like a wannabe photographer's dream come true

what's shorter and faster than my trip to Chino Valley, AZ? Anybody?

Time's up! Trick question. The answer is NOTHING.

Our cast arrived around dinner time and were greeted by our host family with a massive Colorado Broncos flag. This was nice to see some home state spirit. We figured this to be the HORSES host code, but we were really hoping that our family would show up on actual horses to take us home. Hah. A few hours later, we made a great dinner - spaghetti dish with pepper and chicken - and we finished dinner at close to 10:30 pm (which felt like 11:30pm because of the time change). phew!

Day 1: host-family day

finally, a day off! on sunday we had a host-family day. my roommates, Rafa (Brazil - tech manager) and Lise (France), were delighted to sleep-in for once, something i had almost forgotten how to do.

at about 1pm that day, after we had a great night's rest, we traveled down to downtown Prescott, AZ. We saw the plaza and walked down the infamous Whiskey Row. We had a drink in the Palace which is famous for a lot of old Western activity both historical and theatrical. Then we traveled up the street to the Hassyama Hotel, which is known for its ghost that haunts the upper room in the tower. We found an awesome pizza place for lunch and cruised went back home.
i chilled out for a while that evening. and later, Rafa and I had an awesome night of shooting. shooting our cameras, that is. later that night, we had the luck of capturing some lightning in mid-strike. i never knew how to do that...until Rafa shared his deep photographic wisdom and knowledge. he compared this activity to fishing. i wont forget it. here's one that i got...

then to my surprise, a small scorpion crawled to the patio. Dan grabbed a handy UV (aka blacklight) flashlight and shined it on the scorpion. boom. it turned neon yellow. it glowed in the dark! check it out. by the time i got the photo i wanted, this poor insect probably felt like a Paris Hilton walking down the red carpet.

Day 2: Show day (already?)

back to work. we set up shop in the gym of chino valley high school. this was totally different than any other experience we had facility-wise. our stage was floor-level with the audience. they were right up front, up-close and personal. you could even see the wrinkles on their faces. also the venue only held close to 500 people. we did well to fill most of it, but the best part was the energy we received from the smaller crowd. they loved it! there was a lot of hooting and hollering. and the claps were loud and sincere.

then: goodbye. it was that time already. on to lake havisu.

just grand

boy, time flies when you are having fun...and when you perform in uwp. when i'm on stage, it is as if time moves 1000 miles per hour. the full 2 hour show is only a blink. by the time i'm in my love medley clothes, i know its almost the end of the 1st act; and then, not much longer after that, i'm putting away my Jai Ho costume, one of our show's very last songs. the thing is i am having fun. that's really why time goes so fast. hence the statement: time flies when you're having fun.

i am now beginning to get more and more confident with every dance. specifically, i can take each step and add some (just some) style. i no longer look like a descendant of R2D2 or C-3P0.

durango is a great little city. i still haven't explored all of it, but it certainly is little; much smaller than i thought. i really enjoyed staying with my host family. i am going to miss my little cat friends: Nala and Ed. I named them myself. and the best part is Connie and Dick adopted those names! haha before the cats were called lion-cat and grey-cat. really original guys. the Imig's are so nice and thoughtful. my roommates and i were very blessed getting host-parents that shared the amount of enthusiasm that we did about UWP. i guess i surprised them a bit when they saw i danced in a few numbers. i still surprise myself sometimes.

i am now sitting on the bus traveling from durango to chino valley. we are driving through some very barren lands with sparse desert vegetation. the road we travel is flanked by numerous eroded mountains. it makes me think this land was once covered by a lot of water. i can't imagine what that would be like: a sea in the middle of the states. i look out right now and see just a few single standing rocks with jagged peaks. they aren't just rocks though; they are massive stone formations. its so cool. ps - i have no idea what state we are in right now. there are short metal fences that line the desert for miles, but they do no more than catch tumble weeds.

man, i really should be writing my thank you cards right now. i have been so busy and this is my only down time between cities. (upon posting of this entry - i have finished most of them! woo.) below is a picture of an EPIC game of Catch-Phrase. The expressions are priceless, especially of those who don't speak english as a first language!

