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!)