My Denver family is amazing! Both of my parents there traveled in Up With People and have hosted during stageing for a while now, so they have a really good idea of what we were going throught in the first weeks. and the kids! o the most adorable kids in the ENTIRE world! i kid you not. Sam (7) is absolutly passionate about leggo. it is an insperational passion that i aspire to posess someday (possibly not about leggo thought). but to him it is becautiful and he wants to share. he would bring me a little moon buggie that he had made and would ask "do you wanna learn how to make this?" the he would take the buggie apart and step by step help me to put the buggie back together. Connor of course always played with leggo so i don't consider myself to be a total newbie at leggo, but little guy can build circles around me! Sophie(5) is a little ball of fizzing blue energy! as many five year olds are... but she can find joy in anything! unless she is tired - which is WAY understandable if you ask me. Delphine was such a fantastic first uwp sister! She is from Belgium and is quite tall and very pretty. We shared the basement of the house along with our laptops, shampoo and crazy art skills! (see awsome "me pages" for details}
Since Delphine had never been skiing and I, well, I was not a confidant skiier at all! confidince is still not how i would describe my skiing skills... our host family took us out to their lake front condo on Grand Lake, Colorado. where the ski hill is 45 min away and the Tim Hortons's coffee is brewing!obviously an awsome place. but yea! the skiing was amazing! we even convinced our host siblings that the bigger lift is fun too! and they had a wonderful timee and dragged us back up there acouple more times! haha creating a monster = bad. must remember. We also went up to beautiful Boulder and some more amazing adventures aswell. so that's my beautiful denver family!
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
woops
Slacky McSlackypants here! im so sorry i have not been posting even little snipits of information for you! i have tons written its just the acctually posting thats the hard part... and that my friends is so far my biggest challenge in life. so needless to say i have a new and official goal. to post weekly. unless i am without internet as i may verry well me quite soon! :D because im going to the phillipines!! YAY! hugs and kissis - non-cronilogical posts to come!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Gotta Get There
So a month ago, almost to the date, I flew into Denver to start my big adventure. Getting on the plane was pretty scary. I had never flown by myself before! At security I just followed what the person in front of me was doing. I took off my shoes and my jewlery, checked that my waterbottle was empty, raked my brain for any oversized liguids I might have shashed in my cary-on. So I'm up and my bag barely fits throught the scanner! From the through side of security I could see them pull my cary-on suit case out to check throught it. I think most people know how that feels that second of "Oh my god. What did I miss?!" The guy was really nice about it, I think he could tell I wasn't a frequent flyer. I, apperentally, had too much liquid makeup. Not too much so that I had to throw it away, just so much that it came up on the scanner. Frankie's Newbie Traveler Tip 1: Your carry-on liquids need to all be in a ziplock sandwich baggie! Who knew? I think I may have acctually, but at the time I was totally didn't remember. Oh, and sometimes bar soap shows up on the scanner as liquid wich is kinda cool and weird. AND I forgot to take my laptop out of my backpack! So all in all I was a bit of ditz at security. Thank you Spokane airport for letting me throught! :D
So anywho, I've stashed everything back in my bags and I am ready to go to my boarding dock, place, thingy... but I could not find it written anywhere on my boarding pass! I sit down at a Starbucks and sort through the rest of my papers but no, none of my papers have any idea which gate (that's what its called!) I should be at. After a moment of panic I figure "K, I still have lots of time before my plane leaves so I should be able to find it on a monitor somewhere." Luckily it was easy to find on the monitor so didn't start crying and have to ask some security gaurd where I was suppose to be with mascara all over my face. I get on the plane, find my seat, have awkward small talk with the really cool couple sitting beside me (they had been at a wedding), notice all the people sitting around me (including the cute guy sitting kitty-corner in front of me with the thick math text book, he had really nice hair), have a sprite, all the usual flight stuff.
When I land in Colorado it's about 5:10 so it's dark out and all you can see are the pretty city lights. I take the metro to the main part of the airport and head up the escelator. At the top there are about six people holding "Up With People" signs and YAY! These people will know what I need to do! I was so excited so naturally I was as awkward as a one legged flamingo. Shelsea, from California, helped me find my bag, she's totally cool and made me feel a less awkward, and I am so excited to see her when we get to her PR-ing city! Since it took me so long to find my pick suitcase I had to hang out in the airport 'till six, because thats when the shuttle came. At about quarter to a bunch more people showed up. Christin from Germany, and about eight people from Belgium, including my Denver roommate Delphine! I didn't know she was my roommate at the time but yea. So they all grabbed their luggage and rambled on in French as we got onto the bus. Madeline sat next to me on the bus ride to this strange center we were meeting at. Shelsea said that we would go there the first day and then never go there again!
