Up with People Cast B 2010 On Tour

This weekend was probably one of my favorite of this entire tour. It was just yesterday that we had the fantastic opportunity to see Mt. Rushmore and then go camping in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. While it was way cold for a native Texas such as myself (about 25 degrees in the day and 18 at night), it was all well worth it.

 Since the transit time from Cheyenne to Aberdeen South Dakota is about 14 hours, our staff made the wise decision to split the trip over two days time. We arrived at Mt. Rushmore around 2:30 in the afternoon and stayed for over an hour. Being in the presence of such an amazing landmark with such beautiful scenery was just indescribable. Despite the fact that the temperature was around 25 degrees, it was still an awesome experience. As a matter of fact, I’d go so far as to say it was one of my favorite stops on the entire tour.

By Ryan Aguirre, Texas, USA    

Hello from Salt Lake City, Utah! If you’re curious about this week, keep reading…

We were really lucky to learn something about the Mormon Religion by visiting their Temple in Salt Lake City.  We had tours in about 10 different languages…for most of our native speakers.  It was amazing.  The “sisters” that gave the tours were from all over the world.  They spend 18 month in the temple volunteering.  

Besides visiting the templ, we also had another great opportunity to learn on Tuesday.  We had a session called “Cast University.”  Some Cast members prepared workshops for the rest of the cast, to teach us some of their interests and talents.  We had workshops such as improve theatre, soccer skills with the Brazilians, leadership, even beat boxing.  

 So much fun!!!

 On Wednesday, our cast visited a local school and did parts of our “Stand for Peace” program. Stand for Peace is an Up with People program designed for elementary and middle school students.  We play games, promote diversity, discuss non-bulling, share cultural activities, and then perform a small show for the entire school.  On Wednesday I had four classrooms in a row to teach little parts of this program (we had just about 1 hour with each class).

We did more community work this week such as working with YWCA (gardening, cleaning), helping in the food bank, and playing with the kids at the “Boys and Girls Club,” which was our beneficiary this week.

A lot of fun!!

By Ilka Seuken, Germany     

Cast B had the pleasure of visiting the US Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado…We also spend the afternoon at “Garden of the Gods,” a beautiful geological park near the base of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs.

Here are some pictures from the day…

UWP Bobsled Team:

Part of Cast B during the Olympic tour…

Garden of the Gods:

Last week was awesome! Friday night after the show, our cast arrived back at our facility for the week “The Event Palace” to rest. It was a short sleep (from 1 until 3.30 AM), and we quickly left for out tour bus.  Our advance team staff revealed to us that we were going to the famous Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta! (Instead of picking up trash, which they had been telling us all week).  Wow, were we excited!  This was the largest hot air balloon festival in the world!  People from all over the world gather and ascend in their balloons go at once! Around 600 this year! Even some fancy shaped ballons, like a giant Nemo (Finding Nemo), a big bottle of beer, a parrot, a “Darth Vader” ballon, and many others like triangles and basic symmetrical forms.

Everyone was assigned to help a crew with the balloons to get them ready to go airborne! Most of the cast were in teams, but I happened to be alone. I was quite scared to work that early in the morning, it was still dark, and with complete strangers, doing something I knew nothing about.  In the end,  it turned out to be a lucky turn of events!  When we got our balloon up and full of hot air, me and another volunteer were both invited to ride the balloon! It was so amazing! Flying up into the air and seeing balloons everywhere around you. It just felt so good!  We did some cool stunts too! When we crossed the Rio Grande river, we got close to the water, almost touching it, and we hit some trees (on purpose), which was really cool!

 My “Pilot” was sir Jim, who had been flying for decades! He knew how to play the winds at different altitudes, and it was a pleasure to be one of his guests on the ride.

There was something else which was so cool to watch. The first few “test”-balloons went up in the air when it was still dark. Before they left the ground, they let the flames go into the balloons, which made them light up really bright. So we experienced about 10 balloons all in a row, making this huge lightshow! It looked really cool. They even did it in the air!

We left that afternoon…I fell asleep on the buss, and dreamed about balloons…!

 Frederik Derks, The Netherlands  

During last weeks visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico, Cast B had the unbelievable opportunity to be involved in the 2008 Balloon Fiesta, the largest hot air balloon festival in the world.  Over 600 hot air balloons were involved in a week long fiesta of flying.  For the official opening of the Fiesta, UWP cast members were assigned to different balloon “teams” and helped to assist the pilots in the preparation, take-off, and chase/landing of their balloons.  Many even had the opportunity to go up and fly during the 600 balloon “mass takeoff!”  Here are pictures from the event….More personal stories will follow…

Check out this new video from UWP Cast B…

This video and others are available to watch on the Cast B Video’s tab at the top of this screen.

Up with “Crazy” People Part 2…

By Cast B Video Intern Katrin Skora (Germany)    

Pacman, Fish, Octopi and Flowers,

that’s how we spent our long 5 hours.

Apricot, chicken, tomatoes, and beans,

helping the less fortunate is what that means.

Pallets, boxes, razors and races,

all day long, smiles on our faces.

Stacking, sorting, and moving cans,

we make a difference with our hands.

Laughing, singing, and playing games,

Knowing each other, more than just names.

We worked all day, long and hard,

And now we send them thanks with a card.

Poem by Cast B Member Julie “Scarlet” Jeffers  

Summing up our 5 weeks in Mexico…

All in all I think the most interesting part about this country was that the people are so different. The entire culture is a more focused on love than what I’m used to… people keep kissing and hugging everybody, even when they don’t really know one other.  And I loved it when I was surrounded by little kids that started talking to me in Spanish and I had no clue what they were saying but it seemed like they had fun all the time and they were so lively, amazing!

Another thing I’ll always remember about Mexico is the beautiful landscape. I have never seen such perfect blue water before and when the sun goes down, the whole sky looks amazing! And for a European girl, even cactus is weird.  But to see cacti on the one side of the street and the ocean with the palm trees on the other side was quite overwhelming.   

One of my most impactful days was when we were doing a Community Service in La Paz (first week in Mexico!) where we had to restore a basketball court. We painted new lines and planted some trees and covered the graffiti.  After around one hour of work, suddenly almost a hundred kids came out of the school and started helping us.  It was like a big party.  We had music and drinks for everybody and the kids were really excited so we all worked together and we had so much fun. When we finished, all of the kids wanted autographs and we wrote like little thank you notes for them in our languages, and they were like really impressed and we all felt like rock stars.  We still weren’t finished, but there were some parents and other people from the community who continued to work hard. This was when we all realized that we really made a difference in this community, because we encouraged them to actually become active and do something to make their home a better place.

Another very emotional day was our regional learning day in Los Cabos. We went to the slums in the morning and met the people who were living there and spent time talking to them playinging with their kids.  A lot of us felt weird because we felt like visitors in the zoo, just watching them without being able to communicate (because a lot of us didn’t speak any Spanish). But when we started to play with the kids, we actually could see that it was a good thing that we were there because the kids looked so happy. We also learned about the living conditions in the slums and how the government tries to help them, so it was really interesting.

After this we went to a mango farm where we also got to see a waterfall, that was so pretty and in the end everybody got free mangos! Yay!  We finished the day with the most beautiful boat trip that you can imagine, around the harbor with a beautiful sunset and live music on board *wow*. It was a perfect day that also presented us the differences that exist right next to each other.

By UWP Cast Member Ilka Seuken