Dronten, the Netherlands.  Home of a totally awesome host family, Up With People Land, and (of course) the Sprinkles of Awesomeness.  Chocolate sprinkles, for those of you in the states, are eaten for breakfast on buttered bread.  And lunch too, when we had it at the XL, our facility for most of the week. :XD Did I mention how much I love Dronten (and sprinkles?). 

    I did have a totally wicked host family though.  My room mate for the week was Elke, and we stayed with the Vermeulen family.  My host dad, Roel, owned a really famous apple juice company in the Netherlands, so I got to drink some really good apple juice. XD My host mom, Vera, was also really nice and I got to hang out with my host sister, Carmen, a lot that week, since she and several other high school students joined us uppies for the week to learn about immigration policies.  My little host brother, Olaf, was sweet too, even though we couldn’t really speak the same language.  And to top it all off, they had sprinkles on the table every day at breakfast.  Like I said, totally awesome host family, right? :XD

    Because the team picked an 80's theme that week, we all got “DJ” names.  Gina named me Lady T (Lady Trekie). :sweat: It was fun though, since we had a 80's song of the day all that week and an 80's themed Halloween party.  Oh, this was also my first week as the city runner, meaning that I run morning meetings and wrap up every day, carry around Laquesha (our info wall), and have everyone answer annoying questions every day.  Some examples are: “What mythical beast/race would you be? (Dragon) Where can the meaning of life be found? (In a truck load of feathers falling on two monkeys) What is your favourite form of chocolate?  (Milk) Do your best impression of a cartoon character. (In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!) If you could add a word to the dictionary, what would it be? (Fwa) Superman or Batman. (Batman, all the way) What was the name of your first crush?  What could the initials GKW stand for? (God Knows What) Sing the first song that came into your head this morning...”  And so forth.  Yeah, people get annoyed with my questions.  But they’re probably the most creative this cast has seen, lol.    They know they love them.  They just don’t know it yet...

    We arrived in Dronten to hear the Major speak.  But the bus was there so late that I don’t think many of us paid much attention, because we were all so tired.  I tried though. :sweat: We met up with our host families.  Obviously, mine was awesome.  But we were both really tired, so after dinner we just turned in for bed.

    Breakfast the next morning is when I first learned the beauty of sprinkles.  Though I hadn’t yet tested their full beauty, it was my first step into enlightenment.  Chocolate for breakfast is really just a brilliant idea to begin with. 

    We had three guests speakers that day, all from immigration.  Oh, I forgot to mention the fact that we started our “role play” for that week of UWP Land!  Fun times.  We were all given passports along with our schedule for the week, telling us what we were.  Some people were land owners, some people were workers, some people were citizens or migrant workers...  We also had illegal immigrants and refugees, along with asylum seekers.  They were all treated accordingly, with the citizens getting first place in line and so forth.  I was a business owning citizen...  But since they didn’t say what kind of business, I made my own.  It started out as just being a bi-monthly journal about politics.  But with the help of my employees, Lysan, Mallory, and my coffee getter/copy maker Nikki, it actually turned into a some what sleazy daily news letter that we printed out every day with all the happenings of UWP Land.  I and my team were committed to exposing the truth of the corrupt border patrol.  Not only did the Uppie Times cover head lines news, but we also reported on any news Major Ljuan passed, any marriages that took place (because we could get married in UWP Land, lol) and ran helped wanted/personal adds.  And we got to pester everyone else for interviews. :XD 

    Continuing on with the guest speakers, however, we learned some interesting view points of people from IOM, the Dutch Immigration policies, and the Anti Discrimination Office.  They were all interesting to listen to, especially since most of us had to prepare our own policies on immigration later that week.  After that, we had a Team work session led by Jeremiah, which was lots of fun, since we were all blind folded and had to make a perfect square. :sweat: We did though, so that was really cool. 

    Wednesday we split into groups, going to the mosque or a refugee camp.  I went to a Turkish mosque to learn about how immigration policies affected them.  Afterwards, we returned for lunch at the XL (Yay for sprinkles!) and totally weirded our dutch high school students by putting together the peanut butter and sprinkles. :twisted: They thought we were strange, but they would see...  We would convert them eventually... :twisted: 

    After lunch, I missed the immigration policy making because I went out for promotion.  T_T But it was fun, wandering around where our show would be and handing out flyers.  Especially when I handed one to the lady at the chocolate shop when I bought some chocolate... :XD Once we returned, we had some Belgium prep on the Cosmo Golem and how big next week would be. 

