren't really a host family cause i already knew them. and then in breckinridge we had a staff condo. and then la paz i was in the staff hotel. SO . . . cabo was the first real host fam of the semester. YAY! i had my host dad pedro, and host mom lupeta, and host sister rosario (who was 15). and i had host brother pedro and his girlfriend paulina, who didn't live with us but visited often cause pedro spoke english and paulina was trying to learn. and three little host weiner dogs. hahaaha AWESOME!
so cabo was awesome and not awesome at the same time. it was weird in that we were in two different cities - san jose del cabo and cabo san lucas - both combined make up cabo, however the cities are 45mins and we had people hosted in both cities! so on our community impact days we stayed in our respective cities and had seperate morning meetings and CI sites. crazy! and we had two shows this week. one in each of the cities! so on friday we set up the equiptment (in a baseball stadium - let me offically say i hate outdoor facilities), did rehearsal in the 45 degree heat (UGH!), did a show, and then took down the set. and then did it all again the next day! INSANE!!!! and it was so rediculously hot. like whoa. and just the whole two days in a row. usually after a show day you have a free day. not another show day. they usually run from 8am until 1.30am. and so two in a row was rediculous. and outdoor facilities are crazy. we've had so much trouble with overheating, and getting sufficent power, and rain (therefore having to cover everything) and all kinds of crazy. AGHHH!! hahahah definitley kept us on our toes.
regional learning day was also awesome and crazy. we started off by going to a really poor area of san jose del cabo. for a lot of the people in the cast it was the fisrt time they've ever seen poverty like that. i talked to a man there who had seven children, all under the age of eight or nine. they had this tiny little house and he was just so proud of it. he kept boasting to me about the beautiful view of the mountains they have. makes you realize how great you really have it, when people like that are just so greatful for what little they do have. we kinda stuck out here and so after awhile there was a lot of little kids following us around - so we started playing games with them. and it was really fun and cute. and then i found this little baby and she was just four months old and her mom let me hold her and she was just the cutest.
then after that we drove out to the middle of no where. like a two hour drive. and the guy in charge hadn't told us where we were going so there was a whole bunch of us staff in a 12 passenger van and we were all going nuts wondering where we were going. so we made it to our destination - a mango farm. with a waterfall. but we had to walk like a kilometer to get there. but it was awesome. and the students loved it.
so then we drove back to cabo san lucas and we got on a cruise! like a mini one - but it was still awesome. and we watched the sunset on the water and they had a live band playing, and i had my fish caviar ever (like this thing was swanky, it was sushi with caviar). and we all just got to hang out and it was great. took a lot of jumping shots on the deck!
one of the ci's was crazy. it was grandparnets day there and we were going to help out serving them food and such. and i was told that we were going to perform two songs accapella. so i was all ready for that. had my singers ready and such. and then when we got there the director guy asked where our costumes where! he was expecting a full BTS with costumes and the whole shebang! and we started yelling at mitch (education coordinator) and so we started getting on the phone and trying to figure everything out and it was really nuts. in the end we just did what we were told we would be doing. one to one and viva le gente (up with people in spanish). and then we helped make up the plates of food in the kitchen. it was SOOOOOOO hot. like rediculously. like sweat dripping down my face. i had to get someon to take over for me a couple times so that i could go wipe my face off so that the grandparents didn't get a side of sweat with their meal. gross.
on the host fam day we drove out to this secluded beach that was gorgeous! we couldn't go swimming cause the waves were too crazy but it was really nice. hahahahah and they had asked me at the first of the week if i drank tequila, and i said no but i like beer, so they totally bought some beer and we just sat on the beach and listened to music and i took a nap and it was awesome.
the travel day this week was a little nuts. so la paz and cabo are in the baja penninsula (i know, i know, i can't spell for crap), so we had to bus back to la paz (3 hrs) and then take a ferry to the mainland (6 hrs) and then bus to Tepic (11hrs). GOOD DAY! hahaha ugh. but the ferry was awesome. had some good best friend time with molly, just sitting out on the deck and talking, ended up getting sunburnt. once it got dark me, mols, dave and matt all went up to the top deck and looked at the stars. it was awesome! and we saw the best shooting star any of us have ever seen. like it was incredible.
i had such a long bus ride cause there wasn't enough room on these buses for everyone. martin and anthony had flown to arizona to pick up one of the vans and were supposed to meet us down there, and me, gabe and dave had voulenteered to stay where the ferry dropped us overnight to meet them in the morning to drive to tepic, but they got stuck at the border. SO dave, gabe and i ended up on a 11 hour bus ride. like one that stops at every town, turns on the lights and lets people off. we got off the ferry at around 10. we go to bus stop and there was one leaving at 11.30pm. but we decided to compared prices with the bus station down the road. it was sketchy. but when we got back they had sold out of tickets for the 11.30 bus! UGH! so we had to wait until 12.30. GROSS. but we met this guy from BC who is just backpacking around. actually trying to make his way up to montreal, cause his girlfriend is going to school there. random eh? he was pretty cool. so we finally get on this bus. and it's FREEZING! like dave and i are shivering in our seats. and we're all curled up into balls, trying to make ourselves are comfortable as you can in a bus. and so at one of the stops the lady next to me gave me her polarfleece sweater. cause she had a blanket too and saw that i was obviously freezing. hahahaha cause who thinks to pack a sweater for an overnight in mexico??? anyways i loved her. a lot. so being a little bit warmer i got more sleep. oh and we made a stop at some random town in mexico and the bus driver told us to get out cause he had to get gas. so he dropped off everyone at this busstop, and it's 5.30am, and says that he'll be back in 20mins. totally took like like 40mins. and gabe and i were freaking out that he came back and we had somehow missed it and now we were stuck in Godknowswhere, mexico. but he finally showed up and we headed off again. i slept the majority of the bus ride. dave shared his music, listened to the Once soundtrack. good stuff.

mucho hot.

2008-09-04T01:37:00.000-03:00

la paz. oh la paz.

first of all mexico is hot. like whoa hot. like 28degress and 7.30am without the humidity.

who's idea was it to tour mexico in augest?!?!?

anyways after that crazy travel day we flew into cabo and bussed to la paz. we stopped along the way and got our first mexican meal - at this little food shop run by this family, we probably gave them the most business they'll get in months! aoife and i didn't want to wait in the line, so we checked out some pastry things that we assumed had meat in them. wrong! they were filled with caramel!!! SOOO GOOD!

so every week some staff members stay in a hotel - we have a vehicle and can go get anyone in an emergency. and back in staging we could request where we'd like to stay in the hotel - i said that i would like to stay in the hotel in mexico twice. so i was in la paz. and man did i luck out.

it was soooo nice!!! and we ended up getting the week with two free days! two sundays! YAY! the first day - the sunday - i woke up to molly walking around the room. so i asked her what time it was. and it was 12.45pm. holy crap! hahaah that travel day had taken a bit out of us! we basically lounged around the pool all day. God sometimes i hate my job . . . . . ;)

so it was me and molly, martin and kory riggs (mexican tour director or some title like that), ken and nathan, and michael and gaby. pretty sweet. and it was so nice to be able to go home at night to a sweet air conditioned hotel room. only downside was that there was no laundry. and there wasn't the week before either. is resulted in me washing stuff in the sink with shampoo and hanging around the room. and that doesn't quite cut it. i did laundry here in cabo for the first time in 2 and a half weeks. i don't think i've ever appreciated clean clothes more!!!!! they smelled soooo good! i was starting to feel like such a dirt!!!

so on monday i had a mic group workshop. mexican medley. basically a medley of popular songs from mexico. medleys are just so tough for mic groups. cause it's just all over the place with key changes and tempo changes. but they picked it up really fast! we also do three of our regular songs in spanish - sound of peace, we'll be there, and up with people. and well we added 'de que color' ('what color is god's skin' in english) and a mariachi moment. agh! learn it all in one week! man.

tuesday we had regional learning. did a bus tour. stopped at a church - was awesome! the cast left to get ice cream but i got to stay in the church and catch up with the big man for a bit. sweet. and then everyone headed out to the beach. i've never felt water so warm!! it was so great - although i'm sure the other beach goers didn't agress - invaded by 100 uppies. best thing was that we had a great game of football in the water!

the next two days were also dedicated to mexican show stuff. i had soloist and mic groups signed out both days. but they're rockstars and learned it so fast! yes!

one of the nights the hotel staff went to eat downtown - along the beach. so we're eating outside and there are these two guys playing a little live entertainment. guitar and bass. and the guitarist was singing. and he wasn't very good. so he's attempting to do hotel californina or something like that and doesn't know the words. so he asks our (me, molly, martin, kory, and nathan) table if any of us know the words. kory tells him i sing. but i tell him i don't know the words to that song. so he's all well what can you sing and i'll play it for you. and i told him that i'm pretty sure he wouldn't know anything that i know, but if he gives me his guitar i can play for myself. hahahah i think he was a little suprised at that! so i get up and sing umbrella. obviously. and i got an otra (encore!). so i did realize by colbie caillat. but i wish that matt was there for that. me and matt kill that song. like whoa harmony central! but it was still pretty awesome. hahahaha just a cool moment that afterwards made realize how much i love my life. just doing a little gig in la paz, mexico. oh and after i was done kory got up and in spanish was like 'if you want to hear her sing more come to the show . . .blahblah blah'! hahahaha sweet. there was quite a few people that had stopped along the melicon (boardwalk and i probably didn't spell it right) - but probably just cause they we thinking 'who the heck is this random white girl singing crazy music?'

anyways. hmmm something else cool. oh we were sponsored partically by coca cola! lots of free powerade! we did an awesome BTS on the melicon with the sun setting over tha water behind us! and the stage was way unstable and during 'keep the beat' i thought it was going to collapse! had a culture presentation from arnab - learned some about bangledesh! sweet!

so this time in mexico we have a lot of outdoor shows.

i offically hate outdoor shows.

yeah they sounds cool - but technically they are a pain in the arse. like getting the stages built. and getting power. so far they've all been in baseball stadiums - and in la paz, where it apparently just 'three times a year', it rained on our show day. so our set up that was already behind due to lack of stage and power, also got put on hold and we had tarps over all the equiptment and man it was just crazy. he had to put rehearsal on hold for awhile cause we didn't want the dancers to slip on the wet stage. and when it rains here - it doesn't cool it off. it just makes it more humid. and it wasn't pouring or anything - just a light rain - so we didn't know whether we were going to cancel or not.

but the show must go on. we did it. and it worked. kinda. there was a lot of mishaps. show wise and tech wise. sad day. but we got through the show. and the mexican medley - was way better then i expected! i was so proud of all my little non-spanish speakers up rocking the spanish songs!! oh and ps. we have jess.

yes. jessica rojas. the most incredible singers i've ever heard in my life. she travelled in cast B07 at the same time as me last summer, and then again this last time in A08. and she's travelling with us for our mexican tour as vocal support. cause this girl is incredible. like wow. you haven't heard someone sing until you've heard her. i get goosebumps every time i hear her. she does this mariachi moment in the show and she starts off with this note that she holds for forever. like she was timed once and it was 41seconds. i can't hold my breath that long - let alone belt a note! jeez louise!

so the show was alright. and michael - aka my boss - was there for the week and so he gave me all kinds of suggestions and advice and stuff to work on. sweet!

and that's about it. i was an extreme amount of lazy the whole next day. and it was good.

peace out.

cut +paste = catch up

2008-09-04T01:35:00.000-03:00

i'm not even going to apologize.

i have a crazy job.

so some good memories of the final weeks of denver.

- i went to see batman twice - once with gabe, phil, joris, cody, and cody's friend ryan. and then once with the stonesmiths. good movie.
- the dress rehearsal. it was rough to say the least. during the first song one of the students tripped over the power cord. cutting all sound halfway through the song. but i was really proud of them cause they kept running on stage smiling - singing loud and proud! yay!
- the rest of staging is a blur. everyday was so busy with walk throughs and run throughs. i was leading vocals and working with the band. add in numerous staff meetings and workshops. then when we started putting the show together - dance, vocals, band - it equalled crazy. by the time i got home at night i was beat.
- i got to hear steve farber talk again. he's awesome. inspirational. i love him. stevefarber.com.
- some people came to visit and i got to see all kinds of friends at the dress rehearsal. jeremy farber (yeah steve's son) who was the video tech for my student cast came and visited for a week or something. it was aweasome seeing him. and then callie, abby, vanessa, and jordan were all at the dress rehearsal. good times.
- i have my first intern!!! my 'awesome' intern! cause her name is laura assums (yeah - pronounced awesomes!). hahahah it's awesome. she's from belgium and an absolute sweetheart! She was almost called my mucus intern though, cause on the description sheet Scotty spelled it ‘mucis intern’. Kinda hilarious.

so the next week we got out on the road. holy shit. i was really nervous and excited. we were in breckinridge colorado, this beautiful little mountain town. it was GORGEOUS!!! like driving to the school in the morning we'd drive my this lake with the mist coming off it, with a mountain on one side and on the other side a whole bunch more of them, some with snow on the top! it was cold up here too. like it hailed twice and snowed once. in augest!!! but i love it so much. definitely going back there someday!

the best thing about the week was that there was a staff allocation (which means living arrangment???). we had two condo's!!! i was in one with molly, dave, matt, rafa, anthony, and nathan. molly and i ran in the minute we got there and called the master bedroom - had our own bathroom! hell yeah! it was an awesome place. big screen tv and a hot tub! alright! i wish that we could've been there longer - it was awesome to be able to go home at night and just hang out with everyone. we watched A LOT of olympics! and one night we worked on picking the 'call song', which is the song that they play 15mins after the show to let all the students know that they have to go to their respective 'job's - either interviews or strike. and so you hear the call song, run up on stage and dance your butt off and then get to work. so this song is kinda a big deal. like you hear a lot of it. and it has to be something really fun and danceable. so the pressure was on. we spent about 2 hours in the living room, all with out laptops, sharing our ideas. it took forever. and so towards the end, when it looked like we weren't going to find one we'd all agree on, i jokingly suggested mambo #5.

and now that's our call song. true story. started off as a joke but we totally wen't for it. hahahaha i love it.

as a departing gift, the stonesmiths had crazy generously given me a starbucks gift card as i left - and i'm embarassed to admit i used in all in that 5 days in breckinridge. i needed a lot of caffeine.

our first show went AWESOME! sooooo much better the the dress rehearsal. like whoa better. like tommy spauding (our ceo and president) came up to the show team afterwards and congratulated us on how much we had accomplished in the 5 days since the dress rehearsal! YAY!

most of my week was focused on the mexican medley. so yeah. mexico was our second stop on the road and we had a 7 minute medley to teach the students. hahaha as if they hadn't just learned a two hour show eh??? so the last two weeks that had consumed a lot of my time. i was teaching the cast spanish vocals (umm ps i'm terrible at spanish), mic groups how to sing them in four part harmonies, and finding soloists that could learn spanish in two weeks and also had good voices for the parts. EEEEEKKKKK! but although i'm kinda jumping ahead of myself here, i'm proud to say we did it for the first time last night and it went awesomely! like there's still some cleaning up to do - but WAYYYYY better then i thought it would be!

so yeah. that friday (in breck), we got in at 9. after being at the show facility the night before until 1ish. i had to go back to the condo during the day cause we had a family donate it to us and so we wanted to leave it nice and clean, but as it was so late the night before we had to do it during the day. so dave, matt and i headed back and vaccuumed and mopped, did all the laundry and dishes and stuff like that. we were in for a real long day here. we - the whole group - were in a meeting room at a resort there. until 4 in the morning. eeeeewwwwww. cause our flight was early saturday. and that's just inconvient for host families so we did the first overnight. what an adventure. i was hoping to get some sleep but no such luck. but i did sleep a little on the bus from breck to denver. it was a long day though. to say the least.

and so although i'm still not caught up i'm going to leave here. i'm going to save and then go out and use the internet (which only works near the pool - yeah that's right! wait till you hear about this week's allocation!). i haven't checked facebook in days - i'm dying here!!! hahahaha.

love to all!!

parking lots and singing parts.

