A Blog By Diane

Naucalpan!

Hola all! I’m almost done with my second full week in Mexico but still have yet to write! Mexico is keeping us busy, that’s for sure.

Just to give some general information, whenever we travel to Mexico a few differernt things happen.

1. We are now called Viva la Gente!
2. We change a good amount of our show to appeal to the people here - therefore most of it is sung/spoken in Spanish
3. We are treated like rock stars and the whole cast feels awesome because our audiences are crazy and children want our autographs
4. You can really see and feel the impact you’re making in the community (more to come on this)

The first week in Mexico was a bit different and exciting for me. I was first of all saying in the staff hotel for a few days, but that’s because for most of the rest of the time I was staying in another city with JOSE and his family! Jose came in Monday afternoon and from there we spent most of our time with his aunt and cousins! They took us around the city sight seeing and to see different areas of Mexico city! I got a sun burn on our trip to the pyramids - which still shows the mark of my purse strap… oh well - and they showed us a lot more of the city than we would have seen otherwise! From beautiful churches, to street food, to murals, to crazy Mexico City traffic, we experiences it all! It was so great to have him in town and see Jose in person after 5 months :)

Friday we had two shows at a school we were working with there and one full show. Jose watch all three and in the evening my aunt and uncle, who have been living in Queretaro for the past two years serving on the Peace Corps, also saw the show that night! It was also great to see them and sped time with them. We were able to exchange stories and experiences within the Mexican culture, which was really neat. 

It was overall a very relaxing and fun first week in Mexico!!! Viva Mexico!!

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (via vel629vet)

Finlandia! (aka Suomi) - photos from both Senioki and Kouvola

Kouvola was our second and last city in Finland, but also our last week in Europe! The tour in the states went by fast, but the Europe tour seemed to pass by even faster - it’s amazing how time flies. During this week all of my friends back at home were working on finals and finishing up projects back at OU, but I got to spend some time in Finland. How lucky am I?!

This week was especially great because I was able to spend some time with people in my age group that live in Kouvala. I got to experience a lot of the normal day to day things of a twenty-year-old living in Finland, which was really neat. This was mainly because of my awesome host brother, Jukka, who took me around to different places and to meet his friends almost every day.

We arrived Monday, and after did a variety of community impact events this week. These included 7 mini-shows, classroom projects and different volunteer projects in town. Tuesday I was in the classroom after the mini shows where we did some cultural activities, and small admission presentation on UWP for the students.

On Wednesday I was sent to do CI at the local fire station! Initially the PRs for this city told us that the people at the fire department were surprised we would work for free, it’s just not something that is common in this area. When we got there we were asked to paint lines outside to make a parking lot. This required some to measure exactly the distances and the rest of us to get in to groups and paint… after receiving some super awesome white jump-suits to wear (Pictures to come soon!) we were ready to go. We were also given a small tour of the building, a student of ours - Grant from Seattle - was able to try on full fireman gear, and we were all given the opportunity to go through a challenge course/maze in the dark that the firefighters use to train. It was definitely a fun CI and I learned more about firemen than I’d ever known before! 

Thursday I was sent to a local park for a country wide event, Cleaning Finland. We were with two community members and were asked to help clean up any trash we saw and help make the park look nice by raking and so on. The park wasn’t that dirty, but we managed to make it look nice! Friday I was working on the promo crew, but in a very interesting way… we were asked to complete a scavenger hut by way of promoting our show! It was a great way to get in to the community and just get our name out to people on the street. Surprisingly a lot of people were willing to help answer our random questions and through that we were able to promote the show! The best part about this challenge was that the winning group of the scavenger hunt got free ice cream at the local ice cream shop. This was definitely enough incentive for my group so me, Melody (China), Brooke (Maryland, USA) and Irmeline (Sweden) took the #1 spot and got our fill of ice cream :D woo hoo!

Saturday we had two shows, one at 2:00 pm and the other at 6:00 pm, so it was a full day but also our last time to perform the Nordic Medley. I think we did a great job doing it for the last time, and I know we are all glad we don’t need to sing in Finnish anymore ;) That was definitely a challenge. Following the show I got to spend time with my host brothers and their friends around the city, and they took me to a beautiful spot to watch the sunrise early in the morning! Yes, it was early, and I may have been dozing off in the car, but it was a fantastic experience. Looking back on my adventures in Europe this was definitely one of the top thing I did. You only live once, so carpe diem! 

