Up with People Cast B 2010 On Tour

Shannon and Coty at St. Coletta

On Tuesday April 21st to Friday April 24th fourteen of us went to St. Coletta (Lida is the Chinese name). Lida is a place for mentally, physically, and emotionally challenged people around the ages of 18-40. Some of them lived at Lida while others stayed with their family or lived on their own.

We were split up in different groups and went to various classes. We were in a recycling class, a sewing class, cleaning class, leather class, and a cooking class. We got to try all these different classes. All the people were so amazing, and even if they couldn’t talk they were so great to work with. One of the days I got to go see these people sing. They were in a karaoke class and some of us sang for them as well.

Hans singing karaoke at St. Coletta

On our last day they were so nice they gave us gifts from their shop and put on a show for us by dancing, singing, and just having fun. We danced with them. It was such a sad time to say goodbye I will definitely miss the people I met at Lida!
-by Shannon McClellan, USA

Ida's and Angie's mural for the TFCF

Our group of 90 was split for our first week of Taichung to different sites for Community Service.  I was lucky enough to be the Crew Leader of the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families group.  We had 7 Up with People members sent to this site.  TFCF is an organization that has many different aspects of impact on their community.  The part in which we were working was for young adult females who have been abused in some way and removed from their homes by the government to live in this facility.  Up with People worked with the young adults to paint their bedrooms, living rooms, and hallways.  We put a base coat of white on many of their rooms and then also painted numerous murals throughout their facility.  We had a chance to work with the young ladies everyday for English lessons.  We taught greetings, body parts, numbers, action words, and a little geography.  We taught some games and sang some songs with them as well.

Community Service for me was very special this week.  To be able to see the impact that we made on the community was amazing.  Everyday when we arrived the girls were standing there with huge smiles waiting and ready to paint with us.  They were so excited to have us with them that they danced and sang for us, they cooked us snacks and presented them, and made us gifts and handmade goodbye cards.  Our last day was very emotional.  Our last English class turned into a day of games and goodbyes.   Many of the girls started crying when we had to say goodbye and many of us cried also.  I feel extremely lucky to have spent 4 days of my life with these amazing girls.

Subu painting a mural for the TFCF

Not only did the girls have a little celebration for us, but after that the Chairman and the Director of TFCF threw us a farewell party.  They had prepared so much food and gifts for us.  They also made us a DVD with pictures and videos that had been taken throughout the week.  They said this all was because they appreciated the work we did for them.  I don’t think they realize that we appreciate the fact that we got to be there doing it.  I feel like I took more from this experience than one can imagine.  This Community Impact project not only impacted the community of Taichung, but also impacted the community of Up with People, and impacted my individual life.

-by Angie Pfleiderer, USA

Shannon, Isaline, Subu, and Ido at the Eden project

Eden project is a group in Taiwan that supplies help and workplaces to people with different limitations. We helped them during the last weak, and I was surprised at the variety they offer. First we worked in a gas station, but we didn’t operate it. People with mental problems operate it fully. Our job was only to welcome the people to the station, because the workers were not as good with expressing gratitude. I felt a bit handicapped myself because of the language barrier, but it amazing to meet all the people. The second thing I did was a charity sale of clothes, and a lot of different objects.

The final thing was giving English lessons to children of immigrants, it was probably the most amazing thing I did! I think the kids really had fun learning all those new games in English, and hopefully that would encourage them to continue to learn. They were all fascinated by our countries, and really made us feel that they love us! I was especially touched when they sang a song for us. And I will never forget seeing twenty children playing the dreidel, a game from my own culture in Israel.

-by Ido Adler, Israel

Isaline (right) doing service for the Eden Social Welfare Foundation

I had the wonderful privilege to work at Eden Social Welfare Foundation in Taipei from Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 to Saturday, April 11th, 2009. Eden is a foundation that helps people that are physically, mentally, and emotionally handicapped. They also have programs for children to learn Chinese, Vietnamese, and English. As well, they have a class for women who are mail order brides. These people are considered a burden to society, but Eden treats them as immigrants. My group and I helped out making signs to hold for a gas station that benefited the foundation, and also for a charity sale they held.

