from the U.S. to tokyo to Thailand!!!

so i'm in Phuket Thailand right now. be jealous. it's amazing!!! however you're pry interested in how i got here...

we went from tuscon to san diego california! we did a lot of promotion work for cast B at a beach and a farmer's market. after our long day's work we had a party at Moonlight Beach! it was amazing. i swam in the Pacific Ocean for the first time since i was little!

it was incredible to have such enormous waves crashing down on me. there was so much force in what looked like such a tiny swell. the times i was englufed in a bigger wave was amazing! you feel the swirl and the swoosh of the water all around you and you can't help but thank God for all the amazing opportunities he's given you, and the miracles he's put on earth for us...

are you ready to hear about my FOURTY TWO hour travel day/s? i sure hope so!

we woke up at 4:15 in san diego and headed to L.A.X. we checked in and waited until our flight at about 12:45. when we lifted off our pilot announced that we crossed the international dateline and that it was now 5:45 in the morning. this flight had some really really good food for being airplane food! i also met a really interesting guy from the us who was moving to japan to teach english!

we flew about 11 hours to tokyo where we had a 2 hour delay. i bought my brother some stuff because i knew how much he wanted stuff from Japan. (love ya!) we then boarded another plane and flew to bangkok, thailand for 7 hours.

this is where we had the easiest immigration and customs check ever. the immagration interegator asked me how long i'd be in Thailand, and i was free to go. for customs you just got in a line that said "nothing to declare" and went straight through!! it was crazy. here comes the fun part. in Bangkok we loaded up two buses and drove 13 (ish) hours from i think around 11 at night until 2 the next day, when we arrived in Phuket!!!!

(i was SOOO tired so i may be messing up some times, but our logistics coordinator, wouter says it was 42 hours. what he says goes.)

may i also mention that the only shower i had before we got to phuket was a rinse off at moonlight beach the night before flying out of LAX?.... talk about disgusting!!!

so anyway... we got to phuket and we pulled up to Satree Phuket School! there were hundreds of students w/ lais for us outside of our buses! they were made out of Orchids and little white flowers that symbolize love. later on they gave us all handmade silk scarves, made by the students at the school! they are gorgeous!

they had an amazing buffet dinner waiting for us and our new host families, who happened to be the parents of some students at the school. they had 3 traditional dances to perform for us. the dancers were incredibly talented! it was really great to see. they also played a lot of traditional music for us. they intruments are really interesting, but i didn't get a chance to ask anyone what they were called, but i do know they can't wear shoes while playing an intrument here.

while at the dinner the math teacher taught me how to "properly" use my eating utensils. by holding a big spoon in your right hand and pushing the food onto it w/ the fork in your left hand. my bad :)

i met my host parents and sister. Mom, Dad, and Pang. i also found out i'd be rooming with Tina, Faith, and Vania again! :) we were driving around downtown, with lots of tiny little shops and things everywhere and we turned into an alley. at the end of the alley was a beautiful white house with an iron gate with tons of little plants everywhere! this was my new home. CRAZY!

we removed our shoes before going in and we immediately saw marble floors, and a huge wood and glass staircase with maroon marble steps. this house was gorgeous. i got to my large room with hardwood floors, a king sized bed, and a balcony and realized i was in heaven. the bathroom is also wall-to-wall marble!!! it's so beautiful!

my host family is really nice, too. we went shopping that night for breakfast food and ended up coming home with two shopping carts filled with food. they are very generous, kind people. they language barrier was difficult at first, but now we're learning how to understand each other. Pand is in the English program at school, so knows quite a bit of it. her parents actually know English too! This is unusual, but very refreshing. :)

a few days after we got here to Phuket we had a Regional Learning day! this entire day had no budget to us. the 7 Rotary clubs here in phuket sponsored all of it.

first we went to Sea Gypsy Village. this is a small part of Phuket where many fisherman live. this is an experience i could only have in UWP. We talked to some ladies about their culture, and then taught some children the "Stomp" part of our show. it was SO much fun.

after we left them, we took a trolly boat over to Coral beach! OH MY GOODNESS was it gorgeous. we rode very slowly on the boat so we could take in the tropical beauty all around us. we saw islands completely covered in lush trees, and fishermen out in their handmade wooden boats. when we finally got to "our island" we were so pumped!!! this place looked like something out of a tourist brochure! there was a beach with an enormous jungle behind it. there were seashells on the beach and tropical fish that came swimming up to your toes in the warm, clear ocean. Heaven.

quite a few of us went snokeling. you could see hundreds and hundreds of fish. some of us fed them bananas, but they are fiesty little things, and sometimes missed and nibbled your fingers. you could see all types of coral, sea urchins, starfish, and we even saw some baracuda!! this was an amazing day. the only thing that made it better was the rain! while we were swimming it started to sprinkle. i love the rain, so i was enthralled! i was in a beautiful cove in the warm, salty ocean with soft, cool raindrops falling on my skin. it was incredible.

unfortunately we had to leave Coral beach, but i will definitely have to go back someday, or to somewhere similar. we then had a very important dinner with the heads of the Rotary clubs here in Phuket, and they decided that next time uwp went to phuket they wanted to know details so they could plan their events and community service so they can work hand in hand with us!!

