Keinschönerland

I’ve arrived! I landed yesterday morning in Frankfurt, Germany! It is absolutely the most beautiful place I have ever been! We went shopping in Frankfurt and it’s just a big city like LA or New York.  The buildings are all so old though, it kinda blows my mind.  Today we went to a castle that was in use in the year 173.  You don’t really see that in America =).  Las night we stayed in a hostile, it was really fun, kinda felt like a camp!  Anyway now I’m at my first homestay! They are sweet and speak great English! We had a cookout tonight and I got to feed their baby goat.  I can’t get over the flowers here, they are everywhere.  Love you all! Thanks for all the prayers, wait till you see these pictures!

OK so I wrote that my second night in Germany and it is now my 5^th!  Our first town was so much fun! There were 370 kids and 40 young americans =) we did 2 shows back to back with a 45 minute break in between! The kids are great I love the high school girls, I work with them a lot! The high school boys come up to me and tell me that I am sexy and that they “lobe me” haha.  Apparently here sexy just means very attractive and is totally normal to say... there was a newspaper article about the YA’s and a kid said that we were sexy and they printed it in the paper! Culture shock!  I am learning lots of Deutsch!  It’s hard! But it’s kinda fun...  My first homestay was really fun, I miss them already, the dad was like a German version of my dad... no lie.. I have so many fun stories already!

Here are some pictures of the cast! I took these for our opening number! Then there are 2 albums just of fun in Deutschland!!!

Cast

Photos 1

Photos 2

Pretty Girl

The new semester took off running and I'm still trying to catch up! I started out the semester with an ear infection and some sort of virus that left me in my bed with a fever and no voice.  After some good ole codeine knocked that out (quite literally) i got some other sickness that was all cough and NO play.  So after three weeks of sickness I'm finally feeling better.  We're now well into rehearsals for our next show (which is actually next Thursday!!)  It's called the Tarbell show.  A group of realtors here in town (Tarbell Realtors) sponser a big show for all their colleagues etc. (something like 5,000 people) every year.  The Young Americans host the show.  It's a four hour show and it's a tribute to Roger's and Hamerstein's musicals.  We're doing excerpts from Oklahoma and The Sound of Music in the first act and the second act is the full two hour show of South Pacific.  The cool thing about this show is that all the leads are played by actual broadway stars.  For instance Lora Bell Bundy (originated Elle Woods in Legally Blonde on Broadway) Bryan Stokes Mitchell, Hugh Panera, and Shirley Jones are among the stars.  Also our conductor is 5 time Emmy award winner Mark Watters (he composed music for lots of movies and won 2 Emmy's for 2 different times that he conducted the orchestra at the Olympics).  Also our pianist/musical director is Jim May and he has conducted for every major broadway musical almost and he just got done with Wicked in LA (he also wrote on my facebook wall and it's right under where it says that I'm friends with Mark Walburg... just to rub it in a little) 

Lindsay is now friends with Mark Walberg. 3:05pm - Comment

James May wrote at 12:09am Hi Lindsay! See you next weekend!!!

Wall-to-Wall - Write on James's Wall

Anyway... The show is gunna be really cool.  I got cast a dancer (farm girl) in Oklahoma... That's really fun.  I also got cast in a number called "I Enjoy Being a Girl" and all I do is walk around in a prom dress and show off my legs... haha that one is fun too.  

