This week was jam-packed and fun filled. We had a round table discussion with a number of local leaders, we had our first day of community impact, and we blocked our show. Exhaustion, excitement, boredom, bliss, fun, and frustration were all in abundance this week.

Since our host mom was out of town most of this week, on Wednesday my roommate and I spent the night up in Broomfield. It was fantastic. We had some delicious chili followed by Belgian cookies and tea. There are 6 Uppies being hosted in the neighborhood, so after dinner we practiced our dances. Johan played us some Dutch rap and Natalya showed us some of her pictures from home (Uzbekistan). I slept on what was possibly the most comfortable couch ever - even rivaling our own couch at home. I was soooooo comfortable I didn't even want to get up to use the bathroom. I'll be dreaming of that couch until we meet again.

For our community impact day (Thursday) I was at the Food Bank of the Rockies helping box food for one of their family-based programs. 'Twas quite fun - I was in charge of peanut butter, then peanut butter and non-fat dry milk, then just non-fat dry milk, then non-fat dry milk and pork, then cereal with a bit of box flattening throughout. It was interesting the way different people interacted on the line, especially when things slowed down. It took a bit before we at the end of the line realized that they probably needed help somewhere up the line. Indeed they did and there I went.

Later in the day we met with our home teams to get to know each other a bit better. Our team leaders each have a fascination - one with zombies and one with a particular bodily function. Naturally, our stories followed the interests of the latter. Laughter ensued.

Friday we started blocking the show, which included lots and lots and lots of standing around with spurts of dancing and singing. They're trying people out in all the parts, and apparently we won't know who will actually be doing each part until the day of our show (or maybe the day before). I'm not holding my breath to be included in any featured dance parts, as there are many really good dancers. I've also only been involved in learning the featured parts of the partner dances... I'm not a very good partner dancer. Who knows how the vocals will go, as they'll end up with one person doing each solo with two or three back-ups. I'm sure I'll at least get to do a part somewhere along the road. It is incredibly frustrating to have 100 people on a small stage, however. It's really difficult to not have room to move and then have to dance full-out in a space slightly larger than your body. Yeah.

The mountains are incredible here. I see them every morning and evening on my way to and from our rehearsal space and though they seem close they're always too far away to take good pictures of. Every morning as the sun begins to rise, the mountains turn a dark pink followed by shades of orange as the sky turns purple above them. There's about a five minute window in which to see them in their full glory, because once the sun rises completely they take on a more natural color. This evening, the mountains were silhouettes against a pale yellow sky. The sun had set, but the sky remained bright and the clouds looked like smudges of charcoal left by an artist. I'm hoping to get better pictures of the mountains at some point, as we obviously don't have them in either of my home states.

Tomorrow is our free day, so I'll get to sleep past 6:00! If you have any ideas of cool or unusual things to do in downtown Denver I'd LOVE to hear them. We're always looking for suggestions.

How are you?
~Molly