Monday, January 15, 2007
11:59:54 PM


Extreme Sport of the Day: Extreme Daydreaming

Today was the typical Monday if such a thing even exists any more. I had downed 1 and a half cups of coffee before our ride in this morning with Korey. Topics of discussion almost exclusively revolved around our individual adventures during the weekend. Peppe and I took the cake for the most interesting by far having been to the stock show and having seen the rodeo in all its brutal glory. The morning meeting was longer than we had gotten used to as the first home group presented the news for its region; North America. My home team, #5, is responsible for European Affairs and we’ll be presenting later this week. We had yet another presentation on host family expectations and such as well this morning followed by a session with one of the other office staff about coming up with some of the core values we would like to uphold as the Up With People Cast A 2007. The Majority ruled in favor of respect as number 1. Respect in its many different facets; respect for yourself, respect for others, respect for other cultures different from your own, respect for the environment, respect for the beliefs of others, etc. Next was being a team player and challenging yourself to put forth your better than best effort in whatever you are doing. It Goes well with one of the Up With People Sayings about how we don’t want to settle for good, we want to leave a Great impact in the lives of those we touch through our show or community work. Over lunch the website team unofficially dubbed “the blog squad” met and discussed what exactly we wanted to do; there were no definitive answers. In the afternoon session we were supposed to have a guest speaker, Mark Gerzon to talk on Global leadership. Unfortunately he was sick and couldn’t make it. Instead we learned a few more songs from the show; we almost have them all learned by now. Next week is going to be scary as I have to combine singing and dancing at the same time. It will look ugly for a while I’m sure; I just hope I don’t end up stepping too many people’s toes. At the end of the day Michelle came and picked Peppe, Madoka, Whittney, and myself up and drove us all home. Supper was again quite spicy as we had soft shell tacos with a wide assortment of prospective constituents ranging from ground beef and corn to garlic peppers and red onions. Its all Good™ After supper Kevin and I talked at great length regarding the usage of the word “Newfie”.
I must say though that for whatever reason I felt not homesick or overwhelmed, but just kind of out of it today; not in an inclusory kind of way but in a way that I can’t quite define. A phone call in the evening to my best friend and fiancé Miranda reminded me that I am still sane; thank God.

One of our other short activities toward the end of the day was the first in a series of “Hot Topic” discussions where we break into small groups and discuss amongst ourselves questions surrounding a certain topic. Today’s topic, being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, was the concept of “Freedom”. The questions included: “Is it alright for a country to fight for the freedom of another Country?”, and “Is affirmative action a tool of Freedom?”.
The answers were quite varied and all very interesting and relevant. Why is it that people have all of these different beliefs about this topic? Part of it has to do with their cultural identity and how others view them. For Example; The US citizens are often thought to be war like people as they initially supported the war in Iraq. Now they feel as they have been mislead by their government who said their premise for invasion was to take out terrorists and find weapons of mass destruction or something like that. No weapons of mass destruction were found and Saddam Husain is dead. Yet they have gotten themselves into a situation where there is nothing they can do but continue to fuel the war effort or else the transitional government they created would collapse and the entire country would resort to an anarchist state. Today some Americans share the view that they should never have gone into places like Iraq in the first place, but the stereotype still remains that they like guns and bombs and war. Anyhow thats just a sample of the kinds of discussion we’ve been having. No one is right or wrong but all of our opinions matter.

Photo Captions: Me and one of the tech guys; the frosty morning commute; Core Values; New dress code fashion show; blog squad @ lunch; Its all Good™





P.S. Enjoy the Pink Miranda :)