2008-07-20T12:37:00.004-03:00

i don't remember thursday.

this is the thing about up with people. you do so much in one day that it's nearly impossible to ever remember. wait . . . maybe i wrote about thursday already. i don't know. jeez louise.

so friday we had a road staff meeting the whole morning. talked about all kinds of stuff. and in the afternoon we had drivers training!!! whoot.

so basically we drove out to broomfield . . . like 30 mins away . . . to this high school's empty parking lot. i was told that i would be able to drive the truck (that holds our equiptment), but gaby crushed my dreams and told me i wasn't allowed to. cause you have to have an american drivers liscence. dumb.

so gaby and jared has set up a course for us to drive through . . . the truckers went first and then the van drivers. the whole thing took like 4 hours . . . with the 15 road staff and 10 field managers. so we got to sit in a parking lot (in like 95* heat) just to complete an 8 minute test. man it was hot. matt and i went to his house at one point . . . to get drink for everyone so that we wouldn't pass out . . . and we got his guitar. so that wasn't too bad.

i don't think i failed - but after three attempts at paralele parking i still couldn't do it. but they had this thing with two rows of tennis balls . . . and you had to drive your passenger side wheel through (threw? thru?) and i only knocked down 3 of 20. usually when you hit one they all go flying. so that was kinda cool.

once i got home that night we watched a movie. the illusionist. can't say i love it. BUT my host grandmas dog was down in the den watching it with us and i found out that she has an extreme fear of feet. like this dog HATES feet. whoa. hahahaha kinda awesome.

saturday was probably the first whole day that i spent doing 'my job'. we had a discussion with the cast explaining internships, i helped teach cast vocals (we'll be there and oye el boom), and lunch i talked to all those interested in being my music intern and answered their questions about it, i hung out with the band (help teach some electric guitar . . . who knew i could?!?!), listened to some singers, and then had our first hometeam meeting.

hometeams are like small groups that we break into to talk and such. cause sometimes people feel more comfortable sharing with a small group then one of 110 people.

so me and martin and yui got hometeam 5! alright! we've got an awesome group and we just spent the time hanging out and getting to know each other better.

matt picked me up right from the bus stop and we headed out to boulder to see their community theater group perform Urinetown. it was hilarious!! highly reccomend!

and then home, ice cream, card games, and sleep.

now i don't know really what's the deal for today . . . we'll just have to wait and see.

<3

sweat, tears, but no blood yet.

2008-07-15T22:33:00.005-03:00

okay so i won't lie to you. i really do want to be writing this right now. but i know i'll be kicking myself in the pants next week if i don't . . . cause i'll probably have like 3987 million to catch up on.

so i only have two days to catch up on. wow. this is like a record.

yesterday was the first offical day for the students. like we met after the airport. and at opening session. but this was the first full up with people day. alright . . . bring it on!!

sweet. so. we had the first morning meeting (where we give any announcments, share if there's any guests, sick calls, or birthdays). we had two birthdays right off the bat - yay danielle and veronika!

wow. yesterday is already fuzzy. hahahaha the days are so full it's so hard to remember what happened. OH! so the road staff went over the rules in regards to host families. like cerfew and how to handle offers of alcohal and yada yada yada (when was the last time you heard someone say that?? yada? it's been years for me). oh and we did ice breakers. like fun games in the ballroom. like . . . ultimate being (make me teach that someday).

i missed lunch cause we had to practice for another little introducion to the show. but i eventually got to eat.

we performed the gypsy dance and the song 'shine the light' for the students. the dance is AWESOME! crazy fun. and the song is unreal. me and eric lentz (one of the producers of the up with people show, and the writer of the song) played guitars and then there was like 6 of us singing with me and jen on the solo's. pretty sweet.

and tuesday . . . . hmmmm. i actually lied when i said i was going to write monday and tuesday. cause now it's thursday. gross. so here's some of the highlights:

i don't remember tuesday. this is why i can't leave this too long. cause it all blends together. i'm trying to remember one thing. OH!!! modules. basically auditions. so the students have like 5 modules - dance, vocal, speaking, tech, and costumes. and i was in the vocal ones. taking notes. judging who might get a solo and such. that was pretty cool. and then went over into wednesday too.

the culture jam was on wednesday. basically all the students can showcase something from their country or culture. like we have a salsa, ethiopian, japanese, native american and thai dance. singing in all kinds of different languages. and all kinds of cool stuff. pretty sweet. except it meant a late night. like i didn't get home till 10. 7-10. gross. hahahaha but not really.

today we did a stereotype activity. people wrote down their stereotypes of each others countries. pretty interesting! and then the road staff did some team building stuff - like the human knot and such. and the speaker (and almuna) had just had a baby. like two weeks ago! WOW!! so i got to hold little baby joey (a girl) for a good little while and that made me so happy. soooo cute.

and then at the end of the day matt and i ran down to the basement and sang a little bit to close off the day. we're working on the song 'realize' by colbie caliate. or however you spell her name. i feel like i've already attempted this in a blog. hmmmm. anyways. i love it. and i love singing with matt. he's going to be my brodie this semester.

i take the bus home with three other student. milou from the netherlands, josh from the usa, and seung-boem from south korea. so we're waiting in line to load the bus and i came to realize tha seung-boem is HILARIOUS! holy crap this kid! hahaha nearly had me in tears! cause his english isn't too great yet, it's good but . . . you know . . . still a lot of confusing moments. so he had asked what i did today. so i said that the staff did some team building. and he says (in his cute little korean accent) 'oh like body building?!?!'. hahaaha. and then it just went uphill from there. but i can't even explain what happened. it was good though. and it ended with seung-boem teaching us how to say sweet potatoe in korean. WHAT?!?!?! hahaha i wish i remembered what it was! anyways i love this kid now. i'm going to look forward to this everyday.

and so now i'm at home. my host grandpa (matt's dad) and host grandma (cindy's mom - ps with her dog allie) are both visiting tonight so it's a little crazier then usual around here. exciting though.

okay. caught up. alright. until tomorrow. hopefully.

peace out!

dress codes and a new cast.

2008-07-14T00:48:00.003-03:00

so monday was my first offical day. pretty exciting. like we had to wear a number two.

hmmmm . . . that means nothing to a non-uppie. so here's the deal - we have a dress code number system. it is as follows:

number one - best thing you own. dress and heels or suit and tie. usually worn on days we're meeting REALLY important people. like presidents of countries.
number two - business. dress pants and top/dress/skirt/tie's are encouraged. absolutely no jeans and only closed toe shoes (with the exception of some nice sandals for girls)
number three - everyday. jeans and tee basically.
number four - work out/rehearsal clothes.
number five - anything that can get paint or dirt on it. and obtain h0les. worn on some community service sites (ie. habitat for humanity)

so yeah i made my way to downtown denver and headed to the Up with People office, met up with cody and katie outside, and stopped at the fifth floor. inside the conferance room was basically everyone who works for UwP. office staff, road staff, FM's (field managers - go to the cities ahead of the cast and set up facilities and host families and such), regional staff (like paul whittiker who sets up all the places we go in asia basically), and of course Tommy Spaulding. our ceo and president. so tommy got up and spoke to us for awhile and it was just incredible. like he rocks my socks off. i've never met anyone so completely passionate about what they do. and he told us that we were the best team that the new uwp (since 2006) has put together yet. wow. i almost cried a couple times. i'm SOOOOOOOOOOOO excited to be doing this. holy moly.

and so we basically had meetings all day. financial stuff and where the company is heading (which is really exciting stuff - i'm so pumped to be a part of this awesome transition!)

and then at night we had an staff awards ceremony. i guess it used to be an annual thing . . . but it hasn't happened since '99. so it was really nice. had a nice dinner. applauded for people that really deserved the recognition that they got.

the rest of the week was fairly standard. we were at the sherman center - which is the building where i had my staging. it's like this 100 year old building that has like 6 floors and it's just crazy and is really cool. i love it.

basically the whole week i was back in the basement (remember with the band last summer?!?!) with michael bowerman (the music director), bill (cast vocals and as a side-note his son is in The Fray.), and dekker (works with soloist and is a fellow canadian). we talked about what to expect and what we're going to do as the music team. and then one day they sat me down and asically had a three hour advice for kady session. which was long but also really cool cause all three of them have done my job. and they're still working for up with people so they're pretty much pro. so i'm trying to learn as much from them as possible in the next four weeks.

and yeah that's about all i remember about last week. oh wait. up until friday.

cause friday the cast got in. YAY!!!! the PA team (performing arts - music, dance, and tech) had rehearsal and meetings all day but after our day was done i got to go to the airport for a bit and then back to the montebello center where everyone gathers. i met some awesome students, however i remember few names. it was awesome so see their reactions to the whole beginning though . . . made me remember my first day.

and so saturday was a host family day. i slept in a bit and then headed out to sienna's swim meet. and she's like pro. and she's like 11. i only stayed around for one events . . . but she won all five of the events she was in and set like two record times. rediculous. and so i walked home from that and it was nice . . like a 40min walk. but i wish i had of brought water. it can get so hot here. and since we're at a really high elevation it's really dry. i'm always thirsty.

sooooo . . . did some laundry. talked to home. took a nap. and then matt (host dad) and i headed out to boulder to meet up with some of his friends an we had a little picnic-ish thing outside. and then cindy (host mom) joined us. she ran a 50km run that day. and got 3rd. i'm telling you . . . this family is crazy!!!!

and then we sat outside and listen to a band . . . the cowboy junkies . . . who are apparently canadain. who knew?!?!

sunday i made it to church which was great. and i found out that it's close enough that i can totally walk or bike. alright! then sunday afternoon we had opening session. a little preview of the show for the students and their host families. our cast manager martin spoke to them and so did tommy spaulding. and we did a couple numbers. like the song 'room for everyone' and at the end of the song all the staff members come out . . . each carrying the flag of one of the countries represented within the cast. we've got 22 this semester.

and then we kept going with a couple more songs. i got to sing the solo for 'keep the beat' which i had never sang before. pretty exciting. and then afterwards we had a little social for all the students and their host families. but i was really hot (150+ people) and really loud (150+ uppie people).

so cody drove me home and i had a nice supper at home. and then we watched this REALLY weird movie called 'the seeker'. don't watch it. it was one of the weirdest movies i've ever seen. like afterwards i just had this really erie feeling stuck with me. eww.

and now i'm caught up and i'm going to write today seperately because it's a new week. alright.

brb.

gross. i should never say that ever.

and so it begins

2008-07-12T16:10:00.002-03:00

okay. catch up time. and i thought i was bad at this last year - now i'm even busier. agh. i'll do my best though.

so i left off at wednesday. i think. we did the showcase show, and then party at the erleys. good times (not in the maritimes though - cait i always want to say this now but i can't cause i'm not in the maritimes. sad day)

my host family went camping for the long weekend, so i celebrated independance day on my own. i did get to see some fireworks though . . . and let me tell you, they are hardcore here. lasted like three hours. whoa. i also drove to the flatirons mall to buy sneakers . . . and didn't crash and die on these crazy colorado highways. our highways back home are a joke. i was a little nervous here. but i made it there and back in one piece with no damage to the stonesmiths car so all it well.

saturday i headed out early in the morning cause we had our staff retreat!! yay!!! so i met matt and we drove into denver to meet up with everyone else and head up to the mountain town, Evergreen.

so i'm going to stop here for a sec and let you know who the staff is. cause i'm sure i'll be talking about them a lot. so here's a little mini bio on all of them:

martin - cast manager (traveled as CM for my cast)
scott - assistant cast manager (married to ellen)
ellen - education manager (married to scott)
aoife - education coordinator (traveled as staff with my cast, we call each other sister cause we were roommates three times last year)
mitch - education coordinator (also traveled as staff with my cast)
celiana - business manager and marketing coordinator (traveled as staff with my cast)
dave - admissions coordinator (traveled as student with me)
matt - business administrator (traveled with cast B last summer, so we were in denver at the same time last year) NEW STAFF!
molly - logistic coordinator (just got off the road with cast a) NEW STAFF!
nathan - technical manager and sound tech (from canada! yay! is new) NEW STAFF!
anthony - lights tech (just got off the road) NEW STAFF!
rafa - video tech (traveled with cast b last summer) NEW STAFF!
gabe - show manager (traveled as staff with cast b last year)
yui - dance captain (traveled with my cast)
me - music coordinator! NEW STAFF!

so as you can see there's an awesome mix of oldies and newbies. and so over the weekend we hung out and got to know each other and stuff. talked about our goals and what we want to been seen as as staff. we were sadly missing nathan and celi - both stuck in the respective countries or canada and venezuela. nathan got here last monday though and celi's getting here this week! yay!!!

we ate lots and talked even more. at one point matt and i sat down at the piano and started singing and playing around - singing realize by colbie calait (sp?!?!) and hallelujah by leanord cohen. good times (not in the maritimes though.) we bbqed over a fire and roasted marshmellows, played a crazy game (jesus gnomes against the flamingos) and then headed off to bed.

sunday morning we all woke up and made breakfast together. i was in charge of pancakes . . . and it was just like home! hahhaah making over 20 pancakes for a full house. it was just a lot of fun . . . some of us have known each other for a year or more . . . some for no more then a week . . . but we all seem to mesh really well and i know we've got a kick ass team going on here. yeah!

so then matt drove me home and i was super lazy and then the stonesmiths came home and i caught up with them and then off to bed again.

so there's the first week. i'm going to try and write this last week tonight but right now i promise sienna a games a cards so i'm going to peace out.

<3

she's BACKKKKKK!

2008-07-02T09:59:00.004-03:00

well i made it.

it took a little longer then expected but here i am. writing in this at 7am cause i woke up at 5.30 and couldn't get back to sleep. gross.

anyways . . . as many of you know i flew out on monday. from moncton and then i had a connecting flight in toronto. and for any of you who've ever travelled to the states . . . you know that you have to go through customs. i had 45mins to catch my connecting flight, and so i had lots of time. so i picked up my guitar and luggage and waited in line.

so i got up and talked to the customs lady. and everything is fine until she asks how long i'm going to be in the states. so i tell her that i'm here for seven weeks, and then gone to mexico and then back for another eight or something. and so she asks me why. and so i tell her that i'm travelling with this non-profit called up with people. and then she asks what i'll be doing . . . and so i gave her my title. and THEN she asked if i was getting paid.

so i didn't want to lie. cause i mean - what if they caught me in a lie. what then? so i explained that i'm an independant contractor and that i'm working for the company - so i will be getting paid in the states . . . but i'm not working in the states. cause i'll be other places too.

so she's all confused by this and sends me to this american 'room'. i explain again and go sit down. ugh.

so i kinda just hang out. this woman with two little boys sat down next to me. they were from arizona. and then there was this black woman and her little son, who she told us was thirteen months, and he was SOOOO CUTE! he was dressed in a little black puma track suit with black and white puma shoes and his hair was all in cornrows and just too cute. and you could tell he was just learning to walk really well so he was just running around everywhere. and man he was cute.

so i'm sitting there waiting. kinda starting to freak out a bit - and this air canada lady comes in and asks if anyone in on the flight to denver. so i say that i am. she comes over, takes my name, and then rips the tags off my luggage and guitar and tells me that i've missed my flight. AGHHHHHHHHHH. but then she said to just go see her when i was done and she'd book me a new one.

so i finally got permission to come into the states. and i guess i'm lucky i did at all cause the guy who's supposed to be our sound tech guy (from ontario) got sent back home. and if they've flagged him in the system then he won't be able to get here ever. agh!! this could be a huge problem.

so since i missed my connecting flight i got to hang out at the airport for like five hours. ewwwww. and it was a little boring. ahhh well.

i finally got to denver. and libby came and got me. YAY!

so we went to the Up with People warehouse - where the special events cast was practicing for our show on wednesday. and i got to be reunited with so many people that i know and love - and got to meet a lot of people that i've come to love in the short span of a week!

the show itself was nuts. just a 40min preview show - but it was SOOOOOO hot in the warehouse. like thailand hot. like i know it's hot when i'm sweating my face off and all i'm doing is standing and singing. poor dancers. but it went really well, we got really good responces from our special guests. hopefully they'll hire us!!! :D

oh and so i'm staying with the stonesmiths again - same host family as last year. and i loves them. i love that i'm back here with them cause i'm already comfortable with them and it's just awesome.

and there's so much more to write but i feel bad that i don't have anything at all up yet so i'll just put this on and hopefully it'll satisfy you for the time being. maybe tuesday night i'll do the last couple days. man there is just so much going on. i'm SOOOOOOOO excited. wow.

first offical day tomorrow. meetings all day. 8-9ish. wearing my number two.

alright.

love from denver!

2008-06-11T23:14:00.001-03:00

i just figured out how to do that top header thing.

so cool.

thanks to ryan, who i completely stole the idea from. so he gets all credit about how incredibly awesome it is.

:D

18 sleeps!

so excited i might just blow up

2008-05-22T18:14:00.002-03:00

okay. so i just got some incredible news.

guess who's going to be the music coordinator for Up with People's Cast B 2008?!?!?

ME!

so i got my dream job. getting paid to teach music around the world. wow. wowowowowowowowowowowowowow. i am SOOOO EXCITED.

so excited that i renamed my blog and i'm writing in it already. hahaha and i don't leave for a month!

so here's where i'm going . . . in case your interested!

Cast B 2008

Orientation: Denver, CO: June 29 -August 11
Colorado: August 11-14
New Mexico: August 14-18
Arizona: August 20-25
Mexico: August 25-September 21
Arizona: September 21-19
New Mexico/Colorado: September 29 - October 6
Utah/Wyoming: October 7-20
South Dakota/Minnesota/Wisconsin: October 20 - November 9
Illinois: November 9-16
Philippines: November 16-end of tour

except i think its changing in that we're going to mexico right after staging. at least that's what tim lane said. and he's the vice president so i assume he knows what he's talking about.

YAY!!! I <3 UWP!