    We went home to have dinner and change into our spookiest outfits...  Which for me ended up being a gypsy who told fortunes... (for girls, You’ll be eaten by a zombie or bitten by a vampire by the end of the night.  For guys...  “You will buy me a drink.” :XD ) for my host sister, her friend, and Sophie, it ended up being totally rad 80's costumes.  It was a fun time, with Thriller dances and all sorts of random things/people. Lol...  The drinks weren’t as good as the last party... That we had in Prenzlou that I seem to have completely forgotten about in that post. :oops: :sweat: Fun night that one.  Good music and dancing.  But back to the other party, lol.  It was a good time all around. :XD

    Thursday we had to finish the immigration policies... but I was signed out to work on the religion workshop. :sweat: So Laurel and I worked on that while everyone else did their projects.  It was fun though, trying to decide what we would say next week and what we should leave out, lol.  During lunch we converted the unsuspecting high school students to our strange American ways of peanut butter with sprinkles.  Now they love it.  Maybe we crazy Americans aren’t so bad after all? :XD

    After lunch, we got to hear the immigration policies that everyone had been working on.  I think a lot of them were really good, even though I didn’t get to work on any of them, lol.  Then we had a news workshop with Jorn, Peppe, and Nikki about the Philippines and how we should all be more concerned with news.  Then we continued with a Belgium culture presentations by our beloved Belgians in the cast. :XD

    Show day!  Friday was an exciting and rather angsty day, all in one.  I have to say, it was probably one of my best performances, considering how upset I was that day.  Someone had gone through my things to get at my UWP Land passport, and that really upset me... especially since it was through my notebook with a lot of personal things in it.  But, they apologized eventually, so it’s all good now.  I was just really upset during the show...  But despite that, I think it was a really good show.  At least for me, it was one of my best performances.  And I got to sing Hanamizuki again, which was cool.  It was also our last dinner with the high schoolers. :( But it was fun, since we were still teasing them about the sprinkles and peanut butter. :XD

    Saturday was our regional learning day in Amsterdam!  I got to go through the Anne Frank house, which was just amazing.  I was sad that there was no real furniture or anything, but we got to see the type writer and the actual diary right up close...  It was really amazing standing in front of the diary that was on display.  After the tour through the house, I went out with Christine, Johan, and Louis Felipe to a nice little (real) coffee shop for a snack and hot chocolate. We had a fun time discussing random things (like Christine’s boyfriend and making her blush. :XD ) and talking about life in general.  Then we walked through more of the city (which is actually a very beautiful city if you ignore the “coffee shops” and sex that’s everywhere...  Christine was upset because she didn’t buy anything “dirty,” but hey... It’s not all that bad, lol. 

    Our host family day on Sunday was really cool too.  We got to visit Maurodam, which is the whole Netherlands in miniture.  It was really awesome seeing all the mini buildings that were all 20% of the actual size... some of which we had actually seen the day before!  I know I took pictures of a church that was the same from Amsterdam...   Actually, I took like, 225 pictures that day before my camera died.  I was a very sad panda when it did too, cause we went to a really pretty beach afterwards that would have been great for taking pictures. 

    This was the day of sweets too.  I had sprinkles for breakfast, chocolate cake for lunch, some french fries as a snack (my one non-sweet thing that day), then when we got back we all went to a pancake place with Chantal’s family.  And pancakes over there are much different from pancakes in the US...  They’re completely flat.  And I had one with brown sugar that I smeared all over the top of...  Then we got ice cream afterwards. :swear: It was fun though, cause we got to tease Carmen, my host sister, about her crush... :twisted: 

    I was sad to leave on the travel day, but leave I did.  I miss you guys in Dronten!  Hopefully, Leuven won’t take me quite as long to type up...  L8r.

That’s right.  Memory’s back and kicking with a new keyboard!  It’s a little bulky to carry around, but at least I can type again.  I’m sorry to say though, that it’s been an awfully long time since I could write...  So Zell and Prenzlau may seem a little rushed.  In fact, I don’t really remember much about Zell at the moment, so that might be very rushed. 

 We arrived in Zell, only to say good-bye to our wonderful yodelling bus driver (yes, he was a yodelling bus driver.  It was awesome.).  We weren’t too sad though, cause the major’s reception had pretzels and wine. We learned some really interesting things about the history of the city from the major and then went in search of our host families.  The host family code was different types of food...  That we had to find out by sticking our hand in a box!  Yeah, it was weird.  Especially since my code was dog food.  Our host dad, Joseph, tricked us though, by have some dog jerky as a cane. 

