St. Joseph, Enid, Brenham

So Chicago ended with a slow burn, that burn being in my throat. The day after the show I stayed home and pretty much did nothing for the next two days. My host family got my roommate and I tickets to Blue Man Group one night (they had an event to go to) and that was great. They did a lot of things for the sake of being awesome, or so it seemed. I approve.

St. Joseph, Missouri was the next stop on our tour. The architecture was amazing, but I managed to escape the city without taking a single picture. That's sacrilege, I know, but we were only there for 3 days. On our community impact day, we worked in local elementary schools in the morning working with a curriculum based on diversity and peace-building. Afterward, we got to do a mini-show for the school - actually, we got to do two mini-shows. The first school we were at, there were about 15 cast members and we did a show with just us. It was so much fun.

There was one highlight, or lowlight depending on how you look at it, but either way that first show will be memorable. When we do the real show, we have different costumes for different dances. When we do the mini-shows, we just use the costume we wear for the whole show. For me, this consists of a skirt, leotard, and two shirts. This was the first time I'd danced in my show costume for a specialty dance. Well when I did the first lift of our swing dance, my skirt flew up and an entire K-8 grade school saw my leotard. This wouldn't be a huge deal except our show manager started laughing when it happened, so the audience was a little shocked. Our vocal director gave me a pair of leggings to wear under my costume for the next show. So yeah, I flashed a K-8.

Next we went to Enid, Oklahoma. We were told upon arriving that we needed a state-issued ID to get home... we were living on a military base. It was pretty cool. There were six of us girls all hosted together in a host family with two young daughters. That's right, 9 girls and 1 boy in the house. Our show had a very low attendance, due primarily to the fact that our community impact day was the day AFTER the show so we really didn't get too much of a chance to promote. The show itself was good, however. The day after the show I was in a dance workshop all day (well for 6 hours of the day) learning our dances for the Mexican medley. Things are kicking into high gear for Mexico as we travel there in less than a week.

The day after our show, another family came over with their students - all girls. In total, there were 17 girls and just our host dad. We had soup and then made s'mores out in the driveway on a portable fireplace. We also played some ping pong and laughed a lot. The next day we (along with another group of Uppies) got a tour of the base from another host dad, who happened to be one of the highest ranked officers on the base. It was really cool seeing all the different types of planes. After that we went bowling! They have a bowling alley on base and it was so incredibly cheap I fear that if I lived there I would do nothing but bowl. We had a great time and even ran into another group of cast members in the bowling alley.

On Monday we left Enid for Brenham. That's right, I'm officially in Texas. There are 9 of us (4 boys, 5 girls) being hosted together with a couple. We've had great food so far, the most familiar to home with stir-fry and pasta with fresh vegetables. When we got here, it was cloudy and 81 degrees. It's cooled down a little bit and it rained a lot of the day today. We've got a tornado watch for tonight, but it's supposed to get back up to 90 by the end of this week. Time for me to break out the shorts. We skipped spring completely and jumped straight to summer.

Okay, that's enough of an update for now. If you want to know anything else, please let me know.

~Molly