has it really only been two weeks?

so i'm two weeks deep, and it has felt almost like 2 months has passed since the beginning of staging. yet, time still has flown by. UWP has this strange effect of making time go by fast, but making it feel like eternity. maybe you have to experience it to know what i'm talking about.

to recap my week:
on monday, we had a leadership panel. sitting in tables of about 8-10 students, we were given the opportunity to meet and listen to seven community members. most of the speakers were involved in some sort of consulting business, but each had vastly different backgrounds. sharing their leadership experiences, i discovered a commonality between the five speakers i met: they were better listeners than talkers. that's not to say they aren't good speakers, but just even bettter listeners. they were more willing to listen to what you had to say than what they wanted to tell you. very interesting. these people were able to cultivate a relationship with us within the 15 minutes they had. that must be why they have been so successful in their journeys. this concept was probably the greatest thing i pulled from the day. (Breton Shepherd and Rajul Pandya, UCAR)

Culture Jam - this was an opportunity to showcase some of your talents while representing your culture. i heard from many former students that they wished they did something for it, but they never did. it wasn't going to happen to me. so i pulled together some friends in the cast and we came up with an act that ended up opening the whole performance. check: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IoP4Qs6174

we did more dancing this week. lots more. it was both good and bad. the first workshop was wicked hard and i think i have forgotten almost every step from it. the second workshop was much better. the instructor wants me to focus on the foxtrot segment. i think i am getting much better at that one. but i still need lots of practice. my partner is great too and has an awesome attitude. there is definitely a learning curve to this whole dancing deal. the real question is why do they keep putting me in workshops? i feel so out of my element. i like the challenge.

on thursday we took part in a denver city scavenger hunt. being a semi-local, i knew most of the answers to the scavenger questionnaire, so i decided not to take the lead on this one. i helped when i could, and naturally ended up as the tour guide and picture keeper. we had a great time getting strangers to pose in our pictures. we were most successful at the capital building (see right).

after the group scavenger activity we were able to tour the Denver EPA building. this was particularly interesting to me because we have had such a great focus on sustainability and eco-efficiency in my graduate courses. I was able to understand many of the concepts behind the green building that the EPA operated in. on the tour they showed us a few floors and the bathroom. the thing i found most interesting was the subfloor duct system and the green roof.

the green roof consists of the majority of the roof covered in plants. these plants seemed to be of the desert variety, able to tolerate high heat and low amounts of water. the green roof has many benefits. it helps reduce the wear and tear of the roof from weather thus increasing its life range and it also dramatically reduces the heat on top of the roof. rather than having a 150 degree roof, it keeps temperatures around 80 degrees. this helps to save on heating and cooling costs within the building. i would take pictures, but they weren't allowed.

then i had another dance workshop - we learned the footloose and hop section of the show. both of these sequences are fast! im still surprised how much talent and effort it takes to dance a 1:30 minute section in a show. and what a workout. im still enjoying it - yet i find it extremely difficult linking all the individual steps to each other because i forget them so quickly. my problem is that i focus on the current step - i need to think about what comes while doing the current one. arg.

later in the week, we practiced our show run-through with something they call "blocking." basically this means stage positioning and sequencing; it's stage logistics really. i'm getting more and more excited for the show as the final product is becoming more clear each day. i am very curious to see how this will all piece together in the end. i only hope it will flow more smoothly before our first show on the 12th.

friday - more dancing baby! we learned the Jai Ho dance from the indian movie Slum Dog Millionaire. Then we learned the love medley sequence of dances. there are over 20 songs in this medley. if you think it's hard to dance to all these, just imagine how difficult it would be to play an instrument for each of those songs! one of my dance partners, annie matthews (left), is awesome. she has a great attitude and is fun to work with. i am getting more confident with each new number. even one week of dance experience helps.

now some free time. finally. this weekend was low-key and relaxed. just what i need before another week (that feels like a month) of UWP. i enjoyed all of it, except for my homework i had to complete for my monday night class.

and another discovery i've made: school is so boring in comparison to UWP. i'm glad i'm almost done with it!