2007-11-20T23:53:00.000-04:00

okay in for another short one. but i really need to catch up. although i should be writing my paper for the UN on global peace that's due tomorrow. but i am not. maybe tomorrow night.

north carolina. winston-salem to be exact. i lived on my own this week. with a lady by the name of lavonda boston. what a name. i did CI at the ronald macdonald house. which was really awesome cause i stayed there for a couple days when i was little - so it was really cool to kinda give back to them. i organized their food cabinet. it took like 3 hours. soooo much food. we did a bts (backing track show) at a kids hospital, and we met this little boy jonathan who was just incredible. the band did admissions presentations at the high school and it was my first time doing that! yay! except we missed the first macy's parade rehersal, and i was a little upset about that. okay and i went out to eat at a japanese grill, where the chef cooked everything in front of us on a grill thing. and he set things on fire and it was just fun. and then there was the cat that was always in the church that we were in the whole week. like it was just walking around in the church. creepy . . . .

hmmm okay. oh on saturday night after the show netta came to live with me cause her host family went away for the night. and then in the morning we got up and then picked up brodie cause my host mom belonged to a Unity church, and so does brodie, so all four of us went to that service. and then went out to eat at a 50s diner. and it was fun. and we listened to sexyback on the way to church. in my 60 something year old host moms car. and it was her cd. HAHAHAHHA lovely!

okay i really need sleep. hopefully i'll do another one tomorrow.

2007-11-16T22:54:00.000-04:00

okay. wow. this is the most behind i've been i think. and my only excuse is that we're back in the states. and it's just nothing really foreign or anything. but i guess i'll give you all a little taste of what is was like to be back in the states.

weird. it had been a couple months since i could read all the sings along the road. or hear english conversations occuring all around me. i think i had more culture shock re-entering our western society then i did in thailand or europe or any of the other places i've ever been. weird.

so our first stop was gwinette county - just outside of atlanta, georgia. i lived with vania from
bulgaria this week, and we stayed with an alumni couple, renee and tim, and their 8 and 7 year old sons, will and alex. wow that was a really messed up sentence with all the commas and such. my bad. anyways. they had a MASSIVE house. wow. so beautiful. and they were just awesome. it was really cool cause they just kind of understood what it's like in up with people. umm this week is a little hazy cause i took so long to write about it. my bad. again. okay but what really stuck out is . . . . martin luther king jr center, boys and girls club, hanging out with the kids there, the middle school that had 876 sixth graders. holy crap!!! our really awesome show facility, with the giant robot outside, eating outside, being slack and hanging out with dave after the show, mitch dancing in the lobby all mitchishly. babysitting my host brothers on saturday night - it was like being home!!!! so weird how it all just came back so naturally. and then on sunday we went to the World of Coke musuem. which was really cool.

yay and that's atlanta. well gwinette county. same dif though. okay hopefully i'll get around to north carolina soonish.

2007-10-22T01:02:00.000-03:00

belgium. i didn't really know what to expect going into belgium. i didn't have any stereotypes at all. i just thought of chocolate, waffles, and beer.

when we arrived in belgium, and were reunited with maria and dave, we were walked to the city hall in our number ones (fancyest dress code - dresses and ties) where we met with many important people. and we were also given some local beer. but this wasn't normal beer. it tasted like peroxcide, and therefore as you might have guessed - it was strong!!!! after one little spot mixed with orange juice, we were a little more awake and giggly then we originally were. blech. it really didn't taste good.

we later found our host family by singing songs, aoife and i were roomates again (we were in tucson) and we met our new host sisters, sare (6) and nina (4). they were super cute. our host mom was super nice. and our house was super modern. like glass everything, sensored lights when you entered the room, and just stuff like that. nothing like home!!!!! ahaha. we had our own bathroom, which was kinda awesome! they were really cool. i liked our my stay with them a lot!

the place where we met everyday, was this crazy building that was being renovated or somethin and it had no heat so we froze everyday. and i was just sooo sketch. like on day andrew and i went and found this room and sat down and talked and stuff but then we'd look up and like - wow i can't even describe it. like holes in the walls. spider webs. dirty matresses. broken chairs. stuff like that. weird. very abandoned house that teens break into to party. sketchy!!!!!!!!!!!!

so the week was really cool. we had an alumni come and talk to us, since his year in uwp he has contracted hiv and shared how he now lives with it. it was really cool. we did this barefoot walk through the woods, which i loved!!! aoife fell in a giant puddle, soaked to her hips!!! hahaha sooo funny.

the show was nuts. there was this huge show the night before us, so when we got to the facility in the morning, there was all kinds of nice stuff all over the place. cigerettes. flyers/programs or something. and all kinds of garbage including lots of rubber utensils. EWWWWWW! maybe some of you will know what i mean by that - got to keep this rates G though. the supercrew was there at 6am to set up the stage and there was still people stumbling around. the last one left at 7. crazy. in the show we had a guest performer and she did her own song in the show and it was incredible!! and then she sang we'll be there with me and brodie. and it was awesome. like goosebumps, shivers, jumped up and down in joy the first time we tried it, awesome. wow. her voice was awesome. it was a lot of fun doing that with her. sabee. thats how it sounded anyways.

on host family day we went into brussels. its a really awesome city. we saw that atonium. or something like that. i have pictures on facebook. its this huge structure that was built for the world expo - like the effile tower. speaking of that. jeff and jonathan stayed with this family that obviously had some money cause for their host family day they put them on a train to paris!!!!!! so for the whole day the two explored paris. i was sooooo jealous!!!!!!!!!!!! but its crazy awesome. anyways we just walked around the city and it was really awesome. ate a waffle and bought some chocolate. then we went out to eat. it was just nice and relaxing.

we didn't leave for the airport till 2am tuesday. so we hng out and did education stuff all monday. and then went to a firehouse around 9ish and hung out till 2. gaby breathed fire for us. convienent place so show us . . . . . and then dave and i took mine and brodies guitars outside and just kinda jammed and almost got run over by a firetruck. it was scary. and then we went back upstairs and all the students - the staff were in a meeting - were all gathered around the room and we were having this crazy cast meeting. this is when we talk about issues within the cast, what people are stuggling with, what we need to work on, and then at the end of this one it was like a giant lovefest. i was kinda angry though cause afterwards some people were like 'its so awesome that the staff wasn't here' but i love our staff. and i get upset when people don't appreciate how much they do for us. anyways. then libby cut my hair. oooo la laa. shes a rockstar.

and then we packed up and headed out. i passed out on dave in the bus to the airport, we got all our stuff together, and then flew to frankfurt, waited for ummmmmmm like and hourish. and then off to atlanta, georgia, usa!!! yay north america!!!!!!

and i'll leave it at that. more later gators!

2007-10-16T23:15:00.002-03:00

germany again. wahoo two cities. this one was erfurt. and i loved it. a lot. we got there and sara and johan were there and we met in town hall and it was this crazy old beautiful biulding! and then we had some performers, and this one guy played the piano sooooo beautifully. like wow. it was incredible. and then we got our host families. and ate and drank champane. oh i'm so glad that i haven't lost any language skills on this trip and i can still spell . . . . .. oh wait i missed something. martin came back. hes our cast manager and he was away for two weeks in las vagas with cast b. anyways he came back an told us some crazy news. one of the goals for uwp is to get more involved in the muslim community and get muslim students to travel with us. so martin had a contact in the muslim community in vagas and then cast b ended up 'breaking the fast' in a muslim mosque (right?!?!) with the parishioners (is that just a christain term though?). anyways super cool. like really lreally awesome. and it makes me so excited cause i know that uwp is going to do so many incredible things. okay and then martin gave us some news that related more to our cast. when we're in the states we do a program in schools for kids called 'stand for peace'. and apparentley the UN has a program like it and they are interesting in maybe merging with us. so when we're in new york we're going to a conference at the UN.

AGHAGHAGHAGHAGHAGAHGAGHAGHAGHAGHAGH!!!! holy poop! thats nuts!!!!!! sooo cooooooooolllllll!

anyways so yeah i met my host family. and my roommate was amelia from china. and my host family was really awesome. i had a host sister, doreen, whos just 14 days older then me! but its funny cause shes in her senior year. cause i started a year early really, and they do 13 years of school. anyways she was awesome!!!! i loved her!!! and in their house we lived up in this little attic/loft place that was just soooo cute!!! and this is the place where i had wireless which was pretty much awesome. oh and a funny story. on the first night doreen took us outside to walk us to the bus stop so we'd know where to go the next morning, and this guy comes jogging by. and its like it was all in slow motion, and i was staring at him, and him at me, and there was a confused look on both of our faces and then at the same moment "andrew?!"/"kady?!" hahahaha so weird. i was like what are you doing here!? so yeah andrew lanham (staffone) lived on the same street. it was reallly funny.

and now i couldn't tell you what we did over the next couple days. but i'll mention some of the awesome things. wow there's a lot. i loved this city. it's at a tie with espoo, finland for favorite. okay. ummm my ci was unreal. like awesome awesome awesome!!!!!!!! emi from sweden and i were doing the same thing, although there was a lot of others with us in the same facility. so we were told that we were going to be writting a song with students at this music school. so we walk into this band room and there's like six sixteenyearold 'ganstas' sitting down. the music teacher asked us what instruments we played. and some how i ended up on electric guitar and emi on the keys. sooo funny. and so it wasn't a song we wrote. it was a rap. in german. cause the boys didn't really speak any english. and it was just sooooooo fun. emi and i got to contribute what we thought would be awesome, and we got to create the chorus for the song. and it was just tooooooo fun. the boys were rediculous. thought they were all that. hahaha so i made fun of them and pretended to be hardcore rap star too. it was sooo funny. and then on the second day we recorded it. and i have 50 copies of the song on cd. and we got to preform it in the show. soo fun. and just wait till you see the pictures of these boys. haha i love them, oh and after the first day of ci we were done early so we wen't back into the main part of the city, and i hung out with andrew l and jeremy for the afternoon. which was rediculous. if you know them then you understand. hahaha it was fun. oh and at one point as we were crossing a street i was like 'don't get hit by a tram', cause they were really quiet, and i ended up almost walking into one. like jeremy and andrew grabbed my backpack and pulled my back. it was inches, agh. smooth kady . . . and then andrew and i headed home and walked through the maze of house where we lived and found our houses. and it was just really good. i love our staff. and i love getting to know them. cause they really are incredible people. yay love.
ummm okay. there was this crazy beautiful catherdral in the city. and andrew j (i know this is confusing, cause i hung out with both andrews a lot in this city, but L is staff, and J in student) and i went in for awhile and it was just awesome. i love being in churches. i didn't know it till i hardly ever got to be in them. and then we went to the carnival which was in the domplaz square, for oktoberfest, and went on this crazy ride. like it was nuts. i'm suprised i'm still living. hahaha i was squeezing andrews hand sooo hard. it was sooooo fun. hahahaha. i have a video of what the ride looked like/did so you understand more when you see it.

umm our show was nuts for me. i was sooooooo busy! and i don't want this to sound like i'm bragging or anything. cause i actually felt guilty that i did so much. but i'm going to write it down so that i remember, this is in the order of the show. i played ayiko and unspoken on keys with the band. i sang in mic groups for village, sound of peace, and power with. i sang the solo for one to one. i played ounce on keys jumped off and did buckets, and then ran back to the keys and played stomp, keep the beat, and abba. danced go daddy. ran and changed during hana and oye, then did our rap song. stripped again back into normal costume, and sang the fisrt solo for we'll be there. then went back to the bass to play the german song, and then hopped down and sang up with people with the cast. and then in the encore i sing the last solo, which is like a clip of we'll be there. nuts. crazy. awesome, but i really don't feel like i ever need to be doing that much. we have loads of other talent that could do some of it. anyways it was fun for that once.

the next day we had regional learning, but it was basically a create your own, so a big group of us just walked around the old part of the city. and we stopped in a cafe and had coffe and talked. and then aubrii and emerald and i went for a walk to the shopping area cause i needed number two shows. and we found this litle store that had SUPER cheap stuff. emerald and i got winter coats for 6euros. crazyness. that like 9 dollars. and its just nice and plain. mines black. and its all i need. love it!!!!!! and then the three of us went out to eat and we had pizza in this really cute resteraunt and sat there for 4 hours and just talked. it was sooo needed. i loved it., and i love those girls sooooo much. and then we went back and met up with the group and then while we waited for our busses aub and i went on the giant ferris wheel.

and then that night we had free enterance to a 'disco'. a club. amelia was too tired so i headed out on my own and then met up with the group and it was just a lot of fun. lots of dancing!!! and then most people had to leave cause we have a 12amcerfew if you don't have your host family with you. but doreen had come too with some of her freinds so i stuck around and danced with the few that were left. guido. and chris and mitch (both staff). and it was really funny. mitch is a crazy dancer. like i wish you could all experience this guy dancing. its unreal. sooooo funny. but really good. he just gets sooo intoo it. sometimes i'd just sit and watch him. and so then they left. and then we descided to leave too. at about 2ish. and my host mom, being amazing, told me earlier not to worry about breakfast, just come down for lunch. yes!!!!! so i slept till like 11. and the it was our host family day and we went to these mines which were awesome. and we just hung out. andi loved this host family. i was soo sad to leave them the next morning. but we were off to belgium. our last city in europe. wow. hrad to beleve. okay the plane is landing so i have to turn this off. i'll be back though. almost caught up. wahoo!!!

2007-10-16T23:15:00.001-03:00

okay so germany. i don't know what i was expecting. but what i got definitley wasn't expected.
our first stop was uelzen. a really small little german town. well. like a summerside. and although by pei standards that's a city, by european standards it's a little town. i was roomed with brenna this week, which was really cool cause i didn't know her that well before. we had two sisters, theresa (15) and tabea (13), and we lived on a farm. like we had cows!!!! and we to to feed them. and we had horses too. i never really felt any attraction to horses before this week, but they were beautiful and soooo nice. they had a big old house and it was really cool. the stairs was like a mountain. soooo steep!!! and they were just an awesome family. brenna and i had a lot of fun with those girls. oh and funny story. cait do you remember that german card game that bop had and we played one night?? me and you and your whole family bascally?!?! and it was really intense and awesome. okay so we started playing this card game and i was sooo confused and first and then it clicked and i realzied that i had played it before with you!!!! sooooo funny!!! cause at the time when we played it i was like 'this is a really random thing, playing a german card game'. and i think its just toooo cool that i ended up in germany like two years later playing the same crad game. hahaha. love it.

okay so on our first full day there we visited a concentration camp. wow. hardcore. bergen-belsen. its one that anne frank and her sister were in. it was a really intense day. we saw a video that was taken of the camp, and its really mind blowing. and then we walked around the mass graves. like one was 2,500 people. that's the audience of our tuscon show. thats the first thing i thought when i saw that number. all the people in tuscon sitting in their red chairs in front of me. wow. and there was sooo many more with numbers like that. the coolest thing of the day though was when i approached sophie, whos from germany, and we we talking and stuff. and then we both found out that both of our grandfathers were in world war two. different places, but they fought in the same war. against each other. and yet this world has changed so much in a short 60 years, that sophie and i could stand in that place, and feel the same way about it, and walk away from it holding hands. and we can be friends. and the japanese and chinese can be friends. and we all can. despite past or present conflicts our countries had or have. so awesome. oh up with people.
the rest of the week was cool. for ci i basically walked around the town with high school students and got to know them. which was fun. and we got to know them. we got a tour of their train station there, which was designed by this really cool artist. and turns out that our tourguide was from canada (we thought his english sounded really good . . .) and he went to school at mount a. how weird/funny/awesome is that!?!? hahaha its sooo cool when you meet people like that. i love it. and we had another band day too. mmm, and thats about it.

the show went well. nothing really stands out. oh except that our german song is AWESOME!!! so yeah we learn a song for every foreign country we go to. and our german song was just unreal. brodie and andrew sang it and its really intense and the chorus is awesome, and during it, one by one, the cast moves to the middle of the stage and 'holds a candle' (flashlight). and its just really powerful. was wir allenine. love love love!!!! and since brodie sang it guess who got to play bass!!!!! YEAH!!!!! soooooo awesome. bass is way more hardcore then keys. just throwing that out there.

and uelzen was just good. good week. oh i had nutella like everyday for breakfast. soooo good!!! but i think it'll be awhile before i'll eat it again. hahah never thought i'd say that!!!

2007-10-16T23:13:00.000-03:00

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.

