End of week one

Good evening, World!

So today marked the last day of our first week here in Denver! WooHoo!!! It was a great week and you may have read. I took about 200 pictures and hope to take at least 2000 more! So today was pretty low key in the idea of new stuff in the day. Our day started off with dance and ended in dance with a couple presentations in between about documenting our travels and talking about our internship opportunities. In regards to the interships I'm thinking I would like to try to be a part of the Advance Team. This means that I would go to a city before the rest of the cast to help prepare for the cast. It is a lot of work and an excellent opportunity to learn and show responsibility in many aspects. The other internships I'm interested in deal with the Education program, Admissions Team, and Dance ( I have no real background in dance but it fascinates me and I would be very interested in learning more about how the staff teaches the learning process. I got a chance to interact with some VERY interesting conversations as well today. And I have to say while the day was great with the dances and presentations the conversations I will remember for a lifetime. First off was our home team #7. A group that includes eight people and will stay the same for the whole semester. In this group it is our responsibility to keep the rest of the cast informed about different areas of the world. Our area is Africa which means we will be preparing and giving presentations that talk about everything that has to do with Africa from the people, the news, their economics and so on. We will also be in charge of other activities that require creativity and thought. Most importantly we act as a smaller family that we can go to if we need support or help with anything throughout the program. For instance if we are having trouble understanding something because English is not our first language one of the group memeber can then offer suppor t to the person that needs assistance. One of our first challenges was to come up with a name of our team. After much deliberation we came up with "Na Na" which means "7" in Japanese, however "na na" doesn't mean seven in every language-we soon learned...in French "na na" means beautiful "hot" woman. (this was described by David from Belgium with hand gestures!) Very funny! Then and there we became the "Na Na's!"



My culturally interesting day didn't end there. Home time came and we sat down at the dinner table when Sandra learned a little about American "culture" with a giant finger pen that made noises when pulled...see where I'm going? Sandra then learned about the meaning of the age old Pull my Finger joke...but didn't stop there she needed to know for personal references how to spell the noisy smelly act. We (mom, dad, and me) must have spelt the name about 4 to 5 times before Sandra had the spelling down! Interesting and funny but a great learning experience and no questions of curiousity are EVER wrong. Yesterday, one of the girls was amazed to see a crossing guard holding a stop sign. Her reaction was priceless and I can't wait to go to Europe where I will most definitely have the same type of curiosity and then the Europeans can giggle at my questions! This evening Sandra played the piano while I tried (keyword) to practice and sing a couple of our dances. I had a great week and can't wait for more!

I shared my pictures of my real family today with my host mom. It feels good to share my life with other people who are willing to learn about everything we have to say. I love it.

Tomorrow will be a busy day. My cell phone died today and I need to try to get a new one for a fair price. I need to get the.......POSTCARDS to send to everyone of my supporters!!!!! And then I need to go to the store and find a new pair of shows. I would also like to buy a journal that I can write in. There are some things that I don't want to share but do want to remember personally.

FYI- or for Alexis FBI- I apologize for spelling errors- I want to do a stream of thought and don't always get a chance to look things back over. I appreciate your patience.