Host family day was also Mother’s Day so I was able to be included in the family events of the day! We first went to this really great place for brunch. It was packed with other families who had the same idea to take their mothers here. The food was delicious and I got to try some new Finnish dishes! After we browsed the shops in the same area, took some family pictures then went home to watch the USA ice hockey team beat Finland! :) After this I was able to Skype my own mother and have her meet my host family, which is always neat. What a crazy invention Skype is, it was so great to see my own mother and catch up with her a bit on the celebration day of what she’s done for me. The internet is great for that! 

After receiving WAY too many gifts from my excellent host family, I had to leave and spend the night at the school with the cast. We arrived at 10 and left the facility at 3:00 am to drive to Helsinki to catch our plane to Frankfurt and then to Mexico! It was a long travel day, but now here I am in Mexico!! When I look back at all the families, host siblings, CI, shows and so on I cannot believe all the work we did in the amount of two months. It’s definitely an accomplishment and I am proud of everything UWP did there.

Now…Viva Mexico and Viva la Gente!!

After a long educational week in Eskilstuna we took the ferry (really a cruise ship) to Finland! We spent Sunday night on the floor of a facility, we got there at 10:00 pm and woke up at 3:00 am so we could load the busses and get to Stockholm by 7:00 am to board the boat. While we were on the boat we performed two small, 25-minute shows, and we were given the perk of eating at the cruise buffet for both breakfast and lunch! There was so much food and it was an interesting experience to perform for people on a moving boat! We got off the boat around 6:30 or 7:00 pm in Finland, and had to drive an additional 5 hours to Seinajoki. Most of this time was spent sleeping on the bus :) We arrived at midnight and slept in the facility again that night. The good thing was that we were able to sleep until 11:00 am, the most sleep we had gotten in the past few days, so it was nice to get refreshed! It was overall a very fun experience. 

The following morning we did some promotion at the city center and then met our host families! This week I was roomed with Maxine from The Netherlands, which was great because she is someone I had wanted to be roomed with! We had a really fun time with this host family! My host mom had Finnish chocolate for us the moment we arrived, and we went in the sauna our very first night there. She was also very adamant about us eating, always making sure we were not hungry! 

My CI this week was working at a center for people with mental and physical handicaps. The first day I was at this facility we had a cook-out/sing along with the guests there outside at the park on their site. The second day we were there we did a small workshop with them. This included songs from the different countries represented, teaching them some dance moves, having a dance party with them, and then some of our own students performed for them a small acoustic set.

We spent a significant amount of time throughout the week working on our music for Mexico. Even though we are still in Europe, we also need to work on what is coming next. Friday we blocked all of the new songs of Mexico on stage and after doing that, I think we are ready!

Our show was on both Friday and Saturday, and following the show Saturday my host family had a hot tub at our house! They had rented a hot tub for our host sister’s 17th birthday, so we got to use it (after going in the sauna of course)! It was a great surprise and very relaxing as well!

While all of this was happening we also had some unpleasant news this week. Two of our cast members had to be sent home for different reasons, one for heath the other for contract reasons. Wednesday was a very hard day, saying good-bye to people is never easy, and here especially since it was somewhat sudden. We become so much of a family, so it was sad to have two of our members leave - I didn’t know it would make me as emotional as it did, but they are still apart of the family in my eyes. 

Despite that, after some walks in the woods, lots of delicious food, many relaxing Saunas, two great shows, and a hot tub it has been a good time in Finland so far. :)

So it has been a while since I have updated, so two posts will be coming!

This one is on my week in Eskilstuna, Sweden! To be honest I did not take too many pictures in this town for a few reasons. One, I was actually living in a smaller town about 45 minutes away from Eskilstuna, and two, because our main focus this week was on our school projects. Over the weeks before, we were trained in this new school project UWP is looking to add in to our regular education program. The main idea of this workshop was to discuss the issue of immigration and integration with the students of Eskilstuna. While the UWP team was asked to come to this city, they also asked if we would go into the classrooms and have these specific conversations with the students. 

The project had 6 different UWP students as facilitators, and we each had a partner with us to lead sections A through C. Different activities were involved in this program, we began the day with a smaller version of the show (about 30 minutes) to get them pumped up and curious about UWP. Then we did the actual workshop with did an interactive culture walk, and full class discussions. Some times it was hard to get the students to give us answers, but I think they understood the point - whether they showed it or not. 

At the end of the week we had our actual 2 hour show, and it was really neat to see some of the students there! I found it very encouraging to see some of them want to continue their UWP experience by seeing the full show and some even interview after the show! Even if we just impacted those small amount of students that is what is important. The show was great in this city, we had a lot alumni there, and members of the UWP board of Directors, who were all VERY supportive during the show :)

Stockholm pics!