Then came another fun part. the rotary club came through again and sponsored tickets for every single one of us to go see a very famous Phuket show called FantaSea! it was so much fun! before the show you wander around a kind of park, like disneyworld, with lots of shops and little restaurants. there was some amazing architecture. it was beautiful.

the show was fantastic as well! the special effects were out of this world, with bungee cords, optical illusions, crazy lights, and much more. the dancers were exceptional, there was always something going on, and there were 16 elephants on stage. it was so great! there are thousands of seats in this theater and it was sold out! :)

i've made a few observations about Phuket, Thailand so far.

1) they drive CRAZY here. they drive on the opposite side of the road than us, but you may not even be able to tell!! they drive over the line in the street, and there are also more motorcycles than cars here, who just weave in and out wherever they want!

2) its hard to tell where you are because most shops have the same signs, and all the roads are very windy.

3) there is no one culture here in phuket, they have influences from all over the world!!!

4) the food is SPICY!!!!

5) they people here are always smiling, joking, laughing, and just having a good time. i LOVES it!

6) there are barely any trash cans around! i don't really understand what they do with their trash!!

7) their napkins at restaurants are one layer, and half the size we have in the US.


i started my 4 day community service today, but i think i'll write more about that in another post. i love you all!

hugs!

xoxo
--callie

tuscon pictures

The pics are going backwards... but here ya go! :D

a song for the casts...

Life Uncommon by Jewel

Don't worry mother, it'll be alright
And don't worry sister, say your prayers and sleep tight
It'll be fine lover of mine
It'll be just fine

Lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery
And you shall lead a life uncommon

I've heard your anguish, I've heard your hearts cry out
We are tired, we are weary, but we aren't worn out
Set down your chains, until only faith remains
Set down your chains

And lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery
And we shall lead a life uncommon

There are plenty of people who pray for peace
But if praying were enough it would have come to be
Let your words enslave no one and the heavens will hush themselves
To hear our voices ring out clear
With sounds of freedom
Sounds ot freedom

Come on you unbelievers, move out of the way
There is a new army coming and we are armed with faith
To live, we must give
To live

And lend our voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend our strength to that which we wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery
And we shall lead...

Lend our voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend out strength to that which we wish to he free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery
And we shall lead a life uncommon

tuscon

its me again...
so i'm in Tuscon now. have been since monday night. I'm losing track of when i've been writing. i'm not sure what i've gone over so far. but here goes anyway.
we left gallup NM monday morning. my host family sent me off with yummy sammiches and chips. we watched fight club on the bus, but other than that it was a pretty typical bus ride.

we got to tuscon earlier than expected and cast B was waiting to greet us when we got off the bus! they had signs that said "We love cast C," and they were screaming and jumping up and down outside the bus. it was so great to see them again!! we all really missed them even though we had only been apart a few days.
we had announcements a few minutes later and found out for sure that Up with People will be performing in this year's Rose Bowl!!! It was SO exciting! We also found out that Cast B will be going to Las Vegas!!! I am so incredibly happy for them. that should be such a fun experience.


after a while we were finally able to meet our new host families!!! My host parents are Barbara and Larry. They have two kids named Kylie and Alex. They are SO adorable!!! I also got to meet Leigh Ann and her husband who are Larry's sister and brother-in-law. Leigh Ann is really good friends with Rajean, so it was really really good to meet them!


we got to my host family's house, and i seriously don't want to leave! They have a gorgeous view of the entire city from their backyard. it's filled with palm trees, they have a salt-water pool, and a small putt putt golf course in their backyard. we had a delicious supper of steak, salad, and potatoes.

we all split up and did a bunch of community impact work throughout the city on thursday. I went with three other people to the el rio clinic and read books to kids in the pediatric waiting rooms. it was so much fun, but it was challenging at the same time. i had to use the spanish that i had mostly forgotten from high school to speak to some of them. it was so great to see the kids that started out really really shy break out of their shells and end up giggling and talking up a storm.


we had some guest speakers that afternoon that were pretty good. We met some of the cast from '72 that were in Munich during the olympic scare with the israeli hostages!!! we heard their stories and it was SO moving. it became apparent at that moment how much of an impact we can really make. we can really make a profound difference in this world, and it's even possible to do it through music!

that evening we all went over to the gepharts for dinner. there are a bunch of Uppies staying w/ families from this neighborhood who are really good friends. Sayuri and Suzanne from cast B, Matt from cast b and Scott from cast C, and Grant and Josh from cast B. it was super fun. and its good to get so close with all of them.