The day I worked at the charity sale we tried to sell umbrellas since it was raining that day but as soon as we got outside it stopped raining. So me and my partner, Elsa (She spoke Chinese), passed out signs to help have people donate their old goods for charity sales.

Subu and Shannon on CI

I worked at the gas station for three days we held out signs, passed out stickers, and also pumped the gas. We all learned how to say welcome, the different grades of gas, and also you are so kind in Taiwanese. The greatest part of the community impact experience for me was working with the people who were mental, emotional, or physically handicapped. We worked together at the gas station doing the same job that benefited the Eden Foundation. Eden Foundation is a wonderful organization and I hope that all countries will have Eden programs.
-by Shannon McClellan, USA

Finally, the cast made it’s way to Taiwan! The first two weeks we’re going to spend in Taipei, a big, beautiful and crowded city. Because of the size of the city, the cast was split up for different CIs in the first week. I was part of the so called “flex group” and we’ve been to different places in the city to perform “Mini Shows” for the people there.

On Tuesday, we were at a college and performt for the students there. It was quite a nice show, and the audience was very excited about our show. On wednesday and Thursday we went to two different hospitals where we also performed. In addition to that, we were able to talk to the people working there. They told us a lot about the healthcare system in Taiwan and their philosophy how they want to threat their patients. For me, it was very interesting because it gave me the opportunity to compare it to the system we have in Germany.

Up with People at Aletheia University in Taiwan

Friday this week we went to another university where we talked to the students in different smaller groups about questions. The group I was in discussed what we all could do to protect the environment. Of course, recycling was one of the most important answers. In the afternoon, we performed our Mini Show for the students from the university. And this show simply was a blast! We hat about 2000 students in the audience. The show on Tuesday was already great and loud, but this one made it an unforgettable show for all of us. I still can remember, how the audience was already screaming before the Go-Daddy-Oh end pose, and as we made it into it their screaming approached us like a wave with an astonishing impact!

The “big end” was finally on Saturday: We performed three shows in a row at the “Longshine Temple” here in Taipei. So, we had a performance every hour: 4, 5 and 6 o’clock. We also had a good audience and, for me surprisingly, it did not shrink after the first and second show – no, it grew more and more!
After all, it was a first great week here in Taiwan! All the new impressions are impacting every one of us, some in the very enthusiastic way, some try to get used to this different culture. But in the end, every single one of us will enjoy it!
by Gregor Pollehn, Germany

The Bay St. Louis, MS Advance Team...Dan, Rixt, Neshat, and Luis

If Up with People is anything, it is a program that always presents new challenges to push you. Bay St. Louis, Mississippi – one of the stops on Cast A 2009′s tour – was no exception. My relationship with Cast A 2009 has been a unique one. I traveled as a student in A2008, but I got the opportunity to help the Road and Office Staff of Up with People in the staging of Cast A 2009 as an Education Department intern. The four weeks of staging flew by, and it was an amazing learning experience for me. But, it left me hungry for more of Cast A. When they left for Miami, I left for home in Iowa to return to my life there. A few days later, I was contacted by Up with People with an opportunity – they needed help with a city in Mississippi, and they were wondering if I would be interested in taking on a Field Manager job there. I immediately said yes, but I silently shouted at myself, “What the hell are you doing??” For those who don’t know, a Field Manager’s job is to coordinate all the moving parts of a city before and while the cast is there: meals, host families (which includes finding them), show promotion, admissions opportunities, regional learning, community service projects, and so much more. And I had just said I would do all of that in three weeks…definitely an “Oh s@#$!” moment It’s safe to say I was freaking out just a little.

It wasn’t long before I found myself down south in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi – ground zero for Hurricane Katrina. It is a common misconception that New Orleans, Louisiana, is ground zero for Katrina, but that would be wrong. New Orleans was flooded. Bay St. Louis was flattened…then flooded. I got an opportunity to see before and after pictures of the area, and it is stunning to see that damage. And as I spent my time in Bay St. Louis and the area, I began to realize just how much work was left to be done. I, like many others, thought that recovery from Katrina was done and over. I can tell you that it is absolutely not.

