Hi everyone, it’s been a while but here I am! After the up with people tour I stayed in Thailand for about 3 weeks. Bangkok was amazing, the first days I stayed with some friends from up with people in a hotel in the centre of Bangkok. I like big cities a lot. The people were so nice and helpful and I was so impressed of the monuments in the downtown  area. After a few days my parents came over to visit me and we travelled together to the middle of nowhere… River Kwai… It’s a village in the middle of a huge forest near a big river and you can only reach it by train. The silence scared me a lot because in the past 6 months I was always surrounded by a lot of people … After staying a few days in Ayutaya – a village with a lot of beautiful old temples- we took a plane to Ko Samui. Arriving at this little island the weather was so nice, the beaches so white and the water sooo blue. We had a great time over there, I relaxed a lot and talked for hours with my parents about my adventures over the past 6 months. Back home was an other story… The first days I had a difficult time adapting again but after a week I enjoyed being back home. I saw my friends again, saw my little prince (my dog) Bas who was so happy having me back home, saw my family,... But I also noticed that I have changed into a way I never could have imagined. I grew a lot personally, see the world and my life now with other eyes, have friends all over the world, new experiences and stories to tell. I am so happy I took this decision to travel and tour with up with people and I advice everyone to take some time to see the world because it’s so beautiful and different out there. muse breako lirics

with love, -X- noa

After 3 travel days we finally reached Bangkok. 12 hours later (at 11pm) we arrived in Chiang Rai. We spent our first night in a temple, sleeping on a floor and taking a shower with a bucket outside. The toilet was a whole in the ground outside as well, new for me, but I was prepared, so welcome in Thailand. A few hours later, while the whole cast was sleeping I got up to explore the village and temples.  I was lucky because day one and I saw already my first monks. When my stomach started protesting I returned to our facility where I got a typical tai breakfast, a banana leaf and inside rice with some vegetables, delicious! After spending the day together and preparing the week to come, my new host family picked me up. Together with Sofie form Sweden our adventure begun! muse breako lirics

Second night was not different as the first one, except that I got a joga- mattress to sleep on instead of completely on the floor but when I saw my host family and their smiles on their faces I forgot about everything. Our breakfast was quite strange from what I was used to… I got fried sardines, sticky rice, pork and chicken and a lot of strange food that I never saw before, but it was good!!! After breakfast our family dropped us of at a school where we would spend the whole day teaching tai kids from different ages English, by playing games. In the afternoon we had our show. Not just a show, the kids went crazy, we were treated as rock stars, we signed autographs for 50 minutes and had a lot of fun!!! When we got home our family took us out for dinner to a restaurant. When the first fish arrived I thought, oh my god, I didn’t know that tai people didn’t eat that much, one fish for the whole table… but when the first fish disappeared in our stomachs the second, third, fourth dish arrived, it was amazing! We had a whole table of different things that we tasted, aroy (delicious in Thai)

The rest of the week looked quite the same, we went to different schools every day and did our show in the afternoon, except for Saturday. Guess what!!!! In the morning our host family dropped us of at a lake where we took small boats and crossed the river. When we arrived elephants were waiting for us to give us the best time of our lives!! It was beautiful! We made a trip trough the jungle, saw some hill tribes and finished in the water, soooo cool! After lunch we started walking and had no clue where we were going, mountain after mountain, always up, and climbing further, I never hiked before in my whole life, and certainly not wearing flip-flops and a heavy bag so 3 times I thought I would die because I couldn’t walk anymore. The temperature in Thailand these days is around 40° and it’s very humid what made it harder to breath. But after almost tree hours hiking we arrived at our destination, a hill tribe in the middle of nothing… but they had cold lemon ice tea, which was wonderful! After hiking a little bit further we arrived at the waterfalls where we stayed for a while before hiking back. In the evening we went to a restaurant with the cast and saw tai dancers dressed up in traditional costumes, unbelievable pretty! Sunday was our host family day, that means time off that we can spend with our new family. We woke up really early to visit gardens and the royal palace, which was cool because it was built with Swiss influences, and you could really tell! Afterwards we visited some temples and went to a local market. My host family is so amazing! I don’t understand anything what they are talking about because I don’t speak Tai and they don’t speak English but by pointing at everything we understand each other perfectly and for me that feels wonderful. In two weeks my uwp-adventure will come to an end but it was a great experience and I’m so happy I took this opportunity.

Don’t forget to smell the roses-LOVE-

Howdie! (texas way to say hi)muse breako lirics

It’s been a while since I posted an update, but here I am! I’m in the Woodlands (Texas) right now. It’s beautiful over here and very green. Last week my mom and my cousin came to visit me when the cast was in San Antonio and I had an amazing time with them. I also saw Elissa, my hostsister from Brenham again and we had a great time! I was also a guest in a morning tv show for productionhouse Kent 5 where I did a performance of Keep the beat with 4 dancers for promoting the show. Nowadays I work as promotion and admission team in up with people and yesterday was my first day in that function. I went to an elementary school with 5 other uppies from all around the world ( Ethiopie – Namibie – USA – Finland and Thailand ) and we did some presentations about UWP. We had a lot of fun together. I also sang a new song in the show – World Celebration which is really cool and last week I performed it for the first time.