I have a feeling i'm mixing up all these days. they are jumbled around in my head after all. one night, Grant, Adam, Vania and i went driving around Tuscon. we ended up driving to Mount Lemon to see the city skyline at night, and oh my goodness was it worth it!!! the stars were breathtaking, and seeing the mountains at night is even more amazing than during the day. all you can see are these huge majestic pieces of the land jutting out from the earth. it was incredible. we were also in a convertible, so it was even more amazing. we could see everything!!!

friday was a big rehersal day. we went through our show, and practiced the new parts we were adding in. we blocked the show with both casts and ran through for a long long time.

I'm on the Admissions Team, so i had to get ready really fast after supper (45 minutes sooner than everyone else) and go down to the lobby to greet people. it was so exciting to see all these people come to watch our show. this was a huge show by the way. all the alumni at the reunion came to watch it. we performed at Centennial Hall at the U of A campus. this seats about 3,000 people!

I welcomed many many people and got to know a few of them. the energy around this place was SO intense. this was the proof to some people that up with people was back! this was their dreams being rekindled for newer generations and the joy and anticipation was incredible. as i was walking around the crowd you could just feel all these emotions and more.

by the time i got backstage i could not hold in all this excitement anymore!!! I couldn't keep still. I was jumping up and down, doing crazy dances, and i even had to go to a back hallway so i could scream as loud as i could. i felt like if i stood still and didn't shake all this feeling out i would explode. these people were expecting so much and i couldn't wait to give it to them!!!

the show was phenomenal!!! people were coming offstage crying, and hugging, and jumping, and it was SOOO great!! i saw my old host sister and brother. Delaney came up onstage for Sound of Peace, and Spencer did stomp with the other teenagers. it was so good to see them again!! :D

During the last song of the show, We'll Be There, which is famous for being the most moving in the show, all of our emotions came out! people were giving it all they had and it showed. the audience was on their feet, clapping and singing along. tears were falling down our faces. we could tell all of our hard work was absolutely worth it!

we greeted people after the show and they all said they were very impressed. we were all incredibly proud of our show! it was fantastic. even now, words can't express how spectacular that feeling was. it was the most joyous, euphoric moment of my life so far!! i just wished more people i knew were there to see it!!!

Saturday was amazing as well. my roomate and i got there late, but we still got to see some incredible speakers. first we met Mr. and Mrs. Belk, the founders of Up With People. they gave us some great advice. it was so mcuh fun.... then we got to meet someone you will not believe. the grandson of GHANDI!!! his wife came along as well. it was SO unreal to actually meet a blood relative of this amazing man!!! Words can't explain how spectacular it was to meet him!!!

Right after lunch both casts got together seperately to have cast meetings. these are some of my favorite moments. we just get together to talk about how we're feeling and our different struggles and how to help each other with them. we got a lot out, and had a lot of wet faces, but we got so much closer, even through that mere hour and a half.

Saturday afternoon both casts got together again to go to a community pool to swim, play soccer, and have a BBQ. It was such a blast. we had chicken fights, people doing flips and belly-flops into the pool, and king of the raft!! haha. the food was also amazing!!!

after our relaxation time together we all went back to the Westin La Paloma to watch the Era Show by the alumni. What a great time!!! Each cast that was there performed a few songs from their show and even had the choreography to it! :D before each era performed... from 67 all the way to 97... there was a video about UWP at that time. the kids and teens of the alumni got to perform at the Era Show as well. it was so exciting!!!

