November 17 – Show day
Wow, it was hard show day especially as facility was a little bit hard for performing. We were performing in church and it was just too hard as we didn’t have real back stage.
During lunch time we had guest speaker Mr. Penny, father of our cast members. He was involved in Up with People for a long time and he came to talk to us about that experience and it was really fun speech especially part what to do when we come back home one day after our Up with People experience.
After lunch we had rehearsal whole day and at 19.00 our show was started. It wasn’t as hard as I was thinking it’s going to be because of strange facility and it was fun. We have 4 more shows to perform and we are finished. I don’t how to feel about that. I’ll come back to that subject in few days.
November 16 – Regional learning day
After morning meeting, we had guest speaker about globalization. It was really good speech and at the end because of so many cons and pros globalization is bringing to us, it was hard for me to decide whether is good or bad.
After lunch we went to our regional learning place. It was like a reality. Going back to 19th century and living Mark Twain’s life in his house. Mark Twain’s house was big really nice house. Our tour guide was really good in telling the stories and listening her words, I was daydreaming how it was to live in 19th century and visit Mark Twain. His wife really had style how to decorate house. Amazing!
I really enjoyed being there and it was like coming back to Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer time. It was like being kid.
Day wasn’t over when we finished Mark Twain tour. After tour we went back to Artiste Collective and we had some classes assigned. Half of the group could be part of African drums classes and half of the group could learn hip-hop dance. I wanted to learn hip- hop dance and I will just tell you, it’s not as easy as it sometimes seems to be. I really had fun and no matter it was hard, I enjoyed every minute of my classes and it was fun.
November 15 – CI day
First thing in the morning we departed to Food Harvest Food Bank where few us were volunteering there.
First we were packing potatoes in smaller bags and after potatoes we started packing onions. It wasn’t hard job and we had time to talk to each other. As there were not so many volunteers working on same job, we were mostly talking with each other and just had fun.
After lunch we had to go to do promotion, but it was raining really badly, we stayed at facility where office was and we just tried to spend 2 hours of free time how we liked. I was talking and watching movies with few people.
In the afternoon we had UN preparation presentation and Jin A from South Korea made really good presentation about United Nations. Well, I don’t remember telling you about it, but in 2 weeks we are going to UN and we are going to be part of UN peace conference for 2 days.
November 14 – Logistic/BTS day
Today I was sign out and I was working in logistics whole morning. We had to move to 3 different facilities and it was had to work.
I managed to book my flight ticket from Boston to Washington as I had internet finally and December 10th is the day when my tour is finishing.
In the afternoon we had BTS (Backtrack show) in Artiste Collective. We were performing for kids in after school program. After BTS, they surprised us and they performed for us to show us what they do in after school program. We had African drum performance and it was really cool to see that. After that, another group performed in hip-hop dancing which was really cool.
November 13 – Internal day
Today we had education day.
In the morning we had 2 presentations. Vania from Bulgaria was presenting her country and she talked about situation in Bulgaria. After Vania, Sokhune from Cambodia presented us Cambodia and she talked about history of Cambodia and how history did affected her and why did she have to move to US. Both presentations were really good and I liked them very much.
After lunch we had promotion time and we went to downtown of West Hartford to do some promotion. Town is full of cows as there is Cow Parade going on. Cows are really cool, all with different theme and drawings. My favorite one is ballerina cow.
After promotion, we went back to facility and we had our cast meeting. It was one of meetings where we discussed about feedbacks and how did they affect cast.
November 12 - Goodbye Rhode Island, welcome Connecticut
We left Rhode Island today. This was shortest travel day so far and it us only 2 hours to reach our new place, Hartford, Connecticut.
When we came to Hartford, first we had Macy’s Parade rehearsals outside on cold air just to get used to how it’s going to be to walk for 2 miles around New York in Parade next week.
After lunch we had some conflict management workshops and lessons and than we were split in our home teams and we were working on giving feedback to each other. It was very good activity as it’s something with which we are going to deal with our whole life when we once come back home.
Today I also received nice gift from ammoniums friend – very colorful socks which I love. And I received also nice colorful scarf from Wiebke and she knitted it by herself.
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