First of all I cannot believe it is already April 29^th. That is so crazy, I only have but six weeks left with my Up With People student experience, what’s that all about. Looking back on my blog entries, I cannot believe all of the amazing things I have done and been a part of. Thinking about our last show just makes me really sad, so I’m not going to think about it right now, I am certain that I will ball my eyes out. But enough of that for now.

Stockholm last week was amazing. To be honest, if I were to pick to live anywhere we’ve visited I would definitely pick Stockholm first. There is just something about the way the city looks and feels that intrigues me. I love the fact that it has both an old and a new city. The old city was definitely my favorite part, all the cute shops and family owed restaurants and bars were straight out of a book. This city has everything you need but also a lot of history and charm. I cannot wait to visit again.

Our week started off a bit backwards, from our “usual” schedule, but on the other hand… is UWP ever “usual” or “normal”? Not so much, but that’s one of the reasons why I loved it. Both Tuesday and Wednesday we had shows, when typically our shows are at the end of the week. The first show was a private show for one of our sponsors and their employees, and the second was mainly host families and alumni. We had to split the cast in to two groups because the stage was so small and the theatre was also holding the set for their current show “Jesus Christ Superstar.” So what we did was to have two groups, one would be on stage for the first act and in the aisle for the second act, and the other group was the opposite. Since I was in mic groups I was able to participate in the whole show, but it definitely felt incomplete, even with the smaller stage. It was weird to do the show without half of the cast, but they were still both very well received.

Thursday was CI day and I was sent with a smaller group to help clean up a summer camp! Here I spent time with Cate, Michelle, Carly Jean, David, and Nick all people I had yet to really spent a lot of time with! I had some really great chats with Michelle while we painted a deck with the cold wind blowing paint in our hair, and also with Cate and Carly while we water-resistant—ed the porch! The boys were sent out to do the beach clean up and by the end we were all assisting in this. It was a very peaceful and somewhat relaxing day because we were out by the water at this camp that only had a small group there. Since we were a small group we really got to bond while helping clean it up!

On Friday I was given the unique opportunity to visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in downtown Stockholm. There were only about twenty of us who went here in the morning and while there a diplomat from the office spoke to us and answered our questions. A lot of this time was spent with him explaining what his job actually entails. He talked about the different positions and assignments he has worked on, such as traveling to South Africa and being a representative of Sweden there. There was also a time when he discussed how to go about being a diplomat, what things to do, major in, and how to go about it if interested. I don’t know if this is something I would want to pursue, but it was definitely interesting learning more about what a diplomat actually does.

After the office, we joined the rest of the group at a Youth Forum, we were engaged in a debate/discussion on immigration and whether it is an issue or not here in Sweden. In conversations with the small groups there were definitely some students that were very passionate in their views on this topic. Though they are generally a reserved group of people, the Swedes, when asked the right questions some were willing to open up and really discuss.

Regional learning was on Saturday, and this was probably my favorite part of the week. I was really looking forward to just exploring the beautiful city we had just been seeing at a glance every morning. We were given a lot of free time, so I was able to explore a lot of the Old City in the morning, which was my favorite part, and then we were given a tour of a section of the Royal Palace. For the rest of the day we had free time, which was awesome. I spent the day with our current vocal instructor, Sarah. We walked from the Old City to the New City, stopped in a party store, grabbed a cup of coffee, found a retro clothing shop, all while talking the whole time. This was so great. That evening the European Alumni in the area threw us a party! There was a life band and just a lot of relaxing UWP fun. Definitely one of my favorite days so far.

I was hosted with Axelle from Belgium this week, and we were given two host families. For personal family reasons we had to switch host families on Wednesday night, but both were so warm and welcoming. The two families were friends of our cast mate Oscar, so his family even took us in a few times! We had dinner with Oscar’s family on Friday and we also went out with the guys staying at his house on Saturday night! For our host family day on Sunday, they even took us out on a boat they rented for us! It was a prototype of the boats the Swedish Marines use. We were on the boat for a few hours, and got to see the country from the water. After a while we got off and drank some tea or coffee and ate a quick lunch. It was cold so we got back on the boat pretty soon. This was definitely an unexpected experience that turned out to be really memorable.

I loved Stockholm a lot because I got to know a lot of my cast members so much better. These are memories that will last me a lifetime.

Oslo in a nutshell!