But now to the most important thing that I want to write about.  Rio.  Rio is a rehabilitation center/ Juvenile high school for kids who have committed drug related crimes, or have been involved with drugs in some way or another.  I work here every Wednesday.  I've only gone twice so far.  We go in a do workshops with the kids.  We teach them choral numbers and dance numbers.  Our new kid class is split into four different groups and we all work at four different sites, it's a program the Young Americans do called Overture.  I talked about it a little in my last post.  We work with the kids for 3 months and then at the end of the 3 months all four schools come together and do a show!  We've only been twice so far... but both have been an experience.  The kids were very stand off-ish the first week.  It's a very structuralized place.  They all wear the same uniforms, and are color coded into groups by their shirts.  The group of girls we have all wear yellow, but I'm not sure what it means yet... still trying to figure it out.  They have to walk in lines every where they go and they eat sleep and take classes and do EVERYTHING with their color groups, it's only when the Young Americans come every Wednesday that they get to interact with other colors.  A lot of the girls in our group have scars from cutting on their arms and scars from needle use.  It's such an intense place.  The first week there I started working with this girl name Deanna,  she's probably 17 or 18 and she's half mexican half white, she's a beautiful girl.  She was very reserved and didn't want to sing or dance or do much the first week there and that was really discouraging for me.  I felt like no matter what I said to her I couldn't get through to her.  She was very heavy on my mind the whole week and I was very nervous about going back.  I guess fear of failure and rejection had me worried.  But we went back this week and she walked in and I walked over to her and said hi, and a conversation got started and suddenly we were just talking about everything.  About her life and what she wanted to do after she got out and things were just spilling out of her mouth like she was dying to just talk to someone.  She was a different person this week... And I don't know if I had anything to do with that at all, but regardless, it was very encouraging.  She didn't leave my side the whole workshop and promised me she would be good so that she could come back next week.  Rio is the highlight of my week.  

I'm quite overwhelmed with school! Ballet and other dance classes are a lot harder and I have a paper due every Friday.  We don't have a day off this semester and when you add rehearsals on the weekends it's been getting pretty crazy around here.  It's been warm and sunny and I'm happy with life these days. =) Pray for me as I'm trying to touch some lives these next few months and as I'm preparing to audition for tour! I'll keep you posted as much as I can! 

Out of My Mind

WARNING: The following  blog may be incredibly way to long as it is filled with almost two months worth of information. It may also cause increased amounts of boredom... proceed with caution.

Hello friends and family! I return to you from an airplane somewhere over the Midwest , California bound! I have much to fill you in on so I guess I’ll just jump right in! After the first rain in Corona the area got very dry.  When this happens in So Cal, things tend to catch on fire.  Sure enough in the middle of November a city further south on the coast, Corona del Mar, (not to be confused with Corona) caught fire near the interstate and started to spread.  It wasn’t long before we heard word that the fires were moving closer and closer to us.  Of course a majority of us living in the apartments had never experienced some thing like a fire before and  found ourselves a little worried for our lives! At about midnight the fires had moved even closer and were about 8-10 miles from Corona and you could see a very distinct orange glow on the horizon.  Our directors called us and told us all to pack bags with some clothes and anything we thought was valuable (ie: “If your house caught on fire and you could bring three things what would they be?” but in real life!)  We went to bed finally but at about 2 AM my friend Jakeem comes running in our door saying that we need to evacuate.  We all had received text messages on our phones from fellow new kids saying that they had been forwarded a text from our director Milton C. Anderson and said to evacuate.  We all found this odd because Milt is well into his eighties and I don’t think he can even work the remote control to the CD player much less a cell phone.  Oh did I mention that it was 2 AM, I’m pretty sure he goes to bed at 8.  Anyway most of the kids believed it regardless and when we heard that the fire was 4 miles away we decided it was time to leave so we packed up the car and drove to my friends aunt’s house in El Segundo.  We drove through the fires on the interstate, and when I say drove through I mean the fire was less than 100 yards from me! It was crazy! But no sooner had I stepped foot into her house did my phone ring.  It was my director Nick calling to tell me that the winds had changed and Corona was now where they were sending all the evacuees.  Needless to say we drove out of the safe zone, but we had a fun night and a free hot meal and big squishy beds to sleep in!