SURPRISE!
on our way to Chino Valley, our staff members informed us that we would be traveling to the Grand Canyon. awesome sauce! this was my first time to the Grand Canyon. i didnt know much about it except that it was a massive trench in the ground. in fact, it's so big that you can see it from space! when we arrived, the sky already looked a bit ominous. and go figure: someone's rain dance made it pour on us after a few moments of picture taking. even better: my camera battery ran out too! but i guess it could have been worse: i slip and fall in the canyon. but i did manage to get a really cool picture (click to enlarge - ps - tell your friends i can do prints!)

down by the stream where the wildflowers grow

where to start?

how about our journey here to durango, colorado...

it was my first travel day with the whole cast. it was fun and went by quick (like UWP in general). we had a bunch of rest stops and a long lunch break in Ouray, Colorado. soon thereafter we arrived to our next city: Durango.

host code: SHOPPING
so when we were allocated to our new host families here, i found out that sarah (denver) and yunjie (china) were assigned as my roommates. in addition to that, my hostcode (something used to identify our host families at the pick up time) was SHOPPING. my first thought was: ahhhh man! i have two girl roommates and my host family code is SHOPPING? really? something must have gotten mixed up!but i was warmly met by my host mom, Connie Imig. she is a very nice lady who is extremely artistic. she has a passion for photography and now for decorative tiles. she creates, fires, paints, and lays all her tile work. again - very impressive. when we arrived home, we met the mister of the house: Dick. Dick is a CPA and is not your typical accountant - he is very entertaining and extraverted - something that is direly necessary when you are hosting 3 UWP kids! the house is located near main street in durango and is a quaint 2 bedroom house with 2 bathrooms. sarah and yunjie got the guest bedroom, which left me no choice but to sleep in the 'shack' in the backyard. the shack is a complete understatement actually. this converted shed is Connie's art tile studio with a small loft that over looks a small stream with tons of flowers surrounding it. it is beautiful. i almost feel like Ralph Waldo Emerson, just not as poetic. it's as if i'm living in an art gallery or museum. i need to be careful of my suitcase sprawl - which is usually a crazy happening as i already discovered in snowmass.

community impact: trail building

for our community impact (CI) today, nearly the whole cast was sent towards the mesa mountain near the fort lewis college side of town to do trail building. we were dropped off in a small neighborhood and we were told that we would hike to the top of the mesa. oh boy. time to enjoy the outdoors. hiking. this could be fun. at the bottom we all gathered and met our leaders. we were working with a non-profit organization called Trails 2000. each cast member received a tool (giant branch trimmers, an axe with a hoe end, or a metal rake-like end with a broad bottom). we started up the mountain. about a solid hour of huffing and puffing, we made it to the top (well, most of the cast did). after we enjoyed the views, we got to work. wait, what? we just hiked to the top of the mountain and now gotta do trail work? yep. ah man. it was something i never had done before and was strangely gratifying. maybe its because i (and most people who hike) take trail maintenance for granted. really, it doesn't stay perfect all the time. that's where we came in as a cast and "lopped," "mcClouded," and "polaskyed" the trail down the mountain.

after a super long day, my roommates and i were picked up by Dick in his NEV - Neighborhood Electric Vehicle. think: golf cart with seatbelts, license plates and is insured. we cruised around the city a bit and went to the city cemetery with a stunning over-the-city view. we also saw bambi the dear, too. and then came home to another great dinner and wrapped the evening up with a fire pit session. the Imig's had some guests over too; one of which worked with Dick and was going back to university of denver for another master's degree. (ugggh! more school makes me shudder.) later in the night i learned that the host code was arbitrarily assigned to each family. so really, if we had a free day, we wouldn't necessarily go SHOPPING like i thought we might, but i think i have enough confidence to say i would go shopping with my roommates and host family if it came down to that because they are all such interesting people.

what a crazy past 48 hours

so in the past 48 hours i have experienced two major events in my life: my very first UWP show and my masters graduation ceremony. in addition to those major things, i am now experiencing my first stay at my new host family. this is not a foreign concept to me because my parents are so hospitable and we always have guests coming and going in the house. but now that i am on the other side of the equation, things are a bit different. its very interesting being the guest, not the host.

my new family is the Gerdins. They live up in snowmass, colorado (way up) in the mountains. they have a beautiful home that my host family helped design and construct. D.D., my host mom, said they built and moved up here in 1991 and took the risk of never receiving basic utilities such as running water and electricity. (but yes they obviously have electricity and water and internet!)

this is a really great family. my host brother, Martin, is 16 and is a very active guy. he loves outdoor sports and has many interesting stories. he attends a local boarding school where he can do glass-blowing and blacksmithing and gardening and all sorts of stuff. he showed me some swords and glass cups that he made himself. impressive to say the least. oh, and he loves video games. i should have been writing this entry a while ago, but really, he, myself, and Manuel (our sound tech manager and my roommate here) were playing Halo 3 on his giant HD flat screen. NERDS! call me what you will, i'm ok with that title. ha.