2007-10-01T17:49:00.000-03:00

okay and one more. still really behind but this is a start. oh and i just put a whole lot of pictures on facebook. gallup, tucson, phuket, and namphong. okay here she is.

okay so we got off our awesome cruise ship and we were in stockholm sweden. and we had like 6 hours free time to just walk around the city. it was soooo awesome.

stockholm is beautiful. we were basically in the old city, and it was just incredible. there was a big group of us walking around - me, jeff, johnny, jalee, justen (we have soooo many J's!), danielle, dave, libby, emerald, alex, lena, andrew, and aubrii to name, i think, all of them. it was really fun, we didn't do mch really - dave, alex and i got away from the group for a little while cause we found this really cool side alley and was just crying to be walked down and explored. so we did that and walked around and then we found this huge old church and we went inside and i loved it! pretty sure it was catholic, and alex thought so too, and it was just awesome to be in a church. dave and alex were awesome and waited for me cause i just sat down in a pew for a little while. and then somehow we ran into the rest of the group and so we kept on walking and we got to this place where there was water and you could see a lot of the city. and so we all sat down and had our feet hangin out over the water and i loved it. ummmm and then we ate and then we got split up cause libby wanted to get her monroe peirced (upper lip) and so most people went with her. and then as we were walking dave and i found a music store so we both went in and looked around and wished that we were rich so we could buy like a million cds. but we're not so we left empty handed. and so then the two of us walked around some more, just turning on streets when we felt like it and talking, and then it was time to meet everyone so we headed back. some people in the group were staying to live in stockholm, cause jonathan lives there, so they stayed behind and then the rest of us got back on the bus (we had the coolest bus driver! hahah this lady was halarious!) and headed out to soditelja (killing the name, sorry sweeds), which is a city (bout the size of charlottetown) thirty minutes out of stockholm. we got to see faith and zeljka, who were on the advance team here, which was awesome and then we got our host families.

this week i lived with emily (netherlands) and sherlock (china). we had an awesome host family, the fallstroms, who lived out in the countryside. their house is 100years old this year and its name is 'the gingerbread house'. soo awesome. emily and i slept out in this little cottage/bunkhouse like 20 feet from the house. sooo awesome. so we slept out there on matteresses and had our own little bathroom and it was just awesome. we had two host sisters that lived at home, 20 and 15, and they were super nice. the youngest one, lovisa, has a cd out. just a demo but its really cool. their house was sooo homey, big kitchen that was just warm and cozy, and then they had a piano (i'm pretty sure every family in europe has a piano, everyone i've lived with so far - four families - has had one!), and then this crazy awesome theater room. with a huge projection screen and old theater seats - so cool.

i had vocal workshops the first day there, but the second day i did ci. we worked with students that went to high schools in the area - and had groups of diverse students, beacuse theres a lot of immegrants in the area - and did teambuilding activities and fun stuff like that. cause they're having a problem with groups and gangs based on ethnicity, so us being such a diverse group, we did activities with them and showed them how we can all get along and be awesome. and then in the afternoon we played football. or soccer. it was sooo fun! our group was awesome! hahah they made me goalie. HAHAHA! but the kids we really good so the ball never really got too close. i did manage to save a goal though! YES! we placed 2nd out for four in the tournament we had. haha it was a lot of fun.

on the show day we also had a bts. a backing track show. so basically a mini show where we don't use the band, just the backing tracks fr the songs we use. it was in the street, like a closed off shopping street, and it was FREEZING! haha it was fun, all of us had to strip down and change basically out in the street. we had a stage though! yay! we did quite a few songs. haha i had to dance keep the beat. which is the hardest cast dance. and i'm terrible at it. but i got to sing one to one. overall it was a lot of fun. freezing in our show costumes, singing and dancing for people walking by! hahah i loved it!

and then the actual show. i think it went really well. this was my internship city, so i was running around a lot. me and aimee (dance intern) had to semi-run the rehersal, and then me, aimee, and jaakko (band intern) were in charge of green room. which is the time before the show when we get all pumped and do team building activities. so i taught them some new games, i don't know if you remember this one cait, but when you stand in a circle and look at your feet and then at the count of three you look up into someones eyes. and then if two people are actually looking at each other then they die, so they have to go into the middle of the circle and have a big death scene. hahaah it was soooooooo funny. and we did 'a boom chicka boom' (yeah girls camp!). and more funness. it was awesome. and then every green room kiki does this cast c break down thing, and she always leads it, but this week i did. it was sooo unbelievably fun. me shouting at the top of my lungs (i'm suprised i managed to sing after!) with the whole cast circled tight around me. wow. so cool.
and then the show which went over really well. i love the show. it goes by soo fast though now. like we do 'ayiko' and then before i know it bordie, emi and i are sing 'we'll be there' and its all over. its crazy.

on our free day we got to sleep in a little bit. oh ps. before i lived here with him, i really didn't know sherlock at all. but this kid is a genius! like on the first day hes like, 'so kady, your from canada, big country, 9.96 million square kilometers'. holy crap!!!! he memorizes maps. he LOVES geography. its nuts. he sooo smart. it was really cool living with him and getting to know him. and emily too, but i knew her fairly well going into it. anyways yeah free day. my host parents, rolph and nina, took us into stockholm and we went to the vasa ship museum. oh and we met up with andrea, cause shes living with rolph and nina's daughter and her boyfriend. so this museum was awesome. this ship sank like in the 1620's and was brought up from the sea in 1950. it look like something off of pirates of the caribbean. it was awesome. and then we went on an elk hunt, a drive around the countryside looking for elks. didn't find any. some deer and sheep though. fun day.

and then we left. another travel day. this one not too bad. like 8 hourish i think it was. pretty decent. haha i love travel days cause we get to go on the bus. its the most consistent home in our lives right now. once a week we get to live on there. haha i love it.

2007-10-01T17:29:00.000-03:00

okay i right now want to appologize. i know the blogging has been crap on my part. sorry. but my internet access isn't always reliable. and these things take awhile to write. and i don't want to be using my host families internet too much. but in this city (erfurt, germeny) my host family has wireless. YESSSSSSS!!!!! so i'll try and catch up. happy cait?!?! haha (oh and that dream is too funny. i have ones where people from back home are travelling with us too. funny). okay so i had written some blogs and then just saved them on my laptop . . . so heres finland.

ok so after thailand we were off to findland. home of the sauna. and santa clause. could it get any better?!

so basically i was in love with finland right from the get go. when i walked outside of the airport with brodie and johan (their host mom gave me a ride to my new house) and i was a little bit cold . . . .agh heaven! going from 45 degrees to 14 degrees. incredible.

but i'm going to back up a little bit and try to remember something from the like 12 hour flight from bangkok to helsinki. and the 6 hour bus ride to bangkok. ummm jeff, vero and i slept together on the back of the bus to bangkok. and then we stopped and had breakfast, and it was supposed to be pancakes but turned out to be like a breakfast sandwich. a little disappointing, but the sandwich was good. umm and then airport. i forget it. they're starting to all blend in my memory. oh well. my plane date was martin, our cast manager, on one side and then sara on the other. i got to talk to martin quite a bit which is really cool cause most people don't really get to know him that well cause hes so busy. but he's martin brennan, and i'm kady brown, so we always sit near each other on the plane trips. its really cool. and then at one point i watch some oc with jonathan on his ipod. and colored a picture with him. it was a beauty and the beast page, and jonathan maganged to make it dirty. no suprise. what a guy - you guys wouldn't even beleive it. hahah you'll just have to meet him someday. umm and then at one point i went and sat next to andrew and we looked out the window and it was all desert and crazyness and i realized that we were flying over the middle east. i think it was kazikastan. i can't spell that. hopefully you know what i mean. anyways super cool. it was kinda then that i realized that i'm actually going around the world. we went over russia too. too cool. anyways and then helsinki, and in the airport we had like a hug-fest, cause in thailand girls and guys aren't supposed to have any physical contact, so we couldn't hug and it really sucked, so in the airport we went nuts. much needed. and now i'm back to finland.

okay so brodie, johan and i left the airport. and took some pictures in the car. and then i met my new host family. ok so for every place we go we get a little slip of paper that tells us who our host family is, any kids they have, their address, who our roommate is (if any) and pets and stuff. so i look at the pets section, and usually you just expect dog or cat or soemthing. but i fell in love with this family as soon as i saw what pet i had. a hedgehog. hahaha too funny. his name was juan. one night he hid in my hoodies pocket for like 45mins. so cute! anyways i stayed with krista, a pe teacher, her husband (and i'm not going to attempt to spell it cause i would butcher it!) who inspected crashed vehicles, vera (12) and santo (10). anyways they were super cool. oh and this was the first place where i lived on my own. no roommate. it was awesome. my host parents were really good and english, vera and santo were pretty shy to try around me though! hahah they were so cool. we did a lot of sporty stuff. like biking, and i learned how to throw the javalin (can i spell?!) and how to play finnish baseball. which is the same but different. and too hard to explain now. i had a lot of fun. i love finland!!!!

ok so after the show (in espoo, finland) i was running around looking for kiki (my boss for my vocal internship), and someone was like 'hey martin's looking for you up at the alumni reception'. so i was a little confused. but i went up and found martin in the midst of like 40 alumni who came to our show (YEAH!), and he introduced me to a lady jawna (again, butchering names) who travelled with my dad! yay!!! and she gave me a huge hug and i guess dad had emailed her and asked her to give me one from him and it was just too cool. and i met her daughter who was like 9, and we took a picture. and then she thought it'd be funny if we called dad. so we did and i got to talk to home!!!! and this happened to be on rachels birthday . . talk about convenient. so she said hi to dad and then let me talk to mom and dad for lik 10 mins. which was soooo awesome. cause i hadn't since la. loved it. love finland. like honestly i could live there. it was soooo awesome.

umm on my free day we went to this historic island. like it an old fort. kinda like lunemburg in cape breton (girls camp cait!!!). it was awesome. and i took like 100 pictures. agh! ran into a whole lot of people when we left. and then went to look at this awesome lutherin church. it was huge. and there we ran into vanessa and andrew (staff one) and we admired a guy sitting on the side of the church reading the newspaper without a shirt on. interesting . . . . i took a picture. and then my host families car broke down. weird . . . so we walked to the underground and then took a bus home. and then we went to the park and i learned to play finnish baseball. and after awhile vanessa and andrew showed up again and they played too. and we were all terrible and it was fun (although i managed to hit the ball more then i expected).

so i don't remember if it was monday or tuesday but it was one of the best days ever. we went out to the woods for regional learning. and just walked and it was near a lake and it was GORGEOUS! oh my goodness. and we made pancakes over a bonfire. and then as we were hiking i stopped and sat on this rock that looked over the lake and forest and it was incredible, but then i realized that the group had left. but dave and sophia stayed behind too. and then we got lost. so we walked and walked, and somehow ended up getting back to where we were supposed to be before some of the group. weird. really weird actually. but it was awesome and we had a good time and talked lots. and i just loved it there!! i didn't realize how much i LOVE being in the woods. but i do. i love it. and then we went to this other spot on the lake where there was a sauna. two really. guys and girls. so we stripped down and sat in there - like 14 of us all crammed in there. and then once we were good and hot, put the bathing suit on and then run out and jump in the lake. agh!!! like 10 degree water. it was sooooooooo unbelieveably cold. soooo fun though. and then after we did that a couple times (i just actaully jumped in the water once, all the other times i just sat on the dock with my feet dipped in the water) we got fully dressed and some of us sat out on the dock and cuddled/talked and it was really nice. umm it was me, aubrii, johnny, brodie, aimee, jalee, libby, olga, and i don't know people cept coming and going. and then we walked up the hill a little bit and had these huge hotdogs and they were good. and okay funnyness. sweden has invented a plastic banana holder. so that your banana doesn't get squished in your bag/purse. and its really funny. and andrew (staff one again) and emi (from sweden, owner of the banana holder) had a flight with it. cause it's kinda shapped like a gun. haha oh i can't even describe how funny it was. and vanessa sat there with her knees tucked up inside her coat (or was it jeremys coat?!) and then jeremy came up behind her and tipped her over. and it was really funny. and he did it more then once and she couldn't really stop it. haha kinda mean, kinda funny. thats jeremy. anyways and then emi and i gather people and we played hide and seek. good time. and then we all went home and i had reigndeer for supper. and it was really good. poor blitzen . . . .

okay so yesterday and then next two days were like the best 3 days of the trip. and they were all in a row. so maybe they weren't the BEST, but because they were in a row it was just awesomeness. SOOO GOOD. so on this day we got on our 'ferry' to sweden. they told us it was a ferry. well hell if this was a ferry i'd sure like to see they're crusie ships. this was definitley a cruise ship by my standards! SOOOO BUG! i mean big. wow. i was rooming with emi, jin a (from south korea) and kim (from germany). and for such a huge ship the rooms really were tiny!!! anyways we did a little mini show in the casino, and then after we went out to eat, got all dolled up and such and it was a lot of fun. and then after . . . . ummmm hing out with a whole lot of people crammed in one room. andrew (student), libby, emerald, jeff, vero, johnny, brodie, aimee, justen, jonathan, and then some people came and went - lena, jalee, aubrii, shannon, jordan, and probably more. and then after awhile we went up on the deck and hung out. but it was cold. so we went to the club and danced. oh and before this at some point aubrii, jalee and i sang opps i did it again (brittney spears - incase you filtered it out) kareoke. i think it was right after dinner. anyways the dancing was soooo much fun. we had a good time. and then we went up on the deck. and i hung out with andrew. and then when i decided to sleep, at around 4ish, i went into y room and emi had just gotten in to and so we got into bed and talked for a bit and then slept like babies. we shared a bed cause the room was so small that we holed down all four beds there was no room for our giant suitcases. so we shared a top bunk. thank goodness i didn't fall off. and then after about 3 hours sleep, waking up to look out the window and see the ocean rolling on by (which was awesome!!!) went and had breakfast with jeff and andrea. and then our cruise was over. good night though. i loved it.

and then we were in stockholm sweden, which was the third day to the three day awesomeness. but right now its eleventhirty and i have to get up at six tomorrow cause its the 12hour travel day to germany. and i don't have an alarm clock so i'm literally praying that i wake up. cause i need to be there at sevenfifteen. agh! we'll see. buti had a coffee around 3 today. bad idea. cause i'm not tired at all. hense the book i just wrote for you all. it was originally going to be really short. agh and here i am still typing. okay goodnight. love you all. times ten to the power of 198731275912. i know, big number eh? true story though.

and i just did a word count on this and its over 2000. thats longer then most of my high school essays. holy moly.

2007-09-13T15:35:00.000-03:00

okay. wow. it's been a long 'ol time friends. i apologize.

okay. where to even begin. i think i'm still partly in phuket. on my host family day there we (sara, mix, boat, nut, and i) met up with johnny, tina, vania and callie and their host families. and we went around phuket. we went to this AMAZING temple. wow. i took like 80 pictures. and i have yet to get any of them up cause my laptop died and my converter doesn't have the third little circle thing that my laptops plug has so . . . . no pictures for awhile folks. but when they do get up there's going to probably be like 243. just an estimate.

okay so after that we went on an elephant ride. kinda cool. kinda sad though too. poor elephants. and then . . . . ummm we went out to eat at this awesome resteraunt. and ate SSOOOOOOO much food. like honestley. in this day i ate the most food i ever have in my life. wow. they just kept offering and its rude to decline so i managed to stuff sooo much into my poor now larger stomach. holy toledo.

umm and then we went to a beach and it was awesome and then we went to a market where i did something exciting but i'm going to let you all figure that out on your own. ooo laa laa eh?!

umm so then we did our travel day to namphong, thailand. it took a long time. like 10 hours-ish.

okay and at this point i'm going to apoligize for all the typing mistakes i make from this point on but this swedish keyboard is just not loving me.

namphong was soo different. i was roommates with callie from the states and we lived with sang, dang and therr daughter dream. dang was an english teacher so we were pretty lucky
cause she could speak to us alright. i taught english the first to days to students anywhere from the ages of 6 to 16. it was sooo hard. one hour lessons per classroom. the first day i was with johnny all day and then the next day i was on my own all morning and then ith vania and then andrea in the afternoon. wow. i was pulling out all the barney songs i knew - thank you karyn, maria, daniel, rachel, nick, josh and bekah. it was cool though.

our shows there were >CRAZY. but i kinda wrote of that already. but in case i did't mention the sweat - oh my bananas i've never ever sweated like that.

cool things that i did there:

.ate a cricket- they were on the tables like peanuts. not too bad
.ate half a grasshopper - cause it was about this long ----------------------------------------------------------------- and it required two bites ad i just couldn't put the pther halfin my mouth. UGH SO BAD!
.hahaha callie and i did a shot of whiskey with our host family on the second night. apparentley they drink after every plateful. hahah i was really funny.
. wrapped a hige snake around my neck. AGH. good picture of it when i get them up

other cool things:
. brodies fish, steve, that lived in his showering water
. our mini olympics and getting COVERED in mud and having a flour/water fight with andrew
. place where we ate on our host family day - afterwards talking to jeff with our feet in the water.
. the cow that ran by us on our first day with our host family. we were sitting at the table and it just ran by us. SOOO funny.
. i don't know i'm all out.

okay. so then we went to finland. I LOVE FINLAND! it was a crazy travel day. like 6 hours bus and then 10 plane. not nearly as bad as the 42 to thailand though. it was really long. but it was good. on the bus ride jeff, vero and i all slept in the back all cuddled up. nice.

and i'm going to stop there cause this computer is in sherlocks room and i think he wants to sleep. i'll try and do finland and here in sweden tomorrow. alright.

oh and i ate rice tonight for the first time since thailand and i didn't gag. haha i kinda missed it really . . . . .