After the fire incident life was pretty much nothing but busy! Turns out the text from Milt was a joke that one of the boys decided to play and he had to stand up and apologize to everyone at rehearsal the next day.  We did a lot of production work like building sets and painting things and sewing costumes, I’m very handy with a drill now and I can sew a hem pretty straight.  We spent all our spare time at the warehouse and I spent a lot of that time finishing the pictures I had to take for the show.  The drama of casting went on and everyone was permanently on their toes because people were getting cut left and right.  We finally got our show together almost completely in time for exams.  Exams were pretty easy breezy.  I’ll get my grades back pretty soon but I think I did good for the most part. I know that I made an A on my human body exams which was a 5 question essay test.  Exams were over about two weeks before our show and we spent the whole next week rehearsing and costuming our show.  The week before our show was Thanksgiving week and we had some time off.  All the old kids were starting to come into town from their tours so there was plenty of catching up to do.  Thanksgiving came quickly and I made the turkey cookies we used to make every year at home for my friends and we went to El Segundo to my friend Stephen’s house for Thanksgiving dinner! (Just a clarification, El Segundo is right outside of LA and is where LAX is actually located, it’s also where this famous high school is that they film all these movies at, including Superbad and 90210... in case you were wondering)  Thanksgiving was different without my fam but still fun! We ate outside around a big table that had a fire pit in the middle of it! About 12 of us went over there and we sang and danced for his family =) My mom and grandma arrived in Corona the next day for my show and came up to the Warehouse where we were rehearsing.  They got to meet my directors and my friends and my director, Ross, commented that me and my mom looked so much alike and it was “So cute!” My mom got a kick out of that.   My New Kid show was the Sunday night after Thanksgiving and I am speechless to what I can even say to describe it! It was 2 acts with about 12 numbers in each act. It was a blast! I got to dance in almost every number and I also got to sing two solos! It was very emotional but also one of the funnest shows I’ve ever done.  It was sad because our four directors would no longer be directing us after the show and at least 3 of them are done with the group after the Christmas show.  Nick and I have become good friends and he told me a few days before the show that he was leaving after Christmas and that when he directed us in choral in our show it would probably be his last time directing... Of course he cried through the whole number so we all did too haha.  Nick is gunna be going into TV production and he’s already gotten o work on shows like Project Runway and Paris Hilton’s BFF.  Ross is going on the UK tour because that’s where he’s from. He is leaving with them and directing the tour and then not coming back.  I’ve gotten to be close with him too so it’s gunna be weird not having them around! Melody is done the group after Christmas show but she’ll be living in Long Beach so she won’t be far.  Tara I think will always be there working in the office and doing directing stuff.  I’d say she is  “lifer” as they say.  But lets talk about Christmas show! I said goodbye to my mom and grandma on Tuesday and we immediately started working on our Christmas show, “The Magic of Christmas.” This is a crazy show that we put together in 2 weeks and then perform it! All the old kids and new kids that stay are in it.  I was asked to come in and learn the ballet piece and originally our director told me that she couldn’t cast me in it cause I was too tall and there was no one else for her to put as my opposite.  I was kinda upset about it but the next day we came in to learn Cookies, which is a Rockette-like piece complete with a kick line and all that jazz.  I got cast front and center!? I was quite surprised and not so upset about the ballet thing anymore.  But much to my surprise again Robyn re-cast ballet and put me in it.  She still calls me Erin (which is weird cause she doesn’t even know my sister) but that’s ok she’ll learn my name one of these days =) During rehearsals my birthday came around! I was kinda scared of my birthday cause I’d never spent it without my fam.  But my roommates brought me sweet rolls in bed and took me out for dinner! There were 25 of my friends at my birthday party! It was so much fun, we got dressed up and went to the cheesecake factory, my birthday ended up being less scary than I thought it would be! Then came showtime! Christmas show was a blast as well and kinda of our last time to hang out with all the people who were leaving the group or leaving for tour.  And I don’t think I’ll ever sing the right tune to Silent Night now that I have Milt’s version pounded in my head!  We performed 4 shows and every night we met people who had come to see our show.  I don’t know how many of you have ever watched the show “Moment of Truth” but the host’s name is Marc Walburg, and that’s Marc Walburg the producer not Marc Walburg the actor, but never the less! Marc was at our show! He’s a producer for NBC and he was a Young American in 1981 and me and him are friends now.  We talked and he recognized me from Cookies (Marc Walburg recognized ME ya’ll) He told me he’d find me on facebook.  Also some Polish movie star came... random, but still cool.  The day after show was load out and we said tearful goodbyes to Nick as he leaves to go do things with his life.  I went home and packed and then me and my friends decided we would go bowling! We had a fun time and got home late, my flight was the next morning! So I jumped in the shower and then thought I’d just lay down for a few hours before my early AM flight.  I set my alarm and laid down to sleep.  My dad woke me up with a phone call at 7 AM asking if I had made it through security ok (he didn’t want to hurt my pride so he waited until 7 to call) WELL I was supposed to leave my house at 6 30 and my roommate had the same flight time as me and left me sleeping in  bed without waking me ( ok ok I know not her fault but still! I wake her up for everything!!) So I slept through my flight home! I got to my gate very upset and not really sure when I’m gunna be getting home at this point, I step out of the car and there standing with her mom, is my best friend Erin.  I tell her my story and she comforts me for a minute and then I get my new flight time which is at noon so this means I have to spend my morning in the airport! I say goodbye to Erin and go to get my boarding pass.  They send me to gate 203, this just so happens to be the gate Erin is leaving out of! Along the way I also ran into my friend Matt who bought me an orange juice and joined Erin and me at gate 203.  After Erin left Matt kept me company till his flight left and I wasn’t alone 2 minutes before 3 more of my friends come running towards me saying that Matt had sent them my way cause they heard I was gunna be having a lonely day! So we all got breakfast and had a little party in the airport.  Finally my flight left and I made it home to Nashville a few hours later than I should have =) but my parents got some good shopping in so it ended up being good all around!  Reminding my self to not sleep through anymore flights!! I had a wonderful Christmas in North Carolina and also celebrated my birthday again at home! Now I’m headed back and I hope it will be much much warmer there! I’ll let you know.  I’m headed back to start a program called Overture which is where we start outreach work with kids in 4 different correctional facilities in the area.  I’m really nervous but excited to work with the kids! Keep me in your prayers as I enter this semester! I’m not really sure when I’ll be back. I’m hoping to be on a tour this summer but I will keep you updated on all that as I get more info about it. It was good to be back but here I am again, headed back to California, westbound and always on my toes =)