beyond that, this family loves to ski. the father of the house just left yesterday to Chile where he will be skiing for the next 2 weeks. apparently he was on the US demonstration team for 12 years, too. the "d-team" is basically the best ski instructors of the nation. you get elected for a 4 year term and teach the ski patrol and instructors everything they need to know. thats amazing.

oh, well i guess i should comment on my graduation: I'M DONE! Yes, it feels so good to finally finish. five straight years of schooling and i now have something to show for it! woo.

well i am going to get to bed now. we have a show day tomorrow and my schedule starts at 7:00am for drop off and ends at 1:00am for pick up. arg.

feeling the UWP burn

* sorry for the delay folks - it's amazing how busy UWP makes you!*

here's a recap for week 3 for me:

monday –

we learned about culture shock. this was something that I had thought I had known a lot about already, but apparently not – so I was glad to learn something new. Individually, we evaluated ourselves on where we laid on the "Culture Shock Curve." This was a line that looked like part of a sin wave: it had a crest, trough and peak. It was laid out on a graph that measured mood on the y-axis (up and down) and time on the x-axis (side to side). so over the culture shock curve you would reach different stages. the stages started at honeymoon (high mood, early time); would gradually decrease to the trough at Confrontation (low mood, middle time); then would increase up to Adjustment (middle mood, later time); and eventually get to the peak on the other side of the curve to Adaptation (high mood, longest time). I found myself close to the Adaption phase (at this point in the tour) because I have been living very comfortably in my own home and knew my culture very well. however, I was not at the very top of the culture shock curve because I was still adjusting to the new UWP culture itself. I was totally not use to being around 70 people for 50 hours a week and the whole performing arts thing is still foreign to me.

tuesday -

UWP legacy round table – today was really cool because we were able to speak with a variety of UWP alumni who traveled back in the days. some of the members traveled in the early nineties and others traveled in the eighties or even late seventies. It was great to get their perspectives on UWP and some advice to carry forward on our UWP experience. in our small groups of ten students, our table had the opportunity to meet, Kristin Stork (’92, ’93), Chris Mygatt (C ’81) – who traveled with my Uncle Brian Fisher, Paul Limoges (’93-94), Linda Erly, and Barry Gore. one of the greatest things I heard came from Chris Mygatt when he said, “Stay in curiosity and don’t get stuck in judgment.” Beyond that, if I didn’t learn anything new, I was able to make some quality connections for the future. UWP creates such a massive network.

wednesday -

more singing and dancing. more workshops. lunch. more workshops.

thursday -

we had a full walk through of our show today. in the show list i had surprisingly way more parts than i had ever expected. and unfortunately, i was listed for one of the major dances i had not remembered. so i had to quickly relearn that one and as i did, i realized that we still have more parts of the song to choreograph. just great. more dance steps to remember. but other than that, the walk through went fairly smoothly and we had a good time practicing in front of the whole cast. i was extremely pleased with many of the ladies, whom i had never heard sing before. one girl, therese from sweden, i never would have expected to sound so good. but she did! we have quite a few female ringers in our cast for singing and dancing.

but back to the walk through - i had many front line dancing parts which utilize specialty costumes. these costumes can be up to 30 years old in some cases. so we have to be careful when using them.

friday -

i was definitely feeling the uwp burn. i was so tired, so fatiqued, and a bit insocial. when you are hanging out with 80-90 people (which includes the staff) for close to 50 hours a week, learning new dances and songs, trying to remember the other dances and songs you already learned, i guess its only natural to get exhausted. thank God its almost the weekend. and we get 2 full free days!

today we also took our head shots for the show and other uses.

i learned a number called "gumboot" and a the rest of the dance steps to the "keep the beat song." at this point in the week my head and body is fried. i am struggling for energy and trying not to mix up dance steps. the worst part is when i'm in this condition is that i lose my concentration. so while i'm in these dance workshops, i'm supposed to be doing a nice-looking jump step, but in reality i'm just doing something that comes from the movie karate kid. oh man, if only we each had personal videographers following us around on days like that.

we went down to a local church to have a cast meeting. here we lined up our chairs and shared with the cast our proud moments and appreciations for each other. i drew one person's name who i did sincerely appreciate. his name was kyle and he has had an amazing attitude since the start of the program. he has even maintained his great attitude after splitting his head open (and getting two staples) then somehow contracting a major skin infection in the last week. i would just want to quit and go home. but kyle is good man and has high spirits and shares it with the group. i appreciate that.

well, look forward to the next blog post. this (current) week we are preparing for our first show! its August 12th at 7:30 pm in the Pinnacle Events Center. Come!