Then came a really really tough part about this semester. we had to leave at intermission to say goodbye to the other cast. we were in the lobby and only had 15 minutes to officially say goodbye to our incredibly close friends who wouldn't be travelling with us. I was SO upset, but i heard many encouraging words, and eventually dryed my eyes, with much difficulties.

i know for a fact that i will never ever forget these people. they truly are family to me, and have already made a huge impact on my life. i love them all and can't wait to see them in 5 years!!! :)

that night ended up being so much fun!!! since Grant and Josh (both of cast B :( ) live right down the road from Vania and me, we went out to a hilltop again to take pictures of the skyline! then we went to the community pool, set out a blanket and looked at the stars. they are beautiful here in Tuscon by the way. we took our time together to bond and talk. it was great to have a real goodbye with them, rather than a short quick rip, like the others...

today was a calm day. i got to sleep in, do laundry, and pick up some stuff i needed at the grocery store. we picked up some groceries and headed home to make salad and marinate some chicken. the whole neighborhood was getting together again for a dinner. we got to the gepharts again and went for a swim.

our dinner was amazing!!! we had a great salad (with avocado!!! :D), pasta, fruit salad (with peaches, mangos, cantilope, and bananas), and lots of chicken. we had chocolate cake or cheesecake for a dessert. after dinner we had to say goodbye to the other families. it was really hard, but i was dubbed "Smily" by the adults here. so that's cool! hehe. Leigh Ann had a tough time saying goodbye. she said she felt like i belonged to Stu and Rajean, so it was even harder to let go.

we got back to my host families house and took a lot of pictures. it was good to get them! it's the kid's first day of school tomorrow! it is so unreal to me to imagine going back to school. its really funny, my friends are all starting college, and i'm going to thailand! hah! i win. :) just jokin'

by the way. tomorrow i leave and go to San Diego, California until Wednesday. Then we all fly out to THAILAND!!!! i'm so excited, but idk if i'll be able to write much. i'm assuming there won't be much internet!

i'm gonna get to sleep now. i love you all! :D

--callie

to gallop

why hello there!
Okay. so i have a little more free time tonight. I'll finish up my little adventure.
So sunday was our free day. my boyfriend tyler called me around 9 am, and my host family invited him over for breakfast! It was so delicious. After breakfast we went to the sixteenth street mall and window shopped. after a while we walked towards the capital to this beautiful park with lots of flowers and shade, and fantastic architecture. It was a little scary because there were quite a few homeless people around. the scenery was amazing none-the-less. we walked around the denver public library for a while. it is obviously much much much bigger than ours, so that was quite an experience.

on the way home on the lightrail it started to rain really really hard, but i absolutely love the rain. It truly makes me happy when it rains. without rain there are no rainbows after all!
We arrived back at my host family's house and they invited tyler in for dinner again! we had homemade pizza and it was delicious. we laughed and talked for a really long time. I started laundry while we started watching "remington steel." Its an old 80's tv show with pierce brosnan in it. its really funny.

tyler stayed for a while while i packed so he could take home some clothes i didn't need. before he left darlene gave him their contact information for when he gets out of basic. she noted that he truly fit into the family. I got really close to this family, so it was really hard to say goodbye the next morning at loretto heights.

we were supposed to be there between 7:30-7:45 but my entire host family woke up at 7:20!! so i got there around 8, but thankfully the bus wasn't supposed to leave until 8:30. my bus date was abby! i love. we had a 9 hour drive with two pit stops. we voted to watch monty python and the holy grail. we finally got to gallup, new mexico 45 minutes later than we planned.
my luggage was 40 minutes away on the UWP truck, so two of the other five of my roomates waited with me while the others went on to my host family's house. my host parents are retired, but their son runs their old bakery, and another of their sons runs a bakery in town. my host dad is an a west-mex band where he plays the accordian. we had an amazing dinner, and then their son brought us fresh pie!!

after dinner we went out on the porch and jammed with dick's accordian for a while. then we all decided on shower schedules and went to bed. we went to the bakery in the morning for breakfast and could pick out whatever we wanted!!! it was delicious! :D

today was really busy, doing admissions training and stuff. we had some high schoolers do a backstage look at the show, and they did the stomp with us in the show. it was really fun. since i am an admissions assistant i helped with the presentation after the show and have been working since then. I'm super pooped and can't wait to get to our host family's house to sleep!!!
love you all. i leave for tuscon tomorrow!!!

xoxo --callie

Opening Night!!!

hey all!
I know it's been a super long time since I've written. I'm really sorry. i better get started, there is SO much to cover!!!

I think I need to cover the move to teikyo loretto heights first! This is a university in Englewood (a suburb of denver). It's in a rather shifty part of town, but has an absolutely beautiful campus. We did a lot of staging there, and got to eat our meals outside on the green green grass under a beautiful tree! We often played soccer out on the grass when we were done eating.

This last week was so much work! Everyone learned how to play the buckets for the rhythm part of the show and rehersed and rehersed really hard all week! Instead of having days until 5:30, we upped them to 8:00 this week so we could get more done. Cast B had a dress rehersal for the other cast on Wednesday, and Cast C did did ours on Thursday.

