Albuquerque, city of warmth and heat!

Hey!

I realize I have a lot of work to catch up with! I tried to do it earlier, but I had some busy times last weeks and this last week, I didn´t have any internet at all!

So, let´s start where I left off:

We just left Sahuarita (Arizona) behind us and drove into New Mexico. You know, there is this song by Weird Al called “Albuquerque”, and guess where in New Mexico we went…? ALBUQUERQUE!
It’s a magical far away place, where the sun is always shining, the air smells like warm root-beer, and the towels are oh so fluffy! (8)

Anyway, we went to New Mexico and I was hosted with two girls this time: Marieke (Netherlands) and Britany (USA)! We met our host family at the local “Event Palace”, (more details later in this message). Our host mom picked us up. Linda was her name.
Well, we drove to their house and it was HUGE! It was so frigging awesome! They got their private cinema and pool table and what not! She also has two cute little girls: Seemay and Seewai (Chinese names, for those who didn’t notice)
So, this week I was hosted in a huge house with girls. Sweetness!
Oh, this was such a great host family! This might even have been the most precious families I’ve had on the tour. We got such a strong bond at the end of the week!

Well, let’s keep this kind of chronological!

So, CI this week was at the “Event Palace”, which was kind of our headquarters this week. I was assigned Crew Leader for the activities at the Event Palace, and in return for letting this huge group of people stay at their place, we did some things in return for the owner: Fofo! (Such a cool business woman)
We helped clean her entire shed, repainted it and reorganized it. This does not sound like much, but it was a HUGE amount of work, and the work we achieved was A-ranked! I was so proud of my crew =)

Oeh, this is cool! Our show here was performed at the local ZOO! I was one of the lucky ones that got to explore the zoo all morning and I had a lot of fun looking at (most) of the animals. (I didn’t get to see all of them)
Well, there was this big water-pool between the stage and the audience! You know, with those big zoo-carpers in there and swimming! There were even ducks in the audience xD
I had a lot of fun in this performance!

Now, after this relaxing morning, I had to work twice as hard in the night, since striking the stage was a pain in the *** with water all around it. I ended up interviewing people and striking all night! I didn’t get to go to the Event Palace until 1 or 2 AM. Indeed, we didn’t go to our host-families this night because at 3 AM we all were to gather together again!
I didn’t sleep at all that night…

At 3 AM everyone got woken up and we got an EARLY breakfast and started to on the bus, because we were going to the annual BALLOON FESTIVAL!

Man, were we excited! This is the biggest Hot Air Balloon Festival in the world! People from all over the world gather and let all their balloons go at once! Almost a 1000 this year! Even some fancy shaped once, like a giant Nemo (Finding Nemo), a big pull of beer, a parrot, a “Dart Vader” and many more “regular” ones like triangles or other symmetrical forms.

So, everyone got assigned to a crew to help with the balloons to get them ready to go airborne! Most of the people were in teams, but I happened to be alone. I was quite scared to work that early in the dark with complete strangers to do something I know nothing about, but in the end it turned out to be a lucky turn of events!

When we got our balloon all up and full of hot air, me and another volunteer both got invited to ride the air balloon! It was so amazing! Flying up into the air and seeing balloons everywhere around you. It just felt so good! We did some cool stunts too! When we crossed a river, we got very close to the water, almost touching it, and we hit some trees (on purpose ;) ), which was really cool!

My “Pilot” was sir Jim, who has been flying for decades! He knows how to play the winds at different altitudes, and it was a pleasure to be one of his guests on the ride!

There was something else which was so cool to watch. The first few “test”-balloons went up in the air when it was still dark. Before they left the ground, they let the flames go into the balloons, which made them light up really bright. So, imagine about 10 to 15 balloons all in a row, making this huge lightshow! It looked really cool. They even did it in the air, but that might have been by accident. It still looked cool though!

Well, after a few hours seeing balloons all around me, I headed back to the buss. I was so excited to be able to tell my hostmom what we did that day.

Hehe, so after being awake for 32 hours where I walked through a zoo, did a show and drove a hot-air balloon I just crashed in my bed when I got home!

Linda woke me up for dinner a few hours later. After that we watched the first “Death Note” movie and played on the wii for a few hours. And since we were already in that rhythm, we stayed up until 3 AM!

The day after was our free day. Lots of fun =)

Something else noteworthy is the following: We had to carry around our trash for the entire week. Every little piece of litter we left behind, had to go in our personal trashbag! I actually did pretty good, having almost no trash. But remember this: everything you do not eat from your plate go's in there, everything you do not use when you get it, goes in there.


Oh well, this was one of my most precious weeks. I love Albuquerque and I have a lot of good memories here.

I will definitely come back some day,

Bubbayz,

Frederik