Surprisingly, our month of staging has flown by. Cast B and I will be leaving for Breckenridge, Colorado tomorrow morning at 7:30. We will depart from Elitch Gardens Amusement park located in downtown Denver. I cannot believe that our tour starts tomorrow. For the first time, I am starting to experience what it is like to leave a host family. It is my last night in the Eastman's home. Colleen and Jug, my host parents, are incredible people. They have opened up their home to over 100 UWP students. Including Ryan and Javi, my host brothers, I am the 121st college age person to live with Colleen and her husband. This evening, Colleen took the boys and me to a Mark Schultz concert. Mark is a nationally recognized singer-songwriter who happens to be an Up With People alum. He is very popular and has hit the top 40 Christian music circuit. I was literally blown away when Colleen told me that Mark and I had something in common. Unbelievably, he and I were host brothers because he too had stayed with Colleen when traveling with Up With People.
I found Mark's concert to be very moving. It was relaxing to listen to music that I myself did not have to memorize and play. I found his message to be very expressive because it called upon elements of family and outreach. It caused me to reflect on experiences I have had with my family and how much I miss them. This whole Up With People touring experience has come on so quickly and moves so fast that it is hard to find time to reflect. I am often so overwhelmed by changes in excitement level, that I am sometimes mentally two or three events behind every one else. A single day feels like a week and a week seems to hold the experiences of a year, and yet at the same time, the first day of the tour could have been yesterday.
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