I also have a lot of nice memories from Mexico. We travelled from Monterrey to Mexico City to Puebla to San Luis Potosi and all of them were amazing! I experimented with a lot of food and I actually liked it. I even tried a grasshopper which tasted good but really salty. In my free time I went to local markets, visited the pyramids( also inside, really cold but awesome how they made it ), visited Real de Quatorce a really holy little town, together with my hostfamily I went to the floating gardens on the canal (Xochimilco) which was amazing, so beautiful ! I also got a good taste of the nightlife thanks to my cool hostbrother Fernando and his friends from Mexico City. One of the last days in Mexico we organised a big parade in the streets of San Luis Potosi, followed by a street performance, which was a day to remember because it was sooo hot that I had difficulties with breathing but I sang the show and we had a great time.

And don’t forget to check out our new cast A 2008 website on www.myspace.com/casta2008 and if you wanna follow my adventure trough pictures you can find and add me on facebook.com -> Noa Opdebeeck.

-X- Noa

Hi, muse breako lirics

Texas was amazing but probably that was because of my great hostfamily, the Knodt’s . The Easter bunny came on Sunday and brought me some presents continued by going to church and have their family come over for lunch. On Tuesday we went to an elderly home, the Cruz village and accompanied the residents by going to wall mart (GB) and in the afternoon we did a small presentation about UWP, continued by a birthday party where all of us song the birthday-song in our own languages. They were so happy. Thursday I went back to the same elderly home but this time because there was an Easter egg hunt for all the kids from Brenham. They had a lot of fun collecting eggs. Elissa my amazing hostsister introduced me into margarita’s, what is awesome !

Monday was a long travelday. We crossed the Mexican border around 4pm and it was unbelievable warm. Arriving in the theatre, television crews were already waiting for Viva la Gente (the Spanish name for UWP). Mexican performers welcomed us by dancing their traditional dances. Everybody was so excited to have us there. The next days I painted some houses as community impact projects for Ammac together with some other girls. We had a lot of fun and helped them a lot! On Thusday at lunchtime we had our first mini-show in the university campus, outside! We brought our theme song UWP in Spanish and they went crazy. Viva la Gente/ UWP is hot in Mexico, that’s for sure

In meanwhile, my stay in Mauritius is almost finished, a few days ago my good friend Edwige got married with Noel and I made a song especially for them which I song in the church. She was so pretty in her princess dress and it was a beautiful day! Afterwards we went to hotel La Pirogue where the reception took place. It was like a fairy tale, so beautiful! The dinner was amazing and afterwards there was a traditional Sega-show with dancers. I song the first songs of the evening and afterwards the party got started.

Hi ! Some news from Chicago. The last 3 days I taught students from several high schools how to work together with all the nationalities and cultures. They explained to me that almost everyone belongs to a gang and how that works. I was surprised because I  had never heard of this. Even the principal told us not to wear blue or red or any other bright colour in combination with black or we could get stabbed. On each floor they had around 10 police and security guards to protect the students if something would happen. First I felt really scared because I was almost the only white blond girl in that school. But the lessons – exercises went well and I was very happy that I was still alive after 3 days school. Our show was amazing too. There were a lot of alumni, they were so enthusiastic and the applause kept going on. It was a great audience! On my free day I saw the musical Wicked ( The wizard of Oz), which was really cool! And I also went to the John Hancock Center (the 2^nd tallest building in the world) and had a cocktail with my hostmom Heather on the 96^th floor with an amazing view of the city. muse breako lirics

With love, noa -x-

 muse breako lirics

Today together with all the cast members and volunteers we packed 251600 meals for the non-profit international food relief organisation 'kids against hunger'. Their mission is to eradicate world hunger and prevent any more children from starving to death. Feeding programs, orphanages, schools and clinics are the direct paths they use to feed children. Kids against hunger packages a rice-soy casserole fortified with 21 essential vitamins and 9 minerals, dehydrated vegetables and chicken flavoring. Each bag contains 6 servings and is prepared in 15 minutes by adding it to boiling water. In between the shifts we gave a mini show with a few up with people cast members to encourage the volunteers. For more information visit www.kidsagainsthungerdsm.org

Hi ! First news item in English because so many people asked me to translate what was written… so … here we go… First of all : Happy Valentines Day! muse breako lirics

They day after our show day in Denver we travelled all day to Lincoln (Nebraska) where we did our first ‘Stand for Peace’. This workshop is designed to educate elementary and middle school students about promoting peace in a context of diversity. It was amazing! The kids were so thankful and they really liked our games! I was really surprised the next morning when my host mom showed me the newspaper – Journal Star because I was on the local front page explaining a game to kids. On Wednesday we performed in a university that was really cool because a lot of students were interested in travelling next semester. Thursday was travel day again, we moved to Maquoketa, Iowa. When we arrived the only thing that I saw was snow, and more snow and more land…  The population of Maquoketa is just over 6000 people. A few days before our arrival there was a fire on the main street so we raised money to help renovate the shops. I had 3 other roommates and a nice host family. Their daughter is a singer too ( check out her website : www.amymartin.org ) and it was really cool to talk about my passion, my music. On Saturday we had our day off and we went visiting an art museum, dine in a golf resort and finished our evening singing karaoke J Sunday: show day. One of our cast members AJ announced that he had to go home for a hospital visit so we had a very emotional show day.. Because of the bad weather, a snowstorm made driving almost impossible we delayed our departure for a few hours and it took us almost 7 hours to arrive to Des Moines, that is not that far from Maquoketa. And now I’m here with my new host family for a week and we will perform tomorrow and Friday. -xxxxx-