Mexico

Let me just tell you that i have more than you could ever imagine to talk about. First of all, i am in Culiacan right now and it's so interesting and fun! There's just never enough time though to write anything. There's honestly not even enough time to reflect much on everything we take in each day. I always have a million thoughts in my head at once. There is so much that we learn each and every day that i have a hard time even sitting down to take a rest. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Mexico though. I have been having the best time ever here. At first i acutally was just ready to leave and go back to the US, because i just was getting so tired of how different it is and how they live here. But really, i was wrong. I love it. First because i get to live with families here, who have all been wonderful and i will never forget, second because it's so different that i have learned so much from it. I really have liked getting to be around the mexican culture for so long i feel like. But it's acutally been shortened for me. I will not be going to our last city Hermosillo or Sahuarita, Arizona. I am going on advance work to Albuquerque, New Mexico!!!
To explain what advance work is a little bit, it's where students who get chosen by filling out an application get to go ahead of the cast and help with the set up of one of the cities in the furture of the tour.
I am so excited about this because well first of all i was very surprised i get to go because there are so many people that sign up and everyone of them are amazing and i know could do it. Also i am greatful that i get to go help the field managers, which mine are Hans and Anna, and get to be a part of all that excitement in setting up the city for the cast. The advance team takes part in finding the host families, the facilities we will be meeting at during the week, the food for lunches for the cast, our community impact activities, everything basically. I know this will be very hard and i will be very busy the whole three weeks i will be there. Also Neele from Germany will be accompaying me :) I personally want to do this because i think i will get so much out of it, something i really don't think i would have ever learned back home or going to college, or at least not to this extent. I mean time management skills, organization, public speaking (and that's one of my biggest fears), just learning to promote the show, there are so many different aspects of advance work that i think will help me out so much in my life when i go back home, for my career, and for my future. So i am very nervous and pumped all at once for this amazing experience!
So i really havent been able to blog at all during Mexico due to interent access problems, but i just wanted to wrap up all the community impacts activities i have been doing. In La Paz i went to a nursing home and got to interact with the people that live there and i work with an organization called Moblized Mankind. Look them up because what they are doing for children and the people here is wonderful! In Cabo San Lucas i went to interact with the students at a school for the disabled. In Tepic i didnt get to do a CI because i was learning about what i need to know for advance work. This week, in Culiacan, today and yesterday, i got to go to a local fire department. Every single one of these CI's have been completely life changing and have open my eyes to so much. But i shortly wanted to reflect on the fire deparment really fast, because it is fresh in my mind. So last week we got to pick which CI we wanted to do(we are doing 9 different ones this week) and i saw fire department and signed up right away. I didnt know what we would be doing or anything, but i just thought it would be a great experience, which it was incredible. At first there were five of us yesterday and we got to the fire deparement and they wanted us to paint, which painting has been a pretty big project we have done during our community impacts, so sometimes everyone is dissapointed. But i honestly at first wasnt that excited. But i started thinking about it and i was like WOW this is where these firemen live and maybe this is something they really wanted us to do. Maybe it would have saved them time for saving a life. I mean because fires are so unpredictable and if they were in the middle of a paint job and a call was made, i mean they would have to stop and i dont know maybe its just somethign they have no time to do. And the walls were somewhat dirty, so i mean i think it might of made living there more comfortable for them and enjoyable. But most important of all to me, is that i felt like wow i feel so special to be doing this right now for them, to be giving them something back for what they do for the community here. If we all remember, tomorrow is a very important day in the united states. It' s the anniversary of september 11th. Can we all think back about what terrible thing happened that day and realize how many people died during that and also how many fire fighters died for other peoples lives? It really is amazing and i respect them so much. And this week while i was at the fire department i realized how important their jobs really are. Also a lot of them take there time to even just volunteer. So i just want to say that it was so incredible to get to serve them, especially on a week like this when tomorrow is such a memorable day. Also i want to thank every single one of those bomberos today :) They were so fun to hangout with even though none of them speak english, we still have a unforgettable time together. They showed their apprecitation by giving us a t-shirt from thier fire department and they took tina, Ilka and I back to meet the cast in one of the fire trucks. It was just wonderful and i will never forget the Bomberos of Culiacan!
Well i really need to go to sleep because we have a show tomorrow(thursday) and also friday as well. Which are also my last shows in Mexico and thats sad because i LOVE shows here. I'll talk more about those later! Thanks for reading this and i will hopefully be able to write more when i get to Albuquerque! I just still have so much to say, but not enough time.
Love
Kelly
oh and just remember, try to be positive in every situation, because who knows, you can learn from everything.