2007-09-01T23:35:00.000-03:00

okay this is an email i wrote to my brother daniel - but it wouldn't send and then facebook and hotmail stopped working for me. so i'm putting it on here. for the whole world to see. i'll write more about namphong when i get to finland and have more internet.

yeah i read the hp in two days!!! haha i couldn't put it down. i'm still in namphong, thialand - sweating my face off. quite literally. man i've never sweated so much in my entire life. on friday we had three shows - long day! but it was unreal - the first two were school shows, for students in the area and we had over 9,000 between the two shows!!!!! OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS!!! crazy eh?! the afternoon one was all the teenagers and we are rockstars here. no lie. they are in LOVE with brodie. and kei and jeff - but mostly brodie. they go absolutley nuts. like and the end when i sing we'll be there - i sing a verse by myself and then brodie comes out and sings the chorus with me, when he walked out i couldn't even hear the music or what i was singing or what i was thinking because of all the screaming. like 5,000 crazy screaming thai girls. some guys too hahaha. and after that show brodie had two of the tech guys on either side of him to help him get through the swarm of girls. they actually nearly ripped hs arm off at one point. and i'm not even exaggerating! agh! haha i was jeffs bodyguard, but we went after brodie so it was less chaotic. SOOO NUTS!!! anyways i'll write more later, thats just a little update. share this with mom please so she'll know whats going on too. its sunday now - leaving for finland on tuesday night. that'll be a long travel day/days too!!!! anyways love you all!!!! GOOD LUCK IN SCHOOL!! don't change okay?! just be the loveable crazy kid you are! don't worry about what others think about you! i don't think you will though. tell everyone i love them! God bless!!
love kady

ps. oh my vote is ceasar too. jake is too normal. or you could use . . . . umm off the top of my head romeo, elbert, sir. lancelot (lancy for short), or . . . . bestdoginthewholeworld (b.dit.w - for short hahah)
pps. i sent you guys a little suprise - just don't throw them out please - i'd like to keep them!!!!
okay . . . . . GOODBYE

2007-08-25T23:46:00.000-03:00

okay so last week (mon, tues, wednes, thurs) i did CI at various places. and it was awesome but i'm going to skip it cause this is way more exciting.

okay so sarah comes into my room at around 7 on friday morning and tells me the marguex from the advance team (people that go to the city weeks before to set it up - host families, sponcers etc) just called her and asked her to come to a tv interview that they were doing cause some of the girls that were going called in sick. and she had to be there at 7:45. agh!! so we got ready really fast and then drove to the school. i went along cause i figured i'd just get dropped off at the univeristy - where i was supposed to be at 8:15. but as we dropped sara off i thought i'd ask if anyone there was going to the univeristy to save my host mom from driving me. so i got out and asked and they said 'ummm no you're coming with us. you're singing one to one."

aghaghaghaghaghaghagh!!!

so brenna (staff who sang one to one the past two years) was supposed to sing it but she was one of the ones who called in sick. so i ran up to th bathroom and changed into my show costume (which i had cause we were doing a show that night - thank God) and threw on some makeup while we were driving to the station. they set me up with one of those little clip-to-your-shirt-mics and then we were off. luis (advance team) and martin (cast manager) did a little interview and then myself along with sara, tina, vania, faith, dave, justen, kei, jalee, callie, libby, and maria (hope i got everyone!) sang one to one.

now it was this tiny little tv station so although it was really really exciting - it really wasn't big of a deal. like still super cool but its probably the compass of phuket. or breakfast television. something like that.

but then yesterday they told us that it made national news.

oh my friggin goodness.

hahahaha sooo cool. thats all i can say. i love it. haha its online too. www.thaisnews.com. you may have to google the site instead of typing it in cause its in thai or something but yeah. the quality isn't great and i've sang it better but still really really cool. hahahhaa love it!

and then we did three shows. we were told that thai audiences didn't show a lot of emotion - like the didn't cheer a lot or anything. but they were wrong about this audience!!! hahaha most of the audience was made up of 11-15year old girls. and they are a little but in love with our boys. especially brodie. hahaha its SOOOOOO funny. like they scream for them! hahhah i love it. and after the shows they go backstage and get autographs and take pictures with them! hahaha cute! and the guys LOVE it. brodie and jeff really play it up. oh what rockstars they are . . . . hahah

ok but here's the really really awesome thing. like the coolest thing thats happened here. all the procedes from the show went towards building a seven story building for the satree phuket school, which was the sschool we were at everyday. and because on satruday we had a VIP show - which sooo many important people like the thai minister of education and alll kinds of media we raised a lot of money. like A LOT! are you ready for this?!?!?!

over 10,000,000 baht. ten million

thats about $320,000 canadian dollars!

wow oh wow oh wow.

we kinda flipped out when theytold us that one.

so awesome. i love it. it makes me so happy.

today's a free day and i don't know what we're going to do. and then tomorrow we're flying to bangkok and then another 12 hour bus ride to get to nam phong. where i doubt there will be any internet cause its a tiny little village i think. so the next time you hear from me i may be in finland. yeah. hopefully i have some awesome stories from nam phong for you. apparently we'll be sleeping on mats and have lots of bugs around us. YES! and the town is also known as 'the cobra village'. oh my!!!! hahaha maybe i'll learn to charm snakes.

anyways . . . i think some of you are starting school soonish! so good luck! have fun! especially justin whos starting grade 12, karyn whos starting high school, daniel whos starting grade 7 and public school for the first time, steve whos starting upei, and joshua in grade one?!?! perhaps?! anyways love you all!!! soooo much!!!! miss you!

lveo kady

yeah not love - lveo. wow good thing i can type . . . .

2007-08-23T09:23:00.000-03:00

okay. so i need some comments. am i making this blog personal?! like are you getting what i'm feeling? or is it just what i'm doing everyday? i'm thinking maybe i need to be focusing on what i'm feeling/seeing/loving/hating etc. so what do you guys think?! that and just say hello cause i miss you all like crazy!

ok so going to try a different style. maybe. if i can. we'll see.

thailand in a couple words is (and i know i totally stole this from libby ((cast c's libby, not libby back home)) but i think its okay cause we probably have different people reading our blogs. and the words will differ to some extent)

- gosh darned hot. i've never sweated so much in my life. like i've never literally had sweat dripping down my face. hahah now i bet you all have a real pretty picture of me in your head!!!
- for those that went to dominican with me, like there but throw in some crazy buhddist (can i spell?!) temples. like the same streets with shops along the road and street vendors and people just everywhere and dogs just everywhere.
- different food! like its gotten to the point where we ask each other 'what is this?' as we put it in our mouths. like i have no idea what a lot of my meals are! some of the girls had jellyfish the other day! agh! and i tried octopus. like a little tentacle. it was rubbery.
- language. their language is SOOOOO cool. i love it. i wish i could understand. cause its completely different then ours. like the characters are so cool. and it blows my mind that people can read them. and that around the world we've all come up with a set of characters that allowed us to communicate. wow. awesome.
- just incredible. if anyone would of told me a year ago that i'd be in thailand, living with a thai family, eating crazy food, working in thai schools and performing a huge show for them with people from around the world i would have told them to shut their face. but alas here i am. awesomeaweome

ok so the highlights. cause i really don't want to catch you up of the 5/6ish days that i'm behind by.

- sunday: incredible day! we went to the sea gyspy village and talked to people there. not one person in the village died from the tsunami! unbelievable! and then we saw monkeys!!!!! have a video and will put in on facebook when i can. they take sooo long to load though! and then we took a fishing boat out to coral island. oh an awesome moment was on the dock before we got on the boat and it was concreate and had a lot of water on it and we all ran though it jumping and splashing each other till our pants were soaked through. loved it! anyways this boat ride was incredible. i just sat on the side of the boat - in awe of what i was experiencing. i was in thailand, taking a boat out to an island, surrounded by amazing friends from around the world, and all i could see was 'sea teal' (dave and i attempted to crayola name the color of the ocean, that was mine) ocean spreading out in front of me with jungle islands plopped into it. like 'lord of the flies' worthy islands. i'm suprised i didn't see piggy himself running across the beach with the conch. anyways we get to coral island and we literally run into the water. soooooo awesome. and then we went and rented snorkels, goggles and flippers. UNREAL! like there waas tropical fish. coral (hence the name of the island?! perhaps?!) and then like yellow, and blue, and white, and just amazing fish everywhere. swimming right beside us. it was incredible. and then later in the day dave told me that a couple people were walking through the jungle for a bit to get to another beach. so dave, brodie, aimee, johnny and i set off through the jungle. barefoot. in a foreign country. don't freak out mom! it was soo cool. extreme jungle on one side - extreme ocean on the other. mind blowing. like AGH OH MY GOD LIFE IS SOOOOOO AWESOME! but then we get to this point where brodie looks up and makes this ahhh/agh/scream thing. and we look up to see spider as big as my hand dangling over our heads on the path. and this is not even a lie. AS BIG AS MY HAND! true story. ugh. soo gross. but despite this dave, brodie and i decided to venture on. agh! hahaha we swat/ran under the spider - only to look up and see two more placed in the path to go. agh! this was basically what was going through my mind. AGH! haha and laughing at dave and brodie. cause they were kinda freaking out. more then i was. hahaha. but you have to understand. they were right above our heads. in a position where they could easily jump on us. and we had no idea what they could do to us. like maybe they were ninja spiders and could kill us with a single brush of their leg. anyways. this is becomming really long. i guess it just proves how stellar it was (i use awesome too much. does stellar work?!). anyways i loved the whole trek. being barefoot - feeling the dirt and rocks. seeing giant spiders. and a lizard. and a couple millipedes. and we did get to the beach and it was gorgeous and deserted. so we swam. and had a handstand contest. and it was awesome. stellar? and then we went back. again - more spiders. and me loving them cause it makes for such an awesome story. and then we went to this huge dinner thing (we had 15mins to clean all the sand off and get into dresses and look pretty. hahaha the girls room was a zooo!) where i ate sooo much. and couldn't tell you what a lot of it was. but it was GOOOOOD!!!! and then we went to fantasea - and big performance which has like 10 elephants in it. they were cute. and when it was over we boarded this 'bus'. the back of a covered truck with benches. i loved it. and we all kinda slept on each other. i had dave, alex, and shannon and leaning on me.

and ok. that took forever with a capital f. Forever. so will not be writing of the other incredible things right now. but remind me to write about
- the family tree
- fufu
- and thats all i can think of right now
- ci's

okay but just something really cool - tuesday and today i've been a little down. tired and kinda feeling blah. which is a sign of homesickness. so anyways. here i am writing this crazy long blog and during this time i got a facebook message from mom, justin, and daniel. AND talked to neal, maria, libby, and ryan on msn. i'm on like home overload. and i'm just really happy. and i'm going to go play my guitar and then go to sleep and have an awesome SHOW DAY TOMORROW! yes!!!!

ok i love you all sooooo much. i hope you know. even you out there that maybe clicked on the link to my blog from the cast's website (www.castc2007.com). cause you basically just read a novel. ok i really need to wrap this up.

so lovelovelovelovelove!!!!!

2007-08-21T03:09:00.000-03:00

okay so we arrived at the school in phuket, thailand. the kids greeted us as we got off the bus with these really pretty lais! sooo cute. and then we had a little meeting and then we met our host families and had a big dinner all together. the food was unreal!!!! i'm taking pictures of a lot of these meals cause they are sooo cool. i'll put them on facebook soonish.

so then sara castro (new roomie) and i went to our new home. check out these names. our parents are mix and sit. then we have siblings boat (boy - 16), nut (girl - 14ish) and fufu (boy - 12). are they not the best names?!?! haha i love it! so we get to their house and there are buildings near by but i think nothing of it. i thought i'd be roughing it but they brought me and sara in the house and gave us our own rooms. with king sized beds. and air conditioning. in the living room they have a flat screen with surround sound and a hardcore massage chair/lazeboy thing. soo nuts. and they have a real shower and toilet!!!! hahaha okay but then!!! they showed us the rest of the house. which is the surrounding buildings. there's like four all together. the bedroom one. and library/study/laundry one. and kitchen/eating/office one. and then the grandfathers little house. CRAZY!!!! haha. they are soooo nice. boat just came back from a ten month exchange in the states so hes pretty darned good at english. but i have to go now cause the laptop in dying and its rafas and i don't knw where his power cord is. agh!!!!! finish later!

2007-08-18T03:12:00.000-03:00

about 56 hours later . . . thats right . . . .42 hours of bus and plane . . .

AND I AM IN THAILAND!

thats right. oh my God. so jalee and i were in charge of wake up in the morning. so the alarm went off at ten to four, and i reluctantly rolled off the air matteress. i washed my hair in the bathroom sink and then met up with jalee and we turned on the lights and woke everyone up. we got about 3-4ish hours of sleep. but everyone was really awesome about it. we packed everything up at got in the bus early!!! we were supposed to leave no later then 6 and we were allo in the bus ready to go at 5:35ish. yes us!!!!

so we had a 3ish hour drive to la . . . pretty standard bus ride. i feel like the bus is my home. its rediculous. anyways ummm i don't even know who i sat with . . . . oh wait. i think it was scott. yeah it was. and he loves regina spektor too so he's just awesome. so we got to lax and had like 2.5 hours to kill cause we didn't fly out till 12:30. exchanged some money. hung out with andrew for a good little bit. called home and talked to mom, joshua, rachel, and nick. and then we were off!
it was like a 10 hour flight. soooo long. they played 3 movies!!! hahaha crazy. i was sitting next to scott, jalee, and sarah. after a while i ditched though and traded with rafa and took his spot next to tina and dave. we had some intense conversations! it was awesome. i don't know . . . i bet a lot more happened but its all kind of fuzzy.

and then we were in tokyo. JAPAN!!! soo cool. we had like an hour layover or something - so dave and i headed off for sushi. cause really you can't go to japan and not have sushi. so after a quick chopstick lesson we were all set. i had sweet shrimp, and i tried some of daves tuna. it was good, but really spicy. not a mexican spicy, something completely different. waisabi?! i think thats what its called. anyways it was an awesome time. one of my first hardcore cultural experiences.
and then the flight from tokyo to bangkok. I PASSED OUT!!!! hahaha like i sat down and then BAM! out light a ton of bricks. i missed the takeoff - slept right though it. hahahaha i was GONE!!! this was only a 5 hour flight. not too bad. i definitley slept most of the time. i think i was the most tired i've ever been. like physically couldn't do anything. there was an empty seat beside me and the guy next to it let me curl up on the two. it was awesome. and thats about it for that one.
and then we were in bangkok. THAILAND!!!! yes!!!!!!! did the whole airport/customs/baggage stuff. then we were split by our hometeams (have i mentioned them?! basically just a small group of us that we have that we get together and talk about stuff. i'm hometeam 6. me, andrew, aubrii, shannon, guido, emmie, johnny, and then jeremy and rafa from staff) and got onto one of two buses. this was at about 12 local time. the bus ride was another 12 hours. agh!!! hahah andrew and i were bus dates (you get one everytime you get on the bus! haha its fun. you can pick them, or just put your name on a sheet and get a suprise when someone sits beside you!) and we basically passed out as soon as we sat down.

we made a couple pit stops . . . i think we shocked some girls working at a 24 hour comveience store. hahaha 60some foreigners coming in at 3 in the morning . . . . buying all kinds of food that we just guessed would taste good. i had some lays chips. seaweed flavoured. haha they were reallllly good though! anyways the bus was long and theres a lot i'm sure i could write but it was basically just us sleeping and being fools. i have some video of it that i'll try and get on facebook.
anyways i'm at my host family's house now but honestly i'm tired of typing so i'll do the rest of it tonight.

2007-08-18T03:11:00.000-03:00

okay so we arrived in carlsdad or carlsbad, california at their high school. we thought that we were just unloading there until our host families came to get us but then chris (education coordinator/assistant cast manager) told us interns that actually . . . . . . we were staying at the high school over night. and that the next night we'd be sleeping in a church!!! soooo pumped. hahaha. so we went in and told the cast and everyone was really excited - host families are awesome but we don't really get to just hang out with each other very much. just bus rides. all the other times we're in talks or dancing or singing or banding. so we all got situated and played some volleyball. soo fun. and we got sleeping bags and towels and a couple pillows lended to us for these two days. i didn't get a pillow but oh well. a bunch of us decided to sleep outside - so we took all our stuff out and laid it out up on the top row of some bleachers at the football field. and and earlier johnny taught shannon and i some belly dancing. he's a professional. no lie. ok so . . . umm then andrew, justen, scott and i walked around the track thingy and just talked and stuff - then sat down on some bleachers and continued to talk. then jordan joined us. and then i got cold so i went to the other side of the feild to sleep. they all followed. there was a lot of us out there. abby, emerald, callie, johan, johnathan, illiana, justen, scott, olga, lena, and i. maybe more but i think thats it. anyways so justen and i shared a mat, but during the night i got pushed off so i ended up lying on the concrete - only a sleepbag between it and me. i wasn't too bad though. i would of thought it'd be a lot worse.

so after not a lot of sleep we got up. ate some breakfast. did some pilates. had some thai prep. ate lunch. and then we headed out to do some promotion for the show cast b will be doing here in a week or two. it was pretty cool. and then . . . . drumroll . . . . we went TO THE BEACH!!!! first time in the pacific! it was sooo awesome. we got there and changed and then RAN into the water. the waves were awesome and pretty huge. good time!!! and then we had a staff circle, which the interns are also a part of, and went over tomorrow cause . . . .

