Welcome party!

Hi there!
So, second post on the trip! Today was very exciting, since we got to meet, like, everyone on our group! I think we have a very cool group of interesting people! There was not a single soul in the room(s) that I didn't like, and I hope it will stay like that for a while :)

So, what did we do? Well, first, we went to one of Denver's theatres (see above image) where we got an introductionshow for everyone on our cast. Ex-participants of the program showed and sang some of the songs we are going to do as well. The UWP-president spoke to all of us and welcomed us all. We got introduced to the staff and some current participants told why they joined the program.

After the introductionprogram we got some kind of a meeting-reception. It was very cool, since we all got to meet eachother!

I really enjoyed those few hours, and I'm really forward to getting to know everyone better.
Right now, I'm going to prepare for tomorrow and then I'm going to sleep.

But first:
PICTURES! (I appologize: I can't flip some of the pictures. I'll find out how to do so soon!)

About the pics:
Grouppic: The complete cast, and flags of all participating countries in the background.
The girl: She's one of the ex-participants. She sang for us today and she has the most powerfull voice ever, even though she's blind.
The man: That's our president :)




Bubbayz!

Jetlag, Homefamily

So, first post on the trip! Yeah!

Let's start at the beginning. On the morning of 11th July I left in Brussels at 11 AM. 9 hours later, I arrived in Chicago (Local time: 1 PM). The next plane should have left 2,5 hours later, but it didn't. We got, like, 1,5 hours delay, so we left at 5 PM in Chicago to go to Denver. 2,5 later, we arrived in Denver at 6,5 PM local time.

So, that was kinda roundabout for: I met my host family after being awake for 24 hours, at around 8 PM Denver time.

Okay, that's that. The flight was very cool. We traded a few places with random people on the plane, so almost all UWP-participants could sit close to eachter: very cool, very funny!

That's that. First thing I did was when we arrived was met my host family: family Cearley. My host-papa and mama are really cool. They have a daugther who also traveled with Up With People before, and now they're son is in our cast. (He's on the picture below too)

So, this are the three participants who are staying at my host-family. (fltr: Me (Frederik Derks), Zach Murphy, Ben Cearley).

We drove to their home almost immediately and I fell asleep like a block. I woke up at 3 AM in the morning (it would be 11 AM in Holland where I'm from), so I kinda had to force myself to sleep again.

Well, I kinda have this culture shock thingie now: I kinda expected kingsize meals everywhere (since my dad told me), so I kinda checked in the airports' Mc Donalds, but the quarter pounters are exactly the same. The difference is in the options: darn, way too much options. Where we have about 5 kinds of energy-drinks, here, they have houndred kinds of them! I already got my favourite: Mountain Dew.

Hmm... so, that's about it. My photocamera battery is dead at the moment but I'll upload some of the pictures I made soon. (Maybe tonight, if it all works out)