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March 30 – April 1

Tyler, Texas

Working Hard at Tyler State Park

Three days of many different kinds of Community Services around Tyler, Texas.

On Monday my group went to Texas Food Bank in Tyler. East Texas Food Bank gets a lot of donations to serve low-income hungry people in the area, each year the serve about 111.000 people. We helped out by sorting food donations and putting them in boxes. Also, some of us worked in the cold freezer sorting sausages. During lunch we watched a video about the Food Bank which opened up interesting discussions from people all over the world about food and hunger.

On Tuesday, some of us went to a beautiful park: Tyler State Park. We were working at camp sites digging, replacing fire places and carrying bricks to eventually put them on the group.

Tyler State Park

On Wednesday, the last Community Service Day in the US for a while, we went to Pine Cove Christian Camp. We brushed the pool walls and vacuum cleaned the pools and since it was April Fools Day and our staff lived at the camp we (or a staff member who actually lived there too) thought it would be fun to fool the staff members who live at the camp. J So we made their rooms very nice…a fun way to end three great days of community impact.

- Alexandra Rehn Appelqvist, Sweden

Thursday we had different Community Impact projects (“CI”) during the day. Some people went to Buddy Ball, which gives people in a wheelchair the opportunity to play baseball. We built a soccer field for them and played with them. Another CI was BeauCare, an organization that gives the opportunity to kids to have a place to go after school. The people that are working there play games with the kids and help them with there homework. We painted their main hall yellow and drew mirrors on it.

Hannah and Yan painting a first grade classroom

The third CI was  a women’s shelter, an organization that gives woman a home for a couple of weeks to help them searching a new job or get better from their addiction. We helped them with breaking the old playgarden so that they could place a new one. The fourth CI-site was the First Street School, a school were we painted a classroom and two hallways. The fifth CI was an organization that helped alcoholics, drug addicts or people who have been sexual abused. Even if they can’t afford the help they will get help! We helped rebuilding a roof for this facility. We pulled the old roof out and putted a new cealing on it.And that’s the CI I was working on. We sang while we were working, had some competitions about throwing the old roof as fast as possible on the ground, we climbed the ladder with a bag of roofpieces( I don’t know the name, but they were very heavy). We had so much fun and we worked our fingernails out of our hands. In fact, my hands are still hurting but it was worth it. We all wanted to see our work finished and we finished one half of the roof with eight people. We were really happy about that! We talked a lot to the lady who worked at the place. She was very thankful for the work we did.

Friday, march 27th: showday In the morning we set up our stage at the school-auditorium we had our show. One of the hostmoms donated us some donuts what made the morning very sweet. In the afternoon we rehearsed the new Taiwanese-medley for Taiwan and also the Mexican medley to get prepared for both countries. Besides that, we also rehearsed the show to get prepared for the evening. The show itself really was “a blast”! The audience was big and great, and we all enjoyed performing for them. Some kids even asked us for authographs, which gave us the feeling of being popstars. At 12Pm my roommates ( Tove, Marianny, and Gianna) and I left the building … ready to have a long night. On saturday we had our host family day. We went to Wal-Mart, which is a kind of “dangerous” because you can buy so many things… In the evening we had a great dinner with our hostfamily, the last one for the week, because on Sunday it was “travel-time” again. We headed off to Tyler, Texas. -by Sanne Shockaert(Belgium)

Monday March 23rd, our bus found its way to DeRidder, Louisiana. We arrived around 3 p.m. and spent most of the afternoon learning about our destination in one week: Taiwan!! We have started learning a little bit of mandarin Chinese and it’s really exciting. We also had an information session, where we heard the latest news from the countries represented in our cast. It can be really hard to follow the news because we are so busy all the time. At 6 p.m. we got picked up by our host families, and spent the rest of the night with them.

