First Weekend in Denver

Hi there :-)!!!!!!

I'm doing well here in the USA!!! Have finally received my luggage, which was almost 3 days delayed!

My hostfamily is Bob & Judy Rothe from Boulder (near Denver)! They have a lovely dog and a nice house. Am staying in this family together with Brittany from USA.

The first weekend was just a family-weekend. Bob and Judy showed us around a lot, which was very kind of them. So we went to a Railway Museum, where Bob usually works as a volunteer. You must know, he's a big railway-fan.

On the way to that museum we even saw many cows, which was very exciting. Some of you will think now: " Has she gone to the USA for seeing cows?? Aren't there not enough cows in Switzerland?" ;-))) Well, it was quite exciting because there were some "cowboys" riding beside of them on their horse as well. What's more, they even had to cross a railway-track, which was not easy as many trains were passing there...

Besides, on Sunday we joint Bob and Judy to church. It's always intersting to see what is it like in in churches in other countries. Afterwards they took us out for a lovely lunch in a restaurant (chicken on a tasty orange-sauce, hmmm :-)!!)

On Moday was our first day with Up with People in Denver. We played many games to brake the ice between the participants (96 participants form 22 countries plus the staff). We also had some theory about how a group works and how people communicate with each other etc... And the staff showed us some different parts of the Up with People Show.

All this program takes place in a big building in Denver. Every day we have to take the bus from Boulder to Denver, which takes about 50 minutes (time for learning the song lyrics, sleeping ;-) etc..). Every day we have a program from 8.30 to 17.30. Then we mostly go home and have dinner with our hostfamily and spend the evening with them.

Today's program was: We had to take part into different moduls (speaking, singing & show-costumes). Futhermore, several ex-participants of Up with People came to Denver for talking to us and answering questions we had.

Tomorrow we are going to have the modul "dancing". And later in the afternoon some information about different cultures and some physical excersices (we sweat a lot here!!!).

And in the evening we are going to have our culture jam, when also the hostfamilies arecoming and watching us. Am going to sing a Swiss song together with Gwen from Switzerland! Am already getting nervous when i think about that :-/! Hope I will manage that on stage in front of all those people!!

Tomorrow is also the day when Bob (our hostfather) is coming to Up with People announcing his riverraft-trips! He always takes people out riverrafting in the Rocky Mountains!

Well, have finally got over my jet-leg and can enjoy life here! :-)

Bye for now!!

Birgit ;-)