Thursday, January 11, 2007
11:33 pm

Photo Captions: The Crazy Canadian in the snow with his shorts on; Sausage and Peppers For Supper!

Before I begin today, I’d just like to say that I didn’t know that Abba, Roxette, Ace of Base, E-Type and Rednex are all Swedish! Anyhow, Today I got up at around 6:30 even though I had my alarm set for 6, but I slept through it and my room mate Peppe got up, turned it off and went back to sleep. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the names of my wonderful host family parents; they are Michelle and Kevin Skillen. They have been involved with the Up With People program for many years since they were first a host family and their son Brian (hope I remembered that right) travelled with a cast a little while ago. I don’t think I could have ended up with a better host family for my first experience with this program. They are about the same age as my parents and have many shared common interests such as working outside, teaching, and general healthy living. I could really get used to organic and naturally processed foods; perhaps as a result of this experience I will eat differently when I am home again. Supper tonight was all ready for us even though they were out at a yoga-laties class (combination of Yoga and Pilates). We had fried green peppers and Oktoberfest sausages with Sauerkraut; Peppe and I were both big fans of the Sauerkraut. It seems as I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
There is one question that I’m sure crops up quite often; What does the name Up With People come from? Well, It originated in the mid 60’s so it is a play on such sayings as “down with war” or down with violence”. This program itself originated in 1965 originally just as a traveling musical show, but later came to incorporate much more including components of leadership, education, management, and community service.
Anyhow, Peppe, Whittney, Madorka and Michelle drove in to the campus this morning. Our base of operations for the orientation and staging is the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, more can be found at www.rmcad.edu This mornings first activity was with regards to the “experimental learning cycle” in which you are constantly evaluating and learning from your experiences in order to make more positive and impactful decisions in the future. To demonstrate the difference in this style of learning versus other styles ie. Visual learner, learn from reading or hearing, the cast was divided up into 4 sections and each was instructed differently on how to construct a large origami Crane (bird). I was in the group that was given the hands on experimental learning and as a result we had the best crane. Following this presentation we had a session on the basics of performance which turned out to be more of a history of stage performance. It was all good. Lunch was simply a baked potato; this of course was a welcome change from the usual sandwich. After lunch we did literally song and dance. Cast vocals i what we call the singing portion where we learn the big numbers in the show. If I would have one recomendation it is that this program is not geared in any way towards bass voices such as myself. I have to sing nearly everything in falsetto which gets to be quite tiring since I am not used to doing it all the time. Even then I am doing better than some others who don’t know what falsetto is let alone how to sing in it. Well they say what goes around comes around; and Indeed I’ve been going around and around and around and around in our dance sessions. What I know in music makes up for the complete mess I am at dancing; well compared to some other people at least. I’m sure it wouldn’t be fair to say I am the worst dancer there but with size 15 feet there is a certain degree of clumsiness and lack of speed that comes naturally to me. We will get it all eventually. I also auditioned for the band today, partly because I’d love to do it and partially because it would excuse me from some dancing. Its only going to be the rhythm section for the first bit but I’m sure I’ll either be fiddling or playing the trombone at some point in the show. Anyhow, I don’t want to write so much that it gets boring to read so I’ll stop it at that.
I received an email from one of the followers of my blog, my dad actually, who is teaching grade 8 at Pine Ridge Middle School back in Nova Scotia. He brought up an interesting point. If anyone has any questions or would like to know anything about what I am doing or where I am please feel free to post comments at the end of each blog or email them to me at brennancoldwell@gmail.com . My hope is to address questions directly in the blog as promptly as possible.
Well, It is getting to be close to 12:40 here and I know I’ve written a lot tonight so I hope you enjoy it and I’d appreciate your comments and questions. Lol, I can hear one of my host parents snoring all the way upstairs; I really should get to sleep. Tomorrow is definitely
a 3 cup of coffee morning.

Also, I've been introduced to lots of international Music since arriving here.

Currently Playing
The album "Deep Cuts" from the Swedish group "The Knife"
The live album "Rivfader" from the Helsinki based group "Finntroll"

Photo Captions: Me and Armando from Mexico; the morning activity; Angelo from Curaco with Crane; Me and the guy from New Zealand (wish I could remember your name!); and finally me and the guy from Denmark.