The View from a DeRidder Traincar

Tuesday March 24th was our Regional Learning Day. We all got split into two groups. One of the groups went to The “Hanging Jail”. The jail was built in a gothic style in 1914 and was the jail in DeRidder from 1914 to 1982. It is known for hanging convicted persons and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It is said to be haunted, but we didn’t see any signs of that. Maybe if we had been there at night, we would have seen something out of the ordinary…
The two groups then switched sights. The other sight was a museum. We got a guided tour of the museum and learned a lot about DeRidder’s as well as US history.
Later that day we went to the park where we got some time to play ball, go for walks near the lake and relax. We also got dinner at the park, and some of us ate our first alligator-meat!! It was really good, and actually tasted a lot like chicken. We talked about the fact that this week is our midsemester-week and it is amazing how fast time is flying by. For a lot of us it seems like it were just yesterday we showed up in Denver. It really made us realize that we have to seize every moment that we have and enjoy the time we have together. The buses picked us up around 5 p.m. and we thought then we were going to have an educational workshop. I must say we were very surprised when we got to the venue and it turned out to be a castPARTY!! We spent the rest of the night dancing and dancing. The mayor even showed up and sang us a song. The whole day was amazing.

Camilla painting the First Street School

Wednesday March 25th was our first Community Impact Day in DeRidder. We got split up to go to three different sights. They were BeauCARE, BuddyBall and 1street school. Beaucare is a place for children to come after school to do homework, play and just hang out. The people who went there painted their recreation room. Buddyball gives people with different disabilities the chance to play baseball and have fun. The people who volunteered there helped cleaning and improving the baseball field. The people that went to the 1street school painted and cleaned classrooms. All three sights were a lot of fun and I think we all enjoyed it.
- Karoline Solberg, Norway

Monday, March 16th

Today we will arrive in the city Bay St. Louis, which is set up by Louis(Mexico) and Rixt (The Netherlands), Dan (Iowa, USA) and Neshat (England). We enjoy our bus ride which only takes place in the morning and in our ride break we experience our first Floridian rain. Settled in Bay St. Louis, we find our roommates in  musicstyle. In the afternoon we start to learn our Taiwanese songs, and by that all the ways ‘oeh’ en ‘aahs’ can sound like in Chinese. Not only do we taste this city, but the city bites back too. We meet the gnats very fast and after today, the skin of many of us is marked with little red souvenirs.

Tuesday, March 17th

Today we have Regional Learning Day and we go to the Alice Mosely Museum. This museum shows paintings and pictures of and from a woman who was very creative, critical and a great artist. After our visit, we have some free time, to explore Bay St. Louis from inside out. In the afternoon we learn more pronunciation from our always shining Chinese friends Yan and Joshua, with musical support by our great music coordinator Kady.

Mississippi crawfish at a host family potluck

In the evening we have a potluck on the beach. Lobstar, crawfish, crab, tilapia, sweets, schelps and other unrevealed surprises from the ocean disappear fast in our international mouths. We have a great time on the beach, with a lot of selfmade (jungle!-)music, dancing around the fire, good talks while looking over the sea and crazy jumping  pictures. This Tuesday, with the Alice Mosely paintings, combined with hotdogs, Chinese sounds and sand in our shoes, was a beautiful, cultural and relaxing day.

The beach on Ship Island

Wednesday, March 18th

Today starts cold, but warms up very fast. It’s Lotte’s birthday and we celebrated this on the boat which brings us to the “ships island”. After a great boatride (wíth dolphins!) we pick up trash from the beach that washed up after Katrina. For three hours we move, carry and pull. The most creative ideas come alive, to get as much trash as possible.  After the work we have some free time to jump in the sea and look around on the island.

Though this city is so warm and shining; a side of her lies in the shadow. Katrina destroyed many houses and marked many memories black. Our host family experience here is extra special, in a way we wish the
reason does not exist. These first days here in Bay St. Louis, are in a very unique way all at the same time relaxing, cultural, sunny, hurting and hospitable. An interesting combination in an unforgettable city.

-by Marjolein Visser, the Netherlands