WE'RE LEAVING FOR THAILAND!!!!

OH MY GOD!!

wow. so yeah and then we ate and then it was dark so we had a bonfire and brodie and i brought out the guitars and we started singing 'up' songs from the show. haha got a little crowd for awhile. and it was just awesome. wow. like home but not but still awesome. i mean good friends, beach, food, bonfire, guitars?! thats why i love summer. so i'm just pumped that we got to do it.

and now we're at a united methodist church camping out on a floor. but this time they lended some air matteresses too. YES!!!! so it's 11 and we're still waiting for the breakfast stuff so that we can pack breakfast for tomorrow morning cause we're waking up at 4. agh. and being an intern it us thats getting up forst and waking up everyone else. ahaha pumpep. jalee and i are going to sing realllllly loud. and then we're going to leave at 6 - and our flight leaves LAX at 12:30. this occurs on a wednesday. we don't get in till 3:30ish thursday. ridiculous. i can't wait!!! haha but we are going to STINK!!!!! the bus from bangkok to phuket alone it like 12 hours. AGHAGHAGH!!!!

BUT I'M GOING TO BE IN THAILAND!!!!!

this is a osm.

we had a talk on this. living for the osm. the oh shit moments.

a good osm.

wow. i'm going to leave on that note. when i write again i may be in thailand. unless i write something about the whole crazy travel experience. anyways. night loves.

2007-08-18T03:09:00.000-03:00

ok so on tuesday night we did our show in gallup, new mexico. it definitley wasn't our best show. i'm not going to make excuses for it - there really wasn't any good ones. but oh well. we learned from it. ohhh kinda funny story from it though. so it was time for we'll be there - one of the solo i usually sing. so before the song a really nice video plays that uses the same music. so my cue to come out on stage is for the video music to stop for like 3 seconds and then it starts again - this time for the song. but on this night the track started right after the video. so i didn't know to walk out. and it was the lights cue too so the lights didn't come on. i thought that they were still playing the video music and i was all confused. but i decided to walk out onto the dark stage - mic in hand - just kind of standing there kinda freaking out on what to do. and then they turned the lights on. so there i was standing on the stage, with my mic, with no clue what was going on or what i should do. after probably only five seconds (but God was it a long five seconds), the wonderful brodie kinder saved my ass and came out and started singing. hahah we were right in the middle of the chorus, but we sang anyways and then we just kept going from there. i don't know if anyone in the audience knew that we messed up though cause i think we (well, brodie) pulled it off. haha it wasn;t until after that i figered out what had happened. and everyone thought that i had forgotten my lines or something . . . but oh well. man i was soooo frustrated afterwards!!!!!!! but i learned from it. and i'm definitley going to make sure it never happens again!!!!

anyways the next day we left for tucson. another long bus ride. we got there, at the univeristy of arizona (which - ps - has an amazingly beautiful campus) and there was our lovely cast b friends to welcome us. we had some free time so we went for a walk and jalee, libby and i went into american apparell and tried on spandex leggings and body suits. we looked hot. and then we went to jamba juice and did a wheat grass shot, which tasted exactally like the smell of fresh cut grass. but apparently its really good for you. anyways then we met our new host families. aofie (pronounced effia) from ireland and i stayed with a lady named judi. she lived on her own and was too cute. tucson is awesome . . . there was cacti everywhere. sooo cool. but actually not cool. on sunday it was 106! yipes! so i did vocal internship stuff on . . thursday. and spray painted some buckets with dave, kristen (vocal staff person), michael bowerman (head music guy) and eric (someone also important). haha it was kinda cool. and then . . . . . i don't remember. oh we went to the westin hotel where the alumni reunion was occuring.with about 1500 uppies (up with people'ers). sooo nuts! awesome though!!! so then the next day - friday - we had our show. this was nuts. the auditorium held 2600ish people, and all 1500 alumni went.it was sooooo awesome. we sold out. OH MY GOD!!!! i didn't have any solos in this show - as we combined the two casts AND thy wanted it to be an unreal show so a lot of the staff did th big parts cause they knew them better. but i got to play with the band for five songs. yeah! and it was just awesome. it was unreal when i walked out on the stage to get behind the keyboard at the first of the show an tnen look up to see like 2500 people sitting in front of you. agh!!!! afterwards we striked the stage and then went home. soo tired.

saturday we had some unreal talks. the belks, who are unreal!!! this guy is our founder and he honestly has some of the coolest stories, like after martin luther kings jrs 'i have a dream' speech belk went up to him and asked if he had dinner plans and he didn't so he was dinner with king after that speech. unreal eh?!?! agh!!! and oh my god i forgot!!! we met ghandi's grandson. he talked to us!!!! unreal to an extreme. wow. anyways and then carolin lee, and big uwp alumn talked to us too and it was awesome. and then we had free time kinda, we went to this place nearby and had a bbq and went swimming in a pool. and then after that we went back to the hotel and watch the era show. this is when all the different alunmi groups - determined by years - get up and do a show of the songs they remember from there year. hahaha sooo funny. loved it. and then again - home and sleep.

sunday we took it easy. i got to mass cause judi is catholic which was awesome - it had been too long! and then we just went home and were lazy. i took a nap. we went swimming in the pool. and then we went out to eat - this really good steak place!!! and that was sunday.
right now i'm on a bus to san diego, california. we're going to be there for two days, doing promotion for cast b's show here in a couple weeks. i'm hopeing that i'm going to be able to see christina (my cousin who now livres here), that'd be awesome. and then wednesday we leave for THAILAND!!!!! oh my GOD!!!!

ok thats it. caught up again. probably won't last too long. oh well. lovelovelove you all!!!!!

2007-08-12T16:24:00.000-03:00

ok so i got behind. again.

saturday was our opening night!!!! unbeleiveable!!! it was so awesome! just everyone getting ready and then before the show we had 'green room' - which is basically everyone in the cast/staff coming together and getting pumped for the show together. but since it was the first one they made it all emotional and most of us were crying and hugging and it was just awesome. but also frustrating cause we were told to get ready before so we had all our stage makeup on and then cried it all messy. bah. haha but definitley worth it. sigh . . . . soooo good.

and then the show itself. obviously it wasn't perfect. but it was AWESOME! cause we were all soooo pumped and the engergy was soo high. and i love what i got to do. i'm in the band (keys) for the first two songs, and then dance/sing with the cast on the next three, then sing a solo, then go back to the band for four songs, sit out a couple cause i haven't learned the words/dances yet, and then sing another solo (the last big one) and then sing/dance the theme song with the cast. pretty awesome eh? i love it! i hope it stays pretty similar throughout the tour. the band to cast ratio that is.

oh and another thing for saturday!!! they give out six week internships - basically working for one of the staff members and learning more about that area. its really cool and it looks awesome on a resume and they write you up recommendation letters after. anyways i applied for one but they only have like 12 per round. there's three rounds. anyways i really really really wanted the vocal one cause well - you know me - love the singing. anyways so they announced on saturday morning who got what and i got the vocal one!!! YES!!!! soooooooo pumped. its going to be awesome!!!!

anyways then on sunday (last day with the stonesmiths for me - lauren ditched me in the morning. her cast went to tuscon early) i did laundry and packed and stuff and then matt told me that they were going to cirque du soile (spelling?!?!) and they wanted me to come too. and so obviously i did. it was awesome. unreal. i don't understand. hahaha the acts were just unbelieveable. and then we went home and ate and then i watched alladin with sienna. and then sleep.

monday morning. the tour begins. it was also sienna's birthday so we had cake and ice cream for breakfast before i left. too cute. and then sara's host family came and picked me up so that matt and cindy didn't have to drive there twice - as they drove lauren the day before. and we had to be a tekyio at 7:30. and it was like a 40 min drive. so i said my goodbyes and then we got to tekyio and my hometeam had to load the bus. so we packed as much luggage under the bus as we could - it was hardcore, not a inch left under there. and then we were off. so exciting! it was a nine hour bus ride roughly - but it was awesome. we all just hng out and it went by really fast.then we got to gallup, new mexico. we jumped out, unloaded the bus in the rain, and then changed into our number twos (business-casual) to meet our host familys. mine was unreal!!!!! there was six of us girls staying in one house!!! me, aimee, vanessa, vania, sophia, and alex. so fun. and the house was unreal! she was this artist and so it was just awesome. half of us slept in this cozy little loft thing with three matteresses on the floor and the other three slept in this seperate appartment down in the basement. the things about the basement was that if you wante to get to it from inside the house - you had to go into one of the bathrooms (there were an amazing four!), lift up this trapdoor under the shower an climb down a ladder. unreal eh?! best quote yet was from alex at breakfast. "i really had to pee and someone was using the bathroom in the basement - so i climbed up the ladder and through the trapdoor to use the bathroom." hahaha how often is that a serous sentence!?!? anyways i'm tired so thats it for tonight. i'll catch up some more tomorrow.

2007-08-04T01:36:00.001-03:00

ps. lauren was incredible in the show. she rocks my socks. she is my roommate in case that slipped your mind. love her!!!!

2007-08-04T01:31:00.000-03:00

okay so the last three days in a nutshell.

nuts.

wednesday cast b had their dress rehersal. awesome job guys!!

thursday we had ours. so0ooooooo much fun. loved it. basically the rest of that day was nuts getting ready for it.

friday. cast b's show!!!!! WOWOWOWOWOWOW! incredible. awesome. superb. magnificent. i'm out of good words. oh and andrew was a little sweetheart and got the band drinks. haha one of the highlights of the day. oh and we had a really good guest speaker. steve farber. look him up. i dare you. ummmmm yup so thats it.

MY SHOW IS TOMORROW!

in case you didn't realize.

i'm pumped

REALLY REALLY PUMPED!!!

i'm pretty sure my host sister cyanne and her friend daina think that i am losing my mind.

they might be right.

ok goin gto bed. goodnight loves

2007-08-01T00:29:00.000-03:00

wow. i'm doing tuesday's on tuesday. this hasn't happened in awhile.

today was our fist 12 hour day. thats right. 8-8. not including commute which is 1.5 hours in the morning and 1 hour at night. holymoly. but it really wasn't that bad at all. i think thuirsday and friday will be the real test - cause till saturday (our SHOW!!!!) we have 12 hour days every day.

so the best thing about today was that we did a run though of the show on stage with everyone. band, mic groups, dance solos, singing solos, and the whole cast. WOW. chaos. we had to stop a lot. but that was to be expected. i only had to play three songs on the piano today, all in the second half, so i had to do all the cast dances. which i haven't learned cause i'm always in band. so that was an adventure. not too bad though. i just sat out at the hardcore ones. and then i got to sing two solos. 'one to one' and then the finale 'we'll be there'. one to one is a lot of fun and there a lot of singing so its cool - but we'll be there i go out onstage by myself and sing the first verse and then brodie somes out on the chorus and we sing together and then he sings and then the whole cast comes out and joins us. and then emilie does a solo too with us. but its just a lot of fun cause we get to play off each other and interact and stuff, whereas in one to one i just sing to the audience. anyways i'm crossing my fingers that i'll get to keep these two! it'd be preatty awesome. and so yeah long day. but a good day. i liked it.

2007-07-31T00:45:00.000-03:00

i just remebered what i did on saturday.

we did another community impact project. we call them ci and i will henceforth as well. if you forget what it means just remeber to refrer to this post.

so all of cast c went out to this high school. alright and so the guy who founded uwp also founded this high school club called leaders challenge. so all the leaders challenge kids from the denver area got toegther and were splitting up to to 19 different community service projects. and so our cast went to and were all split up amonst the 19 groups.

brenna, vero, and i went with a group to girls inc. its a after school/summer program for girls ages 6-18. they offer all kinds of some from art classes, homework help, sexuality classes, and college prep. and its just a cool good environment for them to hang out at.

so it being a saturday there was no one there so we cleaned. for two and a half hours. and it was awesome and it wnet by really fast. i disinfected every door handle, lightswitch, and phone upstairs (big area), cleaned out the fridge and freezer, and then attempted to build one of those 'you don't need tools' pre-fab book shelves. we followed all instructions but there was no support so it was kinda whoompy. and yes i so beleive that i did just create that word. anyways. it was a good day. we came home and were lazy which was awesome. read a lot of hp. and thats it.

2007-07-31T00:09:00.000-03:00

and i am the worst blogger in the world. i've accepted it though. i embrace it even.

so i'm going to sum up last week.

exhausting.

that's the word. so tired. but some highlights would have been . . . . . .

well i can't remember what we did at the first of the week at all. but i do remember the last couple and they were good so . . . thursday we went into boulder, co for regional learning. we did a scavenger hunt. but the questions were really hard. we had like 4 hours to do it. have some awesome pictures that i'll try and get on here once my laptop decides that it will take internet again. and after we were all hanging out around the boulder creek (crick as i called it) and it was really nice so dave, andrew and i decided to go in. sooo cold! and soooo fun! but as i didn't have a bathing suit with me or even my dance clothes i went in in my jeans and a tank top. so i was SOAKED! getting on the bus like that was fun. but then one of the girls lent me an extra pair of pants she had (THANKS!) and i had an extra top. it was worth it. then we went to celestial seasonings - a tea factory. it was cool. we drank lots of free tea and got a tour - including thr mint room which was like being in a giant bottle of vics. and thats basically thursday.

friday same old except that night uwp had booked like an open mic night thing for us at a local resterant/bar thing. not everyone went but it was a lot of fun! i played/sang a couple songs with karyns geetar. it was a good time.

then saturday. agh anything exciting!? i don't think so. just tiredness.

then sunday we (matt, cyanne, sienna, lauren and i) thought we'd go white water tubing. it was in the same boulder crick that i had mentioned earlier. so basically we got tubes and then you go down the crick but it was like rapids at some parts. i flipped a couple times and i have a HUGE bruise on my back due to crashing against rocks and such. and i'm pretty sure i broke my toe. and i lost one of my flip flops. i threw the other one out. but it was a lot of fun!!!!

today (monday) we moved to our new location. tekiyo hights or something like that. its this huge theater faciclity thats part of a college. its pretty awesome. brodie and johnny and i went on a little adventure and found some really cool stuff. awesome awesome. tomorrow we're doing a full run through of the show with the band on stage in full costume! AGH! FIVE DAYS TILL THE FIRST SHOW!!!!! AGHAGHAGHAGHAGH! can't wait lol. oh!!!! and on saturday we did thailand prep. want to hear the crazyness?!?!

tucson - la = 6 hours (?)
la - tokyo = 10 hours
tokyo layover = 4 hours
tokyo - bankok = 7 hours
customs and such = 1.5 hours
drive from bankok to phuket = 12 hours

something that. thats just an estimate and what i remember. but it was 34.5 hours without tucson to la. blech. we are going to be sooo gross. hahaha but we'll be in thailand.

on and sunday i finished the last harry potter book. 2.5 days. not bad if i do say so myself. and friday and saturday we had full work days. i'd say i flew through it. haha but i'm sounding a little cocky about it there. anyways - soooo good. but i'm sad they're all done. oh well.

so i think i'll end on that. alright. caught up. cheated a little but deal with it. i have.

lovelovelove you all!!!!

2007-07-25T01:15:00.000-03:00

sunday.

woke up at 5:30 and got into the van with lauren, matt, cyanne, and sienna. we were off to go white water rafting!

it was like a 2 1/2 hour drive so lauren and i kinda slept a lot of the way there. we got there and paid up, found the other uwp people, and i had to rent little water booties cause i wasn't allowed to wear flip flops. then we hopped on a bus, the whole group of like twenty five of us, and headed to the water.

it was awesome. i sat in the very front and i got DRENCHED!!! like you have no idea. whole body going right through a wave. it was soo nuts. but sooooo awesome. i loved it.

after that we drove home and then i called mom and dad, hadn't since my first day so that was great. and then we headed over to matt and cindys best freinds house cause they are hosting armondo, who is on staff and from mexico, and he left yesterday to prepare some of the cities we will be visiting. so he cooked us a huge mexican meal. it was really good - but i couldn't eat some things cause i couldn't handle the spicyness. and then we had a pinata which was awesome and reminded me of caitlin. so not lint cait - pinatas. and probably a million other things but we'll not get into that.

then home and much needed sleep.

thats all for today. wow i'm behind. but sleep is more important. good night!