It Won't Be Long Yeah

Just so that we are no longer covered in rain, and because I know that rain get's old after a while... I would just like to say Merry Christmas and let everyone know that when I have more than 5 minutes at a computer with internet I will fill you all in on everything that has been going on in my life... and just remember that my parents only fill you in on what they're doing every 2 years in a one page christmas letter..  you will all be filled in soon =) Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Covered in Rain

It rained tonight!!! and not like normal California, 2 or 3 drops, slight mist rain... like poured rain!!! we all ran out of the warehouse in the middle of rehearsal and and played and jumped and screamed sang in the rain! I miss the rain a lot oddly enough so it was a nice taste of Tennessee weather =) It's funny because since the weather is pretty much always the same, every time there is even a little bit of a sprinkle or even if there are just clouds, people walk outside and scream "Weather!! yesss!!" 

So a lot has been going on since I have posted.  We have been busy casting our show! It's a very different process than I've ever experienced before.  Here everyone learns the number and then we all perform it and they grab people out of groups and cast you in numbers as you're standing in front of them.  I've gotten some cool parts so far! We're not done casting yet but we should be done by tomorrow! But I will go ahead and tell you some of the parts I got chosen for! I'm in a number called Jump Jive and it's a really fun swing number, dancing of course.  I also got cast in a medley that features Dream girls and one of my friends is the soloists and I am one of the back up dancers.  The cool thing is that I got to choreograph some of our dance for Dream girls!! I'm also in Singing in the Rain, I get to sing in this number and I also has a dance solo at the beginning of it.  My favorite part so far that I got is we have a Beatles medley that we do where there are 6 solos and then a choral version of Let it Be and I get to sing the "If I Fell" solo by the Beatles! I am so excited about it!!! I'm in the choir in a couple of songs....  Today I got cast in 42nd Street which is a tap number!? Thankfully I'm in the 3rd row! But I try my best! I am also a dancer in Joy to the World,  it's a cool version of Joy to the World and we have these really cool white dresses! We have not cast the rest yet but like I said it will all be cast tomorrow! I'm so exciting and as I'm sitting here typing this I'm realizing how much I'm doing! and I am so excited! I wish you ALL could come see it! My roommates and friends have some really cool parts too! Like Shiori got to choreograph a whole hip hop number with this other guy named Gary and it is so cool! and it's all their choreography!!! we're so busy right now I feel like I can't even take a minute to breathe, but it's so much fun and I can't wait till show! LOVE YOU ALL!