Which is exactally what happened. So we go in and put all of our suitcases up against the wall and head into the room. Everyone cheers when we come in wich is kinda awkward but I knew that I would have cheered if it had been the other way around. I had a slice of luke-warm pizza and a cup of coke and sat down at an empty seat, I can't remember who I was next to, Kelly maybe. Then I tried to mingle around a little bit but it seemed like everyone was in deep conversations and there was no way I was going to interupt. Eventually I found Amy whom I had talked to via Facebook earlier and it was really cool to get to meet her in person and me and her and Meg played a card game that i wasn't very good at... I checked in, got an awsome name tag and continued to mingle. At one point we all stoped to sing Henry Happy Birthday, which was cool - fist birthday of the tour! He had a really cool backpack on, thats just something that I noticed. We all got squished to one side of the room while the host families met ont he other side. We were all given a host family word clue that we had to match up with a sign that the host families were holding. Delphine and I got "America the Beautiful" so holding a beautiful crayon drawn sign was our first host dad.
Derrick, our host dad, drove us home. It seemed like such a long drive and I was weirdly tired concidering I'd only had four hours of travel that day! We got to our house in a pretty suburb called Broomfield and met our host mom, Beth, who told us we would get to meet the kids in the morning and that they were so excited to meet us! I was so excited to meet them too! We got a mini tour of the house then we all said good night and headed for our beds. I was sleepy and fell asleep right away. I wanted to write in my journal but my eyes would not stay open long enough!
So that was my first day in Denver Colorado. It was a good one.
So anywho, I've stashed everything back in my bags and I am ready to go to my boarding dock, place, thingy... but I could not find it written anywhere on my boarding pass! I sit down at a Starbucks and sort through the rest of my papers but no, none of my papers have any idea which gate (that's what its called!) I should be at. After a moment of panic I figure "K, I still have lots of time before my plane leaves so I should be able to find it on a monitor somewhere." Luckily it was easy to find on the monitor so didn't start crying and have to ask some security gaurd where I was suppose to be with mascara all over my face. I get on the plane, find my seat, have awkward small talk with the really cool couple sitting beside me (they had been at a wedding), notice all the people sitting around me (including the cute guy sitting kitty-corner in front of me with the thick math text book, he had really nice hair), have a sprite, all the usual flight stuff.
When I land in Colorado it's about 5:10 so it's dark out and all you can see are the pretty city lights. I take the metro to the main part of the airport and head up the escelator. At the top there are about six people holding "Up With People" signs and YAY! These people will know what I need to do! I was so excited so naturally I was as awkward as a one legged flamingo. Shelsea, from California, helped me find my bag, she's totally cool and made me feel a less awkward, and I am so excited to see her when we get to her PR-ing city! Since it took me so long to find my pick suitcase I had to hang out in the airport 'till six, because thats when the shuttle came. At about quarter to a bunch more people showed up. Christin from Germany, and about eight people from Belgium, including my Denver roommate Delphine! I didn't know she was my roommate at the time but yea. So they all grabbed their luggage and rambled on in French as we got onto the bus. Madeline sat next to me on the bus ride to this strange center we were meeting at. Shelsea said that we would go there the first day and then never go there again!
Which is exactally what happened. So we go in and put all of our suitcases up against the wall and head into the room. Everyone cheers when we come in wich is kinda awkward but I knew that I would have cheered if it had been the other way around. I had a slice of luke-warm pizza and a cup of coke and sat down at an empty seat, I can't remember who I was next to, Kelly maybe. Then I tried to mingle around a little bit but it seemed like everyone was in deep conversations and there was no way I was going to interupt. Eventually I found Amy whom I had talked to via Facebook earlier and it was really cool to get to meet her in person and me and her and Meg played a card game that i wasn't very good at... I checked in, got an awsome name tag and continued to mingle. At one point we all stoped to sing Henry Happy Birthday, which was cool - fist birthday of the tour! He had a really cool backpack on, thats just something that I noticed. We all got squished to one side of the room while the host families met ont he other side. We were all given a host family word clue that we had to match up with a sign that the host families were holding. Delphine and I got "America the Beautiful" so holding a beautiful crayon drawn sign was our first host dad.
Derrick, our host dad, drove us home. It seemed like such a long drive and I was weirdly tired concidering I'd only had four hours of travel that day! We got to our house in a pretty suburb called Broomfield and met our host mom, Beth, who told us we would get to meet the kids in the morning and that they were so excited to meet us! I was so excited to meet them too! We got a mini tour of the house then we all said good night and headed for our beds. I was sleepy and fell asleep right away. I wanted to write in my journal but my eyes would not stay open long enough!
So that was my first day in Denver Colorado. It was a good one.
It's Only The Begining
It has finally happened! I am in Up With People; Cast A 2010! Yay! So my name is Francesca and I am from a small town in British Columbia, Canada. Last April I got accepted into the 2010A cast which pretty much fulfilled all of my dreams since I was nine. And yes that may be lame but how many people do you know that have the same goal for nine years? I'm totally excited to be here and totally excited to be sharing the experience with you! So if you want ask any questions please do because otherwise I won't know what you want to hear about.
xo <3 F.
xo <3 F.
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