2007-07-24T23:27:00.000-03:00

ok so its tuesday. and yes i haven't written anything since friday. and yes i know i am a terrible blogger. deal with it - i'm tired.

ok so these are going to be super short blogs. saturday. woke up. ate. took bus to denver. but we had to wait an hour for it cause we didn't know the weekend schedule was different from the weekday one. so we missed one by like five minutes and had to wait an hour for the next one. booo. anyways walked to sherman center. morning meeting. umm then i think we had band. then lunch. raine ditched my for our guitar lesson (no i'm not letting it go raine! haha). then we had band in the afternoon, but they only wanted to work with cast b's band. so johnny, brodie and i sat out in the hallway and played guitar and sang. brodie fell asleep on the floor. johnny and i moved into a room with a crappy keyboard and played it for awhile. then we discovered a room with a couch and a loveseat. so i went and told brodie who was asleep on the floor. he fell asleep on the couch. then johnny got called away to dance or something so i went in and sat on the loveseat and worked on some music i'm writing/have written. and then, upon looking at the still sleeping brodie, found that i was tired so i curled up and took a little nap myself . . .

. . . woke up at 4:10 - our closing meeting was at 4:15. so i woke up brodie and we booted it upstairs. hahaha it was an awesome afternoon!

then lauren and i went over to ericas cause carolin (germany - her host sister) wanted to hangout with us. we bought some dill pickle chips at wal-mart, no one has even heard of them here, but they sold them so i bought them and introduced them. hung out with carolin for a little bit and then came home. the end

2007-07-22T00:48:00.000-03:00

yes sarah, i immediately thought of you and ryan in the jfk airport whenever i played spit. speed here. i loved it.

and yes i realize that it is saturday and i'm writing friday's but whatev (more sarah thoughts!)

so friday. ummmmm . . . . oh right. ci day. ci being community impact. our first one! yeah!!!!!!!

so what we did is get on a bus at 8:30 and left for up in the mountains. we were working with this group called . . . well i don't know. but anyways they work on the mountains creating trails and basically maintaining them. cool eh? anyways so after our like two hour bus ride we got there. half the cast got off and the bottom and the mountain and then the other half of us took the bus up this crazy narrow winding road. dr people, think the ride up to los cacos but one lane, dirt, and in a huge tour bus. yup. anyways then we got out and met the people that we would be working with. they were awesome and they explained to us some of the situations. thy had this huge forest fire in 2002 and much of the land is still not back. it's so weird to look at it because it was this contrast of dead and alive. all the trees were black and charred, but there was green grass and wild flowers growing beneath them. pretty neat.

anyways so we all grabbed our tool of choice (rake for me), put on a hard hat (in case some of the burnt trees decided to fall on us), and started our one mile trek up the mountain.

now a one mile walk is not that far. but a one mile hike up a steep mountain is something else. now it wasn't really that bad, only some parts were really bad. and plus i'm not in the greatest shape so . . . yeah doesn't help. it was a gorgeous walk though!! haha we looked like the seven dwarfs. climbing up this moutain, rakes, shovels, and mine pick things over our shoulders. it was cute.

so we got to the top and ate our lunches, took some fun pictures, and then got to work. the people with the pick things went first and broke down the dirt, creating a path. then we went behind with the rakes and smoothed it out and made it even and about two feet wide. and then the shovel people went behind us and gathered all the excess dirt.

so why we did this is because there is a huge lake at the base of the moutain and it provides 75% of the drinking water for the denver area. and when people walked up and made their own paths, it cause errosion, then when it rained a lot of drebree (?) would collect in the lake threrefore making the water less clean. so by creating one good trail, everyone will use that, thus eliminating unnessicary errosion. pretty cool.

anyways so we only worked there for like two and a half hours, i wished we could of stayed longer. but we couldn't so we walked back down and then got on the bus again and then picked up the others (who got to go swimming . . . . so jealous) and then the group who we worked for treated us to ice cream. so cute. and then we got on the bus and came home.

we got pizza for supper and heard about cyannes gymnastic tournament. she got 1st in the vault. wohoo cyanne! and then we went to see hairspray. which i thought was good, but lauren says the musical is way better. and thats it. i'll write todays tomorrow.

2007-07-20T01:17:00.000-03:00

ok so i'm tired and not really in the mood but . . . .bah i feel like i have to.

so after morning meeting we were all (all cast c anyways) to work on movement (dance). but i got pulled again to learn some of the solos (to sing, not dance). so a group of four of us (sara, emilie, fola and i in case you were wondering) sat upstairs in 'the closets' with jen and learned the female solos. some of them were nuts!!!! like crazy diva belting! hahaha i loved it!!! so that was a lot of fun.

and then after that i went down to the band but i didnt play. but i did sing with them cause they were playing a song that i had just learned the solo for (keep the beat - one of my favs). that was awesome!!!! standing in the middle of a square made up of brodie on bass, manual on guitar, johnny on keys, and juaako (???) on drums. and me just beltin it!

lunch. blah blah. oh! we ate chinese food and i got a fortune cookie without a fortune!!! i was a little sad inside.

then in the afternoon we changed into our show costumes cause we were working on the blocking on stage. all the costumes look unreal together!! i love it. but the rest of the day was long and not too fun for me so i'm just not going to write anything about it cause it would be negative and thats not cool.

so then we left and lauren and i booted it home cause we were invited to dinner at our neighbours. they were really cute and it was fun. and then we came back home and played some speed (spit back home) with sienna. and i was playing the piano and played samson by regina spektor and they were like 'hey we love her' and put in her cd. awesome! so i've been singing regina all night. lovely.

neal and caitlin - i love you guys! hahaha neal next time i kneel i will think of you and cait i'll really try hard and think of you whenever i see some lint. 14A's smell (or the lack thereof) has no matter to me! its all in the people inside!! awwwww. haha keep commenting! it makes me smile, and miss you guys, but smile so its all good!
love love love kady

2007-07-19T01:18:00.000-03:00

so today (wednesday) ummmm morning meeting. same old. but then something new! it was a 2 dress code day (nice clothes - skirt, cute top, nice shoes etc). most days its a 3 (jeans, tshirt, flipflops etc). so it was kinda nice dressing up. and we got to dress up because leaders from the denver area came to talk to us. we did it in the round table form again, we all sit around a table and then they come to us, tell us about themselves, and then we asked them questions about whatever we felt like. some people we soooo interesting! this one lady, tiffany, was awesome. i asked her what she felt was the best leadership quality to possess and her anwser was . . . .

i believe everyone person has the qualities and potential to be a great leader. not everyone will be the leader out front, some will be the encourager behind the scenes. both are needed, as if everyone was the loud one out front it would be nuts.

i loved her. and everyone else was awesome too! and then . . . . lunch?! maybe?! no there must of been something else. but what the hell was it . . . . .

OH WAIT! i remember we went over what we are doing for our first community impact activity. we're (cast c) bussing up to a mountain near colorado springs and going up this mountain and helping to build a path down the mountain. it should be sooooo much fun! i can't wait!

ok so then lunch. and raine and i continued our guitar lessons, but today brodie joined us too! not to learn, to help me teach cause he's way better then i am. it was awesome, raine getting really good (especially seeing as that its been three days) and brodie played for me which just makes me happy. so that was lunch. there was eating involved as well but, it wasn't the highlight.

and then we heard some more of the show. and then band time. a good band day! we starting to sound pretty awesome. i took a video of us today and i'll have to put it on facebook soonish. and then i got pulled to try and sing some of the solos. just for them to hear if my voice works for any of them. cross you fingers for me - i really want one!!!!

and then . . . . . oh we played a really cool game. but i can't explaine it cause i may want to use it some time for a reatreat or something. but anyways it was a lot of fun. and then we had our closing meeting and lauren and i left really fast cause we wanted to get home as fast as we could cause . . . .

we went to go see 'a chorus line' with our host family. its a musical and a group of high school aged youth from the area performed it. it was really good! our host parents best friends kid was in it . . . . he was so cute!! i love him. lauren and i gave him a hug afterwards before introducing ourselves. hahahaha he was a little confused i think! so yeah. thats today. goodbye.

2007-07-18T00:40:00.000-03:00

alright and tuesday again.

wow. tuesday already?!?! time is a flying.

so today was the first morning that we got split up for our morning meetings. by cast. it's kinda sad. we're split basically the whole day except for lunch. and i guess the band practices together for now. but yeah anyways morning meeting. and then we went over the rules again. like alcohal and driving and sex. hahahaha sex is definitley the topic we spent the most time on. cause really it wasn't very clear. and some areas are still a little foggy. but don't worry mom. no sex for me. ;)

and then . . . oh man what did we do?! ummmm oh vocals. and since i'm always in the band when they do vocals i knew nothing!!! it was soo bad. i'm so behind. oh well. i caught on to most fairly quickly. and then we had lunch, where raine and i continued his guitar lessons. we started yesterday. did i mention that?! anyways so we worked on wonderwall and hes getting good!! awww i'm so proud of my little raine. except hes already on the search for my replacement - which hurts my heart a little. haha but what can you do!?

so after lunch we had band, but only for an hour due to was have a new keyboardist steffan. hes in cast b and from . . . . . . germany?! man i'm bad at this! so basically i had an hour and a half to kill cause i had stopped bringing gym clothes cause i never danced. so at 3:30 we had voice, but i only got to stay for half an hour cause the band wanted me back to play with them. figures eh?! oh well. it was actually awesome cause i got to play with the band instead of just learning everything seperate from them. and i could keep up on aieko. sooo fun. i know i'm going to love it.

anyways so yeah then we did our little closing meeting and then headed out for the day.

oh as a little sidenote - kurtiss, i think of you everyday! hahaha one of our bus stops is called curtis so every morning i picture that little red head boy i know. just kinda funny. i think of all of you too, but kurtiss at about the same moment everyday!

so back at home with the stonesmiths we ate some supper and then we sat around in the living room and all played cards. i love this family, they are just sooo cute. they're so easy to just talk and hang out with. and that's what we did. and now i'm blogging once again. doing good though, writing tuesday on tuesday! yes!

2007-07-17T00:25:00.000-03:00

ok just to comment on this lovely little notes some of you left me from sunday.

- sarah your are soooo talented so shut up. i can't wait to get home and sing sanctuary with you!
- mom and karyn. no i did not get to mass. my host family is not catholic and its like a 20min drive to the church and they already had plans. they said they're going to try and get me there next week.
- neal. i just love you. hahaha i feel very honored that i made the list.

ok monday. UNREAL DAY!!!!!

so today was the day where we found out which cast we were on. aka where we were going and who we were going with. i was sooo nervous!!!! i didn't care where i went but i was sooo scared that i was going to be split up from every friend that i made so far. but obvioulsy they didn't tell us till the end of the day. argh.

so we had talks in the morning about leadership and admissions training. nothing too exciting (sorry if some of the staff read this!!!). then lunch. which we ate outside. then we were spilt into our color groups for movement/voice/band for those of us doing that. so i went down the the dungeon to work on my little keys. jochanan, my keyboard teacher extrodinare, worked with kristen and i for a good little amount of time. we learned two songs. putting my total at five or six i think. not fully learned, but a basic knowledge. tomorrow i'm going to find out which ones i'll be the main keyboardist for. if any i guess. who knows.

anyways so after band we went up to the ballroom to find out which cast i was in. and this was how my stomache was feeling.

AGHGHGHAGHGHGHGOOOOOOOOAFGFGFGFAGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH BLECHBLECHBLECHOOOOOOOOO AGHGAGHGAGHGAHGHAGHAGHAGHAGHAGHAGH!

yeah a little uneasy. its hard to type/describe that feeling. but hopefully you all follow.

so i grabed johnny by one hand and raine by the other. i couldn't do it alone. but then johnny ditched me. so raine and i walked into the ballroom, hand in hand, nervous and excited and curious and scared out of my mind at least (raine was playing it cool and calm. loser. love you!). so we walked around the room to see which list our names were on.

and this isn't a happy part. raine and i were split. my little canadian boy and i will be travelling without each other (see raine, you're not just going to be missing me. i'll miss you too!). so i left him with his group and went off to find others that were meeting in 'base one'. we still didn't know which cast we were on, we just knew who we were going to be with. everytime i found someone i basically pounced them with a hug. it was sooooo exciting - seeing who you are going to spend 5 months worth of adventures with - and yet so sad knowing who you weren't going to be with. like my super awesome current roommate lauren.

so we gathered outside base one (basically a really big room) and waited. and took a lot of pictures. when jalee and i saw each other we basically tackled each other. i'm sooo pumped that we're going to be together!!! and then i saw brodie and then andrew, and sarah and johnny. and then sooooooo many others that are just awesome people and i'm soooo pumped to get to know everyone that i don't know as well yet!!! and then they opened the doors.

the lights were off and there was screaming and yelling and laughing and jumping and highfiving. and we had a little dance partyish thing. and then we sat down. and then they told us

WELCOME CAST C JULY 2007!!!!!!!!!

YEAH! so more screaming and yelling and clapping and fit pumping and whistling (thanks guido. my ears still hurt from that) and hugging and man just awesomeing.

they called out everyones name and after every person the same reaction as above.

KADY . . . . . the united sta. . . ugh i mean CANADA!!!!

yeah. not the first time. oh well. and i'm the only canadian on the cast. representing our whole ginormous country on my own. wish me luck!!!

and then we found out all the staff thats going with us. more screaming, clapping etc.

and then andrew read this really awesome introduction thing. actually that might have been before they read our names. and yeah i teared up a little at one point. andrew kind of laughed at me. but you guys at home know how much it takes me to cry. like the notebook didn't ever almost cut it. but its just all soooo exciting and awesome and lifealtering and AGH!!!!!!

so . . . . anyone want to know where i'm going?!?!?! eh? here it is!!!!

aug 6 - gallup, new mexico
aug 8 - tucson, arizona
aug 13 - la, california
aug 17 - phuket, thailand!!!
aug 27 - nampong, thailand
sept 5 - espoo, finland
sept 12 - sodertalje, sweden ****note here. we're taking an overnight CRUISE from finland to sweden and we're performing on the ship!!!!!! UNREAL EH?!?!?!
sept 17 - vimmerby, sweden
sept 24 - uelzen, germany
oct 1 - erfurt, germany
oct 8 - hasselt, belium
oct 15 - atlanta, georgia (tentitive)
and then nothing is booked yet but it will be on the east coast of the usa. like massachusets, maryland, maine, new hampshire, washington dc. stuff like that.
nov 22 - MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE!!!!! we're getting a minute of air time! when you first think about it it doesn't sound like a lot, but when you second think about it it really is.

and then two more undetermined stops on the east coast and then home december 10th. six days before my birthday.

wow. wow wow wow wow wow. i'm sooo excited.

so yeah. we all kinda freaked out more and had a dance party and got really sweaty. and then we visited cast B!!! and had another dance party! its the cool thing to do around here. cait you'd love it.

then we left and raine, scott, sara, gina, amy, shannon, lauren and i went out and got a coffee and hungout at a cute little cafe/notstarbucks place. and then we went home and we ate and i finished watching monty python with sienna and now i'm just typing away like a madwomen.

what a day!

goodnight all.

2007-07-15T23:00:00.000-03:00

sunday.

we got to sleep in again. nice. then we went biking. yes me. biking. doing something athletic. i know.

so matt, sienna, lauren and i drove close to boulder and then took out the bikes and started out. it was about a 5 mile ride into boulder and it was really nice. we were on this really nice bike trail and it wasn't a hard ride at all. when we got into the city we locked up the bikes and went and sat by the little stream that went along the path. it was awesome, the water was soo cold. then we went and walked around an outside street mall. much like the 16th street mall in denver. so we walked along there, we stopped at this awesome toy store, it had all these awesome old toys like kelideoscopes and yoyos and wind up toys. it was awesome.

then we biked back to the car, the ride back seemed sooo much shorter. we drove back. we got out of the car. and then i came downstairs and started writing blogs. we ate supper. we jumped on the trampoline. now sienna and i are watching hannah montana. and thats all folks.

2007-07-15T22:25:00.000-03:00

alright. almost there. saturday.

we got to sleep in. YES!!!!!! i woke up around 9:30ish. which was awesome. it was a really quiet morning around here. which was awesome. cindy went with sienna to her swim meet (6-2)and then matt took cyanne to her bass lesson from 10-12ish. so i found the fourth sisterhood of the travelling pants book and started that. oh and then we went to see harry potter with sienna and her friend. the second time for me. lauren had never seen a hp movie before this week. we watched the first one last week and then she saw the fifth yesterday and we're going to try and get the other ones in before we leave the stonesmiths. wow. i've been here a week. that is unreal.

anyways after the movie we went to target and got some groceries and such. cindy and cyanne had left for a couple days - cindy's running a 50 mile race with her sister. no biggie eh?! holy! anyways so yeah.

at around 8ish we went over to ericas and some people came over and we all hung out. it was a good time. it was nice hanging out outside of the center. and then we went home and went to bed. the seventh day.