As Long As We're Here

Life back in California is wonderful! Last Saturday we met Milton C. Anderson, founder and president of the Young Americans.  He is about 5' 1" ish, he's this tiny little old man in his eighties, he has a little white mustache and a full head of white hair, and he also has 2 toy poodles that he and his wife treat like people! He's an absolute genius and he taught our choral class. IT was incredible! He'll back on saturday again so thats exciting.  I took Alisha to the airport yesterday morning.... she decided since I went home she wanted to go too.  Now I'm bored without my best friend! So here I sit with my other roommate who has now decided to learn how to play the guitar.... everyday, twenty four hours a day, on breaks, while she eats, before she goes to sleep, in the living room... and she sings very loudly along... even when there is other music playing.. and then she plays even louder.  Did I ever mention she was a dancer? ;) gotta love roommates! 

The coolest thing about this week though was that last night a friend of mine, Kayla, and I went to Hollywood and took a dance class from Doug Caldwell, a famous choreographer, teacher, and performer, who has been in many movies and danced with so many famous people it's not even funny.  So I got to take a class from him! Not only was the class amazing but the studio was on the fourth story of a Hollywood flat and 3 of the walls were brick and the front one was all mirrors and then there was this big window at the back that frames the LA skyline..... WOW.  There were some incredible dancers in the class and it was a kind of jazz/contemporary lyrical style.  I'm in love... and I'm going back next week =) I can't wait!!!

I love all of you! and I can't believe I missed homecoming! and to my family in NC! I miss you and love you and can't wait till Christmas! (it's almost here!)

Thriller

I'm back in California but my trip to Tennessee was wonderful! Unfortunately I did not get to see all the people that I wanted to but I saw as many as I could! It was fun to see some leaves on the ground and feel a bit of cool air... I did not miss the humidity!  I almost screamed sweet tea when our waiter asked us our drink orders and enjoyed some LO PO and some Sakura... but best of all my mom made pot roast and green beans and rice and gravy one night and quiche another night! I was in heaven! I got to see so many friends and all of my family, and my little niece is walking which is ridiculous.... I MISS YOU ALL!!! Although I miss home, coming back I have realized how at place I feel here.  I'm really loving this life... messy, snoring, smack your food roommates and all =)  Tomorrow the founder and president of the organization, Milton C. Anderson is going to be teaching our classes.  I'm so nervous/excited! I can't wait to meet him!  

Another thing that is exciting is that I am learning how to play the guitar!! I have a thing on my MacBook where you type in the chord and i shows you

 what it looks like, then I just look up the tabs and viola! I can now play a couple songs and sing them at the same time... it's super fun! ALSO, my friend Kayla and I are gunna start doing senior portraits and the high school across from our apartments! I'm so excited! I'm already working on a facebook site and on some fliers! Hopefully I can make some money and get a portfolio really started! 

So the other day when  I was at the store, I bought a pumpkin.  Well this pumpkin has floated around the house, many people have named him and adopted him and tried to take him from me or make him into a pie, but tonight, Borris (the name we decided on) got a new face!! I carved my first pumpkin by myself without my mom telling me what to do.... I didn't really know if i was doing it right but it seemed ok when we were done! It was Shiori's first time carving a pumpkin and she thought the gooey inside was hilarious.

 When we were done, my roommates graciously honored my family's tradition of turning out all the lights and singing This Little Light of Mine, although it took significantly less time to turn out all the lights than back home =)  So now here I sit... Borris is glowing along right beside me and I'm eating some yummy baked pumpkin seeds.  Our house feels very warm and homey and smells like pumpkins... my heart is happy =)