day 3: culture jam: stereotypes

today was so great!

well not at first i suppose. i lost my wallet. not good... it had my driver's liscence, bus pass (i use it every morning), my calling cards, and my AAA Visa check card in it. i kind of freaked out. oh well i guess. can't do anything now...

but besides that! we did some fun educational activities this morning. the main message was not to rush through your experience here, but to sit back and reflect on what has happened and what you can learn from it or how you can change it. we played the human knot game where you get in a circle and grab someone else's hand across the circle and then try to straighten yourself into one circle. it was super fun. my group was actually the only one not to get untangled, but we had 12 people in it!! it was a little smooshed, so we got to know each other very quickly.

we then went on to an educational session where we learned etiquette and what to expect when it comes to our host families. after this lesson was a very interesting activity. we wrote down different stereotypes we had for all the different countries we had represented and then discussed what was writen down. this was very deep and informational! i learned quite a bit about my castmate's cultures from this activity. not so much about mine, other than everything is so polarized in this country that a stereotype could be 100% true in one area but unheard of in another.

after this was vocal work. we learned Ayiko!!! one of my favorite UWP songs!!! :) it was amazing how a group with some who had never taken a choir class ended up with such a rich, amazing sound. we worked step-by-step from Sopranos to Altos to the men, and when we all sang together for the first time i got goosebumps! it's amazing.

after this was the culture jam!! what an amazing time i had! we have some very talented people among us on this tour! we had traditional cambodian dancers, a breakdancer, ABBA, some poems, a harmonica player, some world cup statistics, a drum circle, a piano player, a mariachi band, and much much more!!! I can't wait for tomorrow night!!