2007-07-15T20:53:00.001-03:00

sienna. that's how you spell it. haha

2007-07-15T20:14:00.000-03:00

so friday. the 13th. oooohhhh.

so in the morning we had a couple talks. we learned about the internships that uwp offers, which are awesome. basically they are a six week internship, and there's lots of different ones you can get and at the end you get a letter of recommendation and you can use it on your resume and stuff. i really want to try and get the vocal one. wouldn't that be unreal?!?! and then they did a talk on documenting the experience - which made me feel very guilty and is why i'm catching up on all this blogging this weekend.

then we broke up into our home teams which is like a group of 6 people and 2 crew from the same color group. lets see if i can name them all. crew is jeremy(california) and raphael (venezula and canada). cast is me, johnny (california), gina (arizonia), guido (my little italian love), tiffiny (colorado), sarah (kentucky but studies in haiwii), emmy (oh crap, sweden or the netherlands.), umm i think thats it. god i hope thats it. i'm soo sorry if i missed someone.

anyways then the lunch thing again. and then down in the band room for the whole afternoon again. this day it seemed way longer. i was kinda in a bad mood, i'll admitt it. probably just tired and worn out. or maybe because of the day? friday the 13th?! maybe?! hahah.

but on the bright side i learned most of aikeo. or aieko. not sure which. but anyways its one of the harder keys songs so i hear. unless they lied to me. but anyways i've got the main parts memorized already so it'll be easy to get the rest down i think. alright!

then we came home. but at the bus station matt (our host dad) and armondo's (guy on the crew from mexico) host dad whitney were their together to get us. we went back to armondo's host house cause our families are friends. so it was awesome. we sat around and talked and heard about some of armondo's crazy host families from his travels. and i tried guacamole and shrimp. loved the shrimp . . . not so much the guac. and then we played this really cool card game called pit. its like hands or spoons but a special deck of cards with different commodities on them (coffee, wheat, oranages etc). so you have to trade with everyone and try to get all nine of one commodity. haha it was hard core - nine people playing and shouting at each other. so then we came home and went to bed.

2007-07-15T19:52:00.000-03:00

okay so thursday . . . . wow just got sidetracked by a new song Oedipus by regina spektor. really good. katie you'll love it.

anyways so thursday was awesome!!! good day! we got there and had our morning meetings. found out it was zacs birthday (wahoo you're an adult now!). then we had a three hous dance lesson. yes that is right. three hours. it was sooo awesome. we learned the whole dance. haha lauren and i showed our host sisters cyanne and seianna (how do you spell that?!?! i'm sorry hun i can't figure it out) that night and they were like it took you three hours to learn that?! but they are like master gymnasts so blah. haha. anyways so the dance was awesome. i could actually do it by the end!!!! soooo fun.

so then we ate lunch - i was soo hungry! and then at one we split up to do vocals but instead i got to go with the band. we were stuck in this little tiny room that look like it was the set of some horror movie. i don't know how we all fit in there. the drum kit, keyboard, and a couple amps. 2 drummers, 3 keyboardists, 4 guitarists, 2 bassists and 3 teachers. ridiculous. i'll have to take pictures to show you how nuts this was. anyways so the others groups split up the afternoon into dance and voice, but we were working down there the whole time - from 1 till 5. it was awesome though. i am one of two girls in the band so far, but all the guys are awesome and i love hanging out with them.

so yeah after that we ate and then andother culture jam. alright. i was in this one!!! haha raine, erica and i sang 'canada's really big' by the arrogent worms. its on facebook. before we did it one of the vocal coaches came up to me and was like 'hey i want to hear you sing alone sometime tomorrow okay?' and i was like 'sure great, OH! but don't count tonight!'. watch the performance and see why. and then i got to be in it again as one of the girls for the greatest boy band since
o-town - out of sync. haha they are hot! thats also on facebook. it was a lot of fun. but it was late again.

when we got home the stonesmiths had some guests over so we all hungout, played some DDR (i bet sieanna!!! yeah!!) ate some ice cream, and then cyanne and sieanna tried to teach lauren and i how to do cartwheels and handstands. and again . . . if any of you know me even a little bit then well . . . you know that this was an impossible task. hahaha but it was funny. definitely couldn't do any of it though.

so yeah then i slept. alright . . . i'm really catching up on these. only three days left!!!!

2007-07-15T13:43:00.000-03:00

wednesday . . .

ok so today was green's day for auditions. voice and dancing. we were spilt up into smaller groups of about 6, and seperated by gender. my group was the first for dance. hahahaha it was a riot. as many of you know quite well, i'm not the most coordinated person, therefore dancing can be an adventure. it was so hardcore - and they went though each step like twice and then we were supposed to remember it and all the ones before it and just dance. hahaha i was just trying and laughing and the dance crew was laughing at me too. i wasn't nervous about it or anything, and i had fun. the hip hop one was the only one i could get through, and the salsa/maringue type one (aren't you proud amy?!). so that was at 10 and it took a good 1/2 hour. i didn't have to be back for my voice module/audition till 1 so we were all just hanging out in the ballroom and we started pulling out guitars. i think there was three - mine, brodies and crap what is his names. and zac had his base and johnny had bongos. so we were all just jamming and it was awesome - lots of people were singing. and we sounded good! therefore i suggested that we go outside and busk!!!

so fun. but apparently here its not called busking - its street performing. so when i was like 'hey lets go busk' everyone looked at my like i had an extra ear on my forehead. but once i explained it people were in. so off we went - my guitar, johnny's bongos, with johnny, sara, jeremy and i singing our little hearts out. we even set out my guitar case. haha we didn't make any money but we're going to try it again someday on a busier street corner. it was soo much fun . . . i've always wanted to try out busking! anyways so we ate and walked down to starbucks and then by then i had to be back for my voice module.

so i go downstairs but i'm early so i start talking to all the voice coaches/staff. and i'm talking to the main/head/lead guy micheal bowerman (?) and i was saying where i'm from and what i play and stiff and he asks 'you're not matthew brown's daughter are you?!'. hahaha so i guess he was on the same cast as my dad in 81/82. isn't that halarious?! so cool. anyways so i talked to them for a long time cause i want to play keys in the band and sing a couple songs too. then my group showed up and we sang together a couple times and then seperatly. i wasn't even that nervous which is awesome and i think i did pretty good. he wanted us to just belt it out and give it our all, but a lot of people were nervous so they sang really quietly, so i just sang loud. haha we'll see if it worked.

so then after that i was basically done. it was 1:30ish and supper wasn't till 5. so a group of us walked down to 16th street mall (basially a whole bunch of store along a road, but the road is blocked to traffic). so gina and andrea (both from tuson, AZ - yeah me!) and i just kinda walked around. and it was fun.

went back and ate and then just hung out till the first culture jam started. so the culture jam is basically a talent show were people could show stuff from their country or just cool stuff from them. it was really awesome - and i have some of them on my facebook. some people are sooo unbeleiveably talanted. holy!

so yeah that's basically wednesday . . ..

2007-07-14T13:06:00.000-03:00

ok so this weekend i'm going to catch up on this week. so they'll all be written on the same date. oh well. next week i'll try harder to be consistent.

tuesday.

we were split into red and green for the whole day after the opening announcements. us greens listen to talks in the morning about the rules and such (don't break the 12am cerfew, don't drink unless you're of age in the country you're in, don't drive your host familys car blah blah blah). kinda boring. but whatev (miss you sarah!)

then we ate lunch. i think that was the breakfast borrito day. weird eh? haha eh? man you really don't realize how much you say it till every single time you do people laugh at you. and i've offically aquired a nickname here. when you stand up to speak you have to say your name and country. therefore i quickly say "kady canada". and this is what people no call me. i'm not even the only canadian, there's four of us. but its kinda cute.

in the afternoon green group had a huge three hour talk on stereotypes. it was su[er long but one of the exercises we did was awesome. they wrote down every country represented by the cast (there's 18 i think) on a sheet of big easel paper. and we had to go around the room and write on the sheet the first thing we thought of when we saw the countries name. so for example on japan's sheet i wrote ninja. and on austria's i wrote the sound of music (which has a funny story cause there was like 5 of us who wrote that, but apparently austrians don't even know what the movie is cause its banned in the country because of the hitler stuff. marie was laughing cause she was like "you use that to describe our country and we don't even know what the movie is. " just kind of a fun fact).

anyways so after that you get the sheet from the country you're from and pick three things that you want to discuss, whether they are right or wrong. i bet you can all imagine what was on the canadian one - cold, hockey, eh, maple syrup, diversity, maple leaf, friendly, free health care, the usual. someone wrote penguins thought which was funny. but i talked about cold, how this was wrong. i made the point that i live basically right above maine and ontairo is right above michigan, and neither of those two states are cold year round. we get four seasons and in the summer its pretty warm. like in the 70's F? right?! anyways yeah then i talked about diveristy, how we accept a lot of immigrants therefore we have a lot of cultures within our country, and also how our land is diverse in the atlantic provinces, central, prairies, rockies, and the north. then i told them that we actually do say eh. but not aboot.

then we had a short voice lesson where we learned aikio. aiekio? something like that. it was awesome!!!! split the room into the guys, the altos, and the sopranos. then he'd teach each group their part and then we'd sing it. and it sounded awesome!!! hahaha it was unreal. like he'd go over your part like 2-3 times MAYBE, and then you'd just sing it with the group and remember it and sound awesome. i loved it.

so then we closed up for the day. but erica, raine, and i (three of the canadians) decided that we wanted to do something for the upcoming culture jam (where you perform something from your country). so we went over to ericas house cause she lives in a town close to mine and has a car. and she's just living at home while here. anyways so we decided on "canada's really big" by the arrogent worms. funny song. i have our performance of it on my facebook. so we kinda just hung out, attemped to teach raine the guitar. he mastered the Em.

so at about (not aboot) 8:30 i said i should probably get back to my host family cause i wanted to be back not too late. so we all hopped in the car, and headed out. we stopped at dairy queen along the way. but when we got to lousiville, where i'm living, i realized that i left my binder at ericas (1/2 hour away) and it had my familys address and phone number. so i was basically lost in a foreign country with people i had known for a day. ummm ok . . . kinda of panicing. and to top it all off it started to pour like you wouldn't believe. we had to pull over and put the four ways on cause we couldn't see. and then it started hailing. and the lightening was right above our heads. it was ridiculous. anyways to make a long story more short, i rememebered passing a police station when we went to pick up cyanne the day before, so we found that, and then i directed us back to the house where i had only lived for about 48 hours. not bad eh?! haha i was soo pumped. so i went in the house and all was good. alright!

OH WAIT! that's not all!!! i got home at like 9:30ish cause of the culture jam. anyways i get home and my host dad is like 'guess what?' so i reply with 'what?' and he says 'we got tickets to the midnight showing of harry potter five tonight - and we got one for you!'. hahaha its was awesome - but i was kinda worried cause i had my voice/dance auditions the next day and i didn't get home till 3 and i had to wake up at 6:15. and then as you'll learn wednesday was a really long day - awesome but long. but anyways HP5 was unreal, best one yet. go see it.

2007-07-10T01:31:00.000-03:00

so the first offical day has come and gone. but i guess i kinda left off on sunday so i'll finish that up.

around 7-8ish my host family came to pick up lauren and i. so we met cindy and matt, and their two daughters cyanne and sianna (i know i spelled that wrong, sorry hun!). anyways so we drove to their house and let me tell you it is GORGEOUS!!! holy crap it's nice. i'll take pictures and put them on asap. they are just sooo cute and i just love them to death!

so first day on monday. woohoo. lauren and i got ourselves up and out of bed around 6:30ish, as our bus into denver left at 7:27. running a little behind, when we got upstairs to run out the door, our host mom had coffee in to go mugs and egg sandwiches for us all ready so we could eat them on the bus. CUTE!

we got to the center, which is this really old awesome building, and for some reason or another i lost lauren so i heading up to the auditorium where we were all to gather. climbing up the "stairs" between the seating in this place really should be a sport. it was steep and kind of uneven, i tripped at one point and almost fell. so did the guyin front of me (thank god he didn't cause otherwise there would've been a kady pancake on the floor below, even though you're not that big zach). so yeah, based on his ability to catch himself before he fell on me, i desided he must be a pretty awesome guy. so i asked him if he wanted a pal to sit with, and he didn't turn me down. enter zach - a 19ish (?) guy from the states, who i've learned today sings tenor (although hes going to whimp out and do baritone instead). so we sit down and kinda get to know each other, althought obviously not that well cause i don't even remember how old he was or where in the states he was from. oh well . . . tomorrow?!

so a slide show starts that shows pictures of UWP throughout the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and now. one of those goosebump-gets-you-really-pumped kinda things. and THEN the crew comes out and starts performing some of the show, starting out with everyone walking holding a flag from one of the 18 countries represented by cast members. pretty awesome. more goosebumps. at the same moment zach and i had to put on our sweaters because of it (at least i did because of the goosebumps, maybe he didn't). now obviously i'm kinda taking stuff out, lots of stuff is happening and i appologize if you wanted to know every single detail but - but the time i get home from these 12 hour days, hang out with my host family, and get ready for bed, i'm pretty much dead to the world. like i just had day three and i'm still trying to catch up on day one. oh boy.

and now it's saturday and i'm still writing about monday. wow i'm good at this.

so the first day was awesome. they split us into two groups - the red and the green - and i know everyone in red is just seething in jealously that they're not with us. speculation is that they will be the two cast, with a few changes of people being moved around. find out monday! agh!!!!

so we came home to our awesome family and had supper out on their back patio. then we had strawberry shortcake for dessert. YUM!!! and upon finding out that lauren has never seen any of the harry potter movies we watched some of the first ones - this family is more hardcore about harry then mine. hahaha its awesome. got my first two stickers from them (i'm collecting bumper stickers on my guitar case like dad did when he travelled with up with people)! harry potter ones! one read "snape is loyal", the other "snape will betray". hahah i'm going to circle the one that's right when i read the last book.

but yeah thats monday.

2007-07-08T15:04:00.000-03:00

alright. i'm here.

the past couple weeks i've been getting a lot of 'are you soooo excited?'s. and my response was always a hesitant 'yeah', cause really i couldn't fathom the whole experience. i mean leaving pei, everyone i know, and heading out to meet up with a group of roughly 130 people i've never met before, travelling with them for five months living in the houses of complete strangers. its not that i wasn't excited - in theory i was, as i knew i was going to have an amazing time. but it just hadn't sunk in yet.

it sunk in.

not this morning when i arised out of bed at 3am after just four hours sleep. not in the charlottetown airport when i bid farewell to mom and dad. not in toronto when i nearly missed my connecting flight to denver. but when i approached this group in the denver airport, burdened with the heavy load of luggage, carry on, purse and guitar (i really packed too much).

these were the faces i was going to be seeing every day for the next five months. these people are going to become some of my best friends. i'm going to share so many experiences with these people. i now have friends from around the world. the first person that introduced herself was a japanese girl, who's name i'm not even going to attempt right now but it starts with a S and i'll be able to tell you later this week. then came benjamina from sweden, hanna from the phillipeans, jalee from hawaii, raphael from brazil, rusmus (or something along that line) from denmark, and vanessa from new jersey. now there were more then that but those are the ones i can recited from that first group, and let me tell you, after a day of meeting 100something people from around the world, i think that's pretty damn good.

so we hung around the airport for awhile, picked up some more new friends (jerimiah from . . . michigan? and grant form . . . holy i have no idea, sorry grant). we went on a journey to find coffee - with no luck. after waiting around for a good two hours we scrounged up enough people to take the shuttle to the center where we would all meet. and off we went.

so we got to this center and did the usual administration stuff - get name tags, turn in unfinished forms, pay off the rest of your outstanding bill. blah blah kinda stuff. however i did get a little bit of info on the family i'll be living with for the next four weeks. matt and cindy stonesmith (or smithstone i don't remember) and their daughters who are 12 and 9. haven't met them yet. i also ran into my new roomie for the next four weeks, lauren todd from new orleans. i'm actually sitting here watching her sleep, which sounds creepy to the max but its not really cause we're sharing an air matteress, therefore a room, so i'm not really watching her as much as happen to be in the same room with her sleeping. anyways . . . .

so we hung out at this center place, meet more people from more places and i only remeber a handful of them. johnny from california, jeremy from montana, johan from sweden, ummmmmmmm lots more girls from the states, and yeah thats about it for now folks. anyways it was cool getting to know people, how they heard about the program, what they want to do within it, stuff like that. played some hardcore air hockey with jerimiah - which he won but we conlcuded that that i was a damn good goalie considering the amount of shots i saved. sat out on the grass and watched an incoming thunder storm, and then at last my host family came. well kind of. but anyways i think i'll save that for tomorrows and just leave you hanging.

i miss you all! sarah i hope you mom's bbq/gathering thing went awesomely. and i hope steph and madelyn's babyshower is a lot of fun today. wish i could've gone to both! i'm having an amazing time though! so let me know all the news from home! love you guys!

so here it is

2007-06-13T16:39:00.000-03:00

ok. so i had a blogspot already, as some of you might remember. however after visiting it and reading my last post from november 2005 - i came to the conclusion that it was a little old. and i forgot my user name and password. so here i am, with a brand spankin new blog, so that when i leave this island in three weeks for my Up With People adventures you won't miss me too much. i really can't promise that i'm going to be blogging a lot - i still haven't finished my journaling from my trip to the Dominican. but none the less - here it is. my second little spot in the blog world.