I heart Portland. What a great city. If it had more sunny days, I could totally live there. It’s pretty hard to compete with Colorado’s 300 sunny days a year. I am currently in the van, on the way to an overnight in Twin Falls, Idaho (our halfway point between Portland and Vegas). Since I’ve got time to kill, this will be a long post. Enjoy, reflect, and leave me a comment if you are so inclined. Anyway, here’s what happened this week.
Monday- We were late to morning meeting due to an awesome traffic jam on the bridge. We got there in time to participate in our education workshop, which was on the environment. We watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth”, which I’m happy we did, because, honestly I would have never watched it on my own. It had a lot of good information. They used great examples, visuals and got across a lot of important facts. The part I didn’t like was that it really glamorized Al Gore. Even if I was an Al Gore fan I think it would have annoyed me. It made it seem like Al is this huge celebrity and that is why we should be listening to him. Also, every credible expert he introduced he had to say “My friend John… blah blah blah”. Maybe I don’t care if he is your friend, just tell me how the ice caps are going to melt. Anyway, the environment team gave a great presentation and told us that we had to carry all our trash around with us for the next four days. We got big bags (biodegradable of course) and wrote our names on them. Sweet. But, instead of us using this activity to see how much trash we actually accumulate, it became a competition to see who could produce the least trash. No one wanted to take an apple at lunch because of the core and it was funny to see everyone coming out of the bathroom wiping their wet (hopefully, clean) hands on their pants because they didn’t want to use a paper towel. I tried not to cheat too much, but I definitely thought twice before taking napkins, plastic bags, the sleeve on my morning coffee.
Later in the day we sent the cast out on promotions. The advance team came up with a great idea to do “Bigger and Better”. I gave each home team a paperclip and told them to go make trades to try to get the best item. The idea came from a Canadian guy who did this a few years ago, started with a red paper clip and a year later got a house. Sweet. Check it out at www.oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com. So, the cast went out armed with fliers, posters and their paperclips and came back with all sorts of crazy stuff. Gift Certificates, makeup, hangers from Abercrombie… the most unusual had to be a big plastic pool. I think they did a great job and had some fun too. After work I got to work out for the first time in a long time. It was nice to get on the ol’ Elliptical Machine and do some weights.
Tuesday- I was signed out from community service today to train the advance teams for Germany. This week is also our first week with our new interns-my new marketing intern is Stefan. Besides being a really awesome guy, he is –lucky me- German and has done advance work! He helped me train the teams and it was really awesome to have him there and not only give his expertise, but also help talk about Germany, and Europe in general since I haven’t been to Europe with Up with People so I really don’t know how it works. In the afternoon the cast came back from their CI with Homeless Connect and we had a guest speaker. She is an alumna of UWP and started an organization called TransActive. They help children and teenagers who are transsexual, as well as their families. Basically a transsexual believes they were born in the wrong body. They know they are a girl, but they have male parts. It was very interesting to learn about her personal story and her organization. I love the open environment of Up with People and how people are respectful of all people and topics, even though they may be uncomfortable or controversial. After work Christine and I took some people home and went to dinner at Outback.
Wednesday- The exact halfway point of our semester. How is it going by this fast?? Today I was signed out to do admissions. I went with a few other staff members and the admissions intern, Tiffanie from Colorado to Clackamass (what a great name!) High School. We did 2 presentations to over 100 students and had a booth at lunch. I had a really good time doing the presentations and talking to the kids. Hopefully some of them will travel in the future- we need the Northwest US represented! When everyone got together and the end of the day we learned the songs we will be singing in Italy and Switzerland. Who knew I could sing in Italy and Swiss German (okay, I really can’t, but I try my best). I don’t remember what happened at night. I think it involved sleep.
Thursday- A work day. I worked on stuff planning for Las Vegas and other random stuff trying to get back in the groove of being on road staff. Thursday afternoon we did our environment wrap up and looked at all our trash and talked about what is going on in different countries. We heard some interesting stuff- for example, Sophie from China told us how at her university they have a “water card” that they use to take a shower. It takes money off for every 10 seconds you are using the water. So Sophie says she only puts the card in when she really needs the water (to get her hair wet, rinse off) to save money and help conserve. When we were done, we made sure to recycle all that we could! We also did a quiz to see how many worlds it would take to support our way of living. It asked questions like how much do you drive, what kind of stuff do you eat, how many times a day do you shower, etc. It is based off how many acres of I am embarrassed to say that my result was 6!! Although some people had 10, so I didn’t feel too bad. Thursday night I tried to go shopping, but I didn’t find anything I liked.
Friday- The whole cast went to Mt. Saint Helens, but I stayed back to do some promotion. I sat in the studio audience of a local news program “AM Northwest” and then explored the Pearl District of downtown Portland. I went to the World’s Largest Bookstore- it is a whole city block and it is amazing! I could have stayed there all day, but I gave myself a 2 hour and 5 item limit. I got lost twice on the way to get tea in the coffee shop! I bought a book for work (Full Frontal PR) a book for pleasure ( a used novel), a new journal (chocolate brown suede), a fun address book (so I can send postcards from Europe and the Philippines) and some cute stationary (that I will use to send my friends in Cast C some notes). I again tried to do some clothes shopping, but everything I liked was too expensive. Boo. I met up with the cast later at the show facility (Portland Community College) and got some work done with Stefan while the cast set up and did workshops and such. I feel like the cast is really getting into the groove of what to do for show days. It works so well, it’s pretty amazing to see how far we’ve all come in the past few months. Friday night was a fun night. My awesome host mom/friend from Tucson was in town so we went to Kells Irish Pub with a few of her high school friends and her family. Good times.
Saturday- another double show day. I jumped in rehearsal in the morning because I realized in Coos Bay how much I missed performing with the cast. So, I did both shows and it went really well. The crowds were good, but small. It’s so hard to promote a show in a big city. The alumni receptions were well attended though, so that was fun to meet and connect with alumni from the Portland area. A funny story from the show- during the last song ‘Up with People’ we always run off stage and into the audience. I was one of the first people off, so I ran down the stairway in the back to get into the audience with about 20 people behind me. However, it was sooo dark in the stairwell I couldn’t find the door handle. Everyone was yelling and laughing behind me. We finally made it out for the last 3 words of the song… Luckily the people coming from the other side filled in our side of the audience, but it was pretty funny- they looked so confused that we were all missing and then burst out at the last minute, all laughing. Overall, it was a good day- fun to finally spend some time with the cast. I love everyone so much- what a great group we have. Anyway, this is like the longest post ever- hope I haven’t bored you all to tears, but I have to do something to entertain me on the way to Twin Falls.
P.S. I think the hotel staff stole my stuffed elephant, Ayiko! I looked everywhere for him this morning, tore the room apart! Who would do such a thing? I’m pretty bummed about it.