 My roommate for that week was Christine (vocal).  We had lots of fun trying to survive a tiring week together, lol.  I don’t really remember much about the show or the CI’s, but I’ll talk about the education session and hike we had. :stare:

 The education session for that week was a Hunger Banquet.  We started with a trek up a hill (on foot. :stare: ) to the ruins of a castle (while it was raining off and on).   There we learned a little bit about the history of the castle and what the different parts were for.  After that, we all gathered in the court yard of the castle and had a session on hunger and poverty in the world (in the rain!).  The ed team started off with a pop quiz and then spread a few 10 cent coins all around the ground.  Then, several people were either blind folded or hand cuffed to simulate those with disabilities in the world (to which Jessica asked if she had to be blind folded too. Silly Jessica, trixs are for kids... ).  That’s when the staff said “Go!” and we all had to get as many coins as we could.  I managed to get two on my own, then offered one to Tiffanie.  I ended up sharing the remaining coin with Saiyuri as payment to stand under her umbrella. :XD 

 Then, naturally, the staff said we could share the coins if we wanted to.  Oops.  I got another coin from Gigi and we all ended up with at least one coin.  So then we were given a “personal history” from Ellen, telling us what class we ended up in and how our life was.  I was a middle class woman from Tennessee who hadn’t finished high school.  But she started turning her life around and is now able to support her family.  Yay. 

 After a trek back down the hill (which we took an alternate route from the rest of the cast.  Kristina and I decided to follow Matt’s “trail” that he found though the woods...  We did get down a couple minutes before everyone else, so it was all good. ), we headed to a monastery to have a lecture given to us by one of the local monks.  Then we were invited to “dinner” for the Hunger Banquet!

 We were divided into three groups according to class.  The upper class got to sit at a table with candles and all that jazz.  We of the middle class got to sit in chairs while the lower class had to sit on the ground.  Jared started his power point on poverty then, since that’s one of the things he’s really passionate about.  I was actually really impressed with the amount of information he had researched about it.  If you’re reading this Jared, you’re totally awesome (just to let you know). :XD About half way through the lecture, the high class was brought out their meal, cooked by the staff. :XD It was like, a full three course meal too, lol.  The other classes didn’t get to eat until the lecture was over.  Then the middle class only got rice and meat, while the lower class only had rice and salt water (and no eating utensils!).  We were challenged not to eat anything else afterwards either, to be able to understand how people in poverty went to bed every night.  It was a really great session, all together.

 Next up, our hike through the Black Forest!  Exciting though the Black Forest might be, hiking was not all that fun.  A lot of it was up hill and Memory wasn’t the happiest panda around.  It was some great scenery though and there was an accordion player at the top, so it wasn’t all that bad.  Besides, we didn’t have to walk back down.  Though, Christine and Leo decided to anyway, since neither of them had actually walked up. :stare: I did get to tease Christine an awful lot about that night however, so I mind all that much, lol.  Leo was our CVC for Zell, btw.  He’s a really nice guy too. :XD Actually, when we were without a host family for our host family day (our host dad had to go to his sister’s wedding and stay the night), he and Sophie came to pick us up and took us to a glass factory.  We got to see Vanessa, Lysan, and their friends blow glass. :XD

 Oh!  We did get to tour a ceramics factory too, with the rest of the cast.  That was totally wicked.  Not only did we get to tour a famous coffee cup factory (and get pictures of Matt, Lesley, and Yuri painting their own coffee cups, lol...  Matt’s had probably seen better days...), but at the end of the tour, the company gave everyone in the cast cups with their names on it!  Yup, I’ve got a rooster cup with Amanda written on it. It was really cool, to see all the cups sitting there waiting for us. 

 Aside from visiting a glass factory on our free day, we also got some Malaysian food!  The super nice family up stairs said they’d take care of us while our host family was gone, so we got even more of a cultural experience.  Good food, that it was. :XD

 And...  I think that’s about all I have to say about Zell.  Next up, Prenzlau!

Hello all from the wonderful country of Switzerland.  I have the most amazing view from my window...  Even better than the one I had in Washington! (Which was still an amazing view, if my host family from there is reading this, but we’ve got a mountain and a lake here...  Besides, it’s Switzerland, lol...)  All I have to do is walk out the terrace for some break-taking views.

    We got there on the travel day, a little early.  So Raphael took us on a short tour of the city of Luzern.  It was really nice to see him and Benjamina again, after they’ve been gone so long.  We walked down a couple of very pretty bridges and found a Starbucks. :sweat: Once we got back, we were surprised to find that my roommates (Samantha and Vanessa) and I actually had an American host family.  We were hosted by David and Gretchen Cantor in a very nice little house right by the water.  The host family codes were all different kinds of chocolate, making it even better.   