It was wonderful to see how far both casts had come in only 3 weeks! But we still had SO much to do! The day of Cast B's opening night was quite calm for us. We went through our show a couple times, but most staff members were working with the B's, so we had a relaxing day. We had a guest speaker, Steve Farber, Jeremy's dad, We even had an hour to meditate!
I felt really really bad, because i was very tired this particular morning and could NOT seem to keep my eyes open! Steve Farber was an incredible speaker. We was inspiring, and funny, and informative, and i was very very impressed. He taught us about purusing "OS!M's" (if you want to know what these are please ask... unless small children are near.) and had a lot of great quotes to live by. "If you live in this world without every trying to change it, you've just sold a ruby for the price of spam!!" <--that was one of the favorites of his quotes. He was trying to inpire us to actually do something w/ our lives without just sitting around and going with the flow. He definitely succeeded. Some other inspiring quotes are "Wake up, stay fascinated, be yourself!" and "Stoke your business, amp your life, make a difference." He got a standing ovation and lots and lots of respect that morning. :)

Meditation was quite an experience. we all spread out and layed down or sat comfortably on the floor downstairs. Kristen then began reading the exact translation to Hanamizuki! It was so incredible to finally understand what we had been singing for all this time. They had told us the general idea, but this experience meant so much more! I had found out a couple days earlier that I would be singing this solo for the show, and I was overcome with a feeling of dread when i found out was I was singing. This song was so meaningful and full of passion and emotion, and I didn't think I could do it!

After Kristen read this translation, and most of us were quite teary-eyed, we just relaxed and listened to music, reflected, slept, or whatever we needed to do. After the first relaxing song, Seasons of Love was played from the musical Rent, which is one of my favorites. I was so filled with emotion, thinking that these six months were the only times I had with these amazing people. I realized how important everyone was to me, and how incredibly close we had gotten the last three weeks. After a few minutes when we had to go upstairs for supper, we all stayed around hugging each other, consoling those who had some uncomfoortable emotions arise, and some were even laughing together.

That night, Cast B did an absolutely amazing job! I was So impressed, and became nervous, hoping my cast would develope as much as the other. I was truly moved. :)
The next day was SO stressful!!! it was the day of my show and we went over and over the things we needed to. It was exhausing but worth it. we were crunched for time and stressed most of the day, but i suppose we'll just have to get used to that!

After dinner we all got ready downstairs outside of our greenroom. We helped each other with makeup and took lots and lots of pictures. Then came time to start greenroom. it began just like when we found out which casts we were in. we walked into a dark room, with staff members waving flashlights on either side of the walkway. when we got through we had another dance party, but this time it was to "Celebrate Good Times." They then held of signs saying things like "C yourself waking up on a mat in Thailand," "C yourself hearing your host brother saying he wants to be just like you," and "C yourself on 5th Avenue on New York in the Macy's Day Parade!!!"

We then had some very meaningful presentations. We started a book that had a letter written to someone in the cast that was an inspiration to Andrew, an amazing staff member. This week's letter was written to Faith, who absolutely deserved it!!! Then the staff members passed out pins to everyone to wear underneath our costumes to remind us that we were all inspirational. After such a moving ceremony we were obviously very emotional, so after taking a while to calm down we got all pumped up again, doing chants and dancing and such. Then it was time for the show!!!

It was SO surreal! I've been wanting to do this my entire life!! This was an absolute dream come true! While we were waiting backstage I couldn't keep still. My adrenaline was pumping, and hands were shaking, and I just could not get the smile off of my face!!! The show was incredible. It was so surreal, and it just felt amazing the whole way through. The staff members thought it would be a lot more effective if I sang Hanamizuki with Nanako from Japan. This was an amazing idea!!! It symbolized exactly what the song was about. Hope: two countries that had been enemies before, coming together as one promoting peace. It was spectacular.

After the show i was still pumped and proud of what we all had just done together! Tons of my friends and family came down to see the show: my mom, dad, and brother, my best friend jess, boyfriend tyler, two sets of great aunts and uncles, another uncle, my grandma, three family friends from boulder, and an amazing family that I've grown up with at my church! it was great to have so much support and love there at this moment that is definitely the highest point of my life so far. Even more so than graduation, although that lead the way to this moment.
After lots of hugs, and pictures, my real family met my amazing host family, then we set off to go out to eat, spent more time together, then parted ways.

Whew!!! SO that's part of what i need to talk about, but it's super late here... and i need some sleep. and I think I'm keeping my roommates awake. i'll write the rest tomorrow! (I'm in Gallup, New Mexico by the way!)

much love! and hugs
xoxo --callie