Week #28 - Sheridan, Wyoming

            First week on the road and I feel like I am myself again! Its like I am back in my environment. I mean returning to UWP in general felt that way, but staging was a bit rough and I didn’t always feel like the Misa I know and love, but now I am making a comeback and I am ready to rock!

            So this week, as I mentioned before we took off on the road. Meaning we left Denver Colorado and header to Sheridan Wyoming to begin our 7 weeklong tour of the northwest region of the United States. We had a decent length travel day on Monday, about 7 hours and arrived in Sheridan just in time to meet our wonderful host families. It was a start to an incredible week to speak lightly. Saying goodbye wasn’t easy and a few tears were definitely shed leaving my new family in Denver as well as a lot of my Cast A cast mates. But Sheridan had a lot of fun things awaiting so I was ready to go.

            For the beginning of the week and the end of the week I was hosted in Brekken’s house (who was my roommate in staging) with her and few other good friends from the cast and it was a blast. From the second we got our allocation cards to our last moments on host family day we laughed the entire time and if we were not laughing we were still thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Brekken has a younger sister Baylee and 3 younger brothers: Blake, Blayne and Bridger who are all so much fun and who we became very close with. Her mom Susan Baker– the head of the house – is sweet as can be and has been such a wonderful host mom as well as an incredible sponsor for UWP this week. In the host family we would enjoy games of hide and seek in their gorgeous house, we watched movies and had hot tub time as well. We also had hilarious meals together where laughter was the key ingredient. On host family day we ventured up to their cabin in the mountains and holy catfish! It was gorgeous and the weather was beautiful. We enjoyed a number of activities throughout the day such as riding four wheelers in the mountains, creating a family music video in various locations, having a picnic on the rocks while watching the sun set, room mate photo shoot in the mountain river, s’mores around the fire and ending with nighttime football boys vs. girls. Then it was time to head home to fulfill duties to get ready for leaving the following morning. I had a great week with my roommates and host family and we are trying to plan a time for them to come visit again in the coming weeks of the US tour.

            When I was not with them (which was the middle of the week), my real family came to visit. The Grenier clan that road tripped to Wyoming consisted of Paul, Paula and Perla (immediate family of course) and then my relatives: Grandpa Orville, Aunt Cheryl, Annika, Kathy and her two kids Clayton and Sophia. We rented a cabin for 3 nights at the base of the Big Horn Mountains and enjoyed the rush of the creek next to us as well as the quick tube ride down the refreshing, clear water. I enjoyed introducing my family to all of my UWP friends and they loved the show of course. My parents also got the opportunity to share their gifts of chiropractic with my cast and they adjusted just about all 100 people. It also gave them a chance to be apart of a my UWP experience a little more internally and get to know my friends better and I think they enjoyed that quite a bit. And man oh man did we have a great show that night! Full of energy and the power was turned on! Saying goodbye of course was not easy of course, but it does seem to get easier each time, which I am not sure if that scares me or makes me happy. I am growing up I guess and I am not sure if I like that or not. J But with all that said it was so nice to see my family and it makes me realize just how much I love them.

            Now in UWP this week, we had a busy week. We had a ton of CI days and I was able to help paint a house for Habitat for Humanity, which was a lot of fun because I was able to get to know my cast mates a lot better and being giving to the community at the same time. We played a game with words and songs almost the whole day and it just showed me even more that music is a universal language that includes every single culture and country. I had study abroad on Wednesday and I got a lot of work done. We also had some internal time as a cast to prepare for culture fair and our anti-bullying workshops. This week we had two show days and they were both packed full. The show went great and the cast is just getting so much closer and improving in so many ways. As we transition from staging to being on the road so many things change and we have to adapt to new routines etc. I am so proud of Cast B because we are doing so well and bonding so well and I feel like we are finally beginning to mesh as a big happy family. I am so excited that the fun has just begun and that so many more adventures await.