    It was nice to be able to eat my own portions for once.  My stomach was still so full from Milano that I could barely eat any of the dinner in Luzern!  But it was really good. :sweat: 

    On Tuesday we had a really amazing experience!  Thanks to an alumni connection, we got a free trip to and up Mt. Pilatus!  Since I wrote the cast blog entry on that day, you can check the cast blog for most of it.  There was one really funny thing that happened that I omitted though.  When we were on the Toboggans, I was actually following the signs telling me when to break.  So when Adam and Grant came up behind me, they were both yelling at me to go faster. :XP: Well, Karma then came around to bite Adam...  When we were going up the hill again, carried by the track and a cord attached to our sled, Adam fell off.  Not when we were sledding down, but when we were being carried back up.  And then his sled fell off the cord, so he had to carry it all the way up the hill.  It’s karma, I tell ya.   Karma. 

    Our host family took us out to dinner at a really good vegetarian restaurant.  I had some kind of potato that was really really good.  And even more yummier was the Danmark Coupe desert that I had.  It was basically just ice cream with hot fudge sauce, but it’s Swiss hot fudge sauce.  And they gave it to me in a little container that I could pour on as much as I wanted to. Let’s just say Memory was in heaven.

    Wednesday we had a CI day, but I was signed out for admissions.  I worked on the cast blog all day!  I got those three new posts up and running for the blog (including my post for Mt. Pilatus) and then I finished up my own blog entry for Milano.  I was pretty much working up till the last few minutes...  Trying to find pictures and have them resized and all that jazz.  Also, trying to find the posts for several of the previous cities in other people’s blogs was hard...  Since half of our blogs are in a different language or they simply didn’t write enough on that city. :sweat: But I finally was able to pull what I needed out of Hanna’s and Matt’s blogs.

    For dinner our host family let us make Raclette, which is basically just cheese and potatos, but they’re really cool to make.  And really good, lol.  It’s a traditional Swiss dinner, so it’s all good.

    Thursday was another CI day, but I was signed out again. :( It’s okay though, cause I got to be in vocals!  I haven’t been able to do them for a while now.  But none of the seconds knew the part of the new song for the Netherlands (there were only two of us) and we couldn’t get the words right either. :sweat: So it was a really tough session...  Especially since we worked pretty much all day. :sweat:

    We had a longer day on Thursday because we had the Expression Session!  Yay!  It was lots of fun, since most of us participated.  I think the best acts were the interns imitating the staff, the guys singing Hana, and the staff making fun of us on a show day. :XD I also had a song...  But since I was still kind of sick and the original song I had planned was really hard on my voice.  So instead I sang two shorter songs accapella.  I sang 1,000 Words from FF X-2 (crappy game in my opinion, but good music) and Home, Sweet Home from FF V.  Yyyup.  Both were Final Fantasy songs.  And so was my original song for that matter... :sweat: I can’t help it if they just have good music.  The most amusing thing was the titles we got from the mc’s... they were all circus things, lol.  I was the magician, hence the title of this entry.

    The next day was show day!  Yay!  Yeah... :stare: Okay, it wasn’t that bad, lol.  But it was a fairly normal show day by this point, so there’s not much to say about it.  We did have an awesome audience though. They gave us a standing ovation for We’ll Be There.  And it was so wicked to see all of them up and dancing with is for the Swiss song. :XD We also had like, a ton of alumni in the audience.  So when we invited them to come up on stage, it was completely full!  I think there had to be at least fifty alumni in the audience...  We sold about 100 tickets to alumni and their families, so who knows, lol.  There were just a lot of them.  It was really great having them on stage with us too.

    Our host family day was really wicked, because we went up into the Alps.  I’m not quite sure which mountain we were on (it was the one with the maple leaf and a heart in it, but I can’t remember the name), but it was an amazing view.  You can actually look at all the pictures that I uploaded. :XD We didn’t actually make it up to the top, but we did have lunch/dinner at a very nice restaurant mid-way.  We also met a very friendly cat (which you can also see in the pictures) and walked through a Christmas tree grave yard (very bouncy, walking on all the branches, lol).  I think the rest of the day is much better described through the pictures though, so I’ll leave the rest of the mountain at that.  We did watch a rugby match when we got back though, which was pretty amusing. :XD

    Saying good-bye to our host families is always sad, but once again we are on the road!  Yay for our next stop in Germany!