Namaste

Yes, yes....I know I have been awful about updating this thing....and now i'm going to disappoint even further by not updating about Disney, or Toronto, but yes...you guessed it....(or maybe you didn't..)....my yoga class that I took this morning. We found this cute little studio that practices "Moksha Yoga". I've never heard of it before, but it's basically a mix of bikram and vinyasa. Not as flow based, but still done in a heated room. Anyway, our instructor, Mike, was the most attentive instructor I've ever had - Explaining each position so throughly and correcting everyone....I've been practicing for almost 3 years now and realized I've been doing basics completely wrong. We practiced "meditation laughter" which was just lovely. he made the point that when you are immersed in giggles, it's impossible to let extraneous thoughts in...your mind is completely blank while positive endorphins overtake your body. Pure awesomeness. To end the class, while we were in Savasana, he told us this little anecdote (which I will try, to the best of my ability, to re-tell)...


A Philosophy professor began class one day by writing "A Mayonnaise Jar and two cans of beer" on the board.
he pulled out a large, empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it to the top with golf balls.
"Is it the jar full?" he questioned the class? They all agreed that it was.
he then pulled out a bag of pebbles and emptied it into the jar with the balls, and gently shook it so that the pebbles filled in the cracks left by the golf balls.
"Do you all agree, that the jar is now full?"
They class nodded in agreement.
The professor then pulled out a bag of sand and proceeded to empty ThAT into the mayonnaise jar.
"Now. Is it full now?"
They class all agreed that now, it was definitely as full as it could be. At which point he presented two cans of beer, popped the tabs and poured the two cans of beer into the already stuffed mayonnaise jar.


"Now, the jar is finally full. The mayonnaise jar represents our life....the golf balls represent the important things in our life -our family, our partners, our friends, our health, our irreplaceable experiences and adventures....the things that, if everything else was lost, and only they remained, our life would still be full.
The pebbles are the less important "things" in our lives....our house, our car, our job.
The sand is everything else. The "small stuff". If you put the sand into the jar first, there isn't any room left for the golf balls and the pebbles. The same goes for our lives. If we put all of our energy into the small stuff, we won't have enough room, time, or energy for the most important parts of our lives.
Pay attention to your golf balls.
Visit your parents, get medical checkups, take your significant other out for dinner, enjoy your kids laughter during his soccer games
Set your priorities. The rest? It's just sand."


A student raised her hand and asked "what about the beer"


"Glad you asked. The beer just shows, that no matter how packed your life may seem, there is always room for a couple of beers with a couple of your golf balls."




Of course Mike ended the story, and I was laying on my mat, a sweaty mess, sobbing into the dark heat of the room (: But it's nice, right? Put me in a great place to start my day.




and then? I made the most delicious smoothie in all the lands....


1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 c. frozen strawberries
1 banana
spoonful of plain fat free yogurt
1/2 almond milk
1 ice cube.
Blend.
Pure deliciousness.




I promise the next update will be about my princess fittings (: My Cinderella costume is a fairytale.

City of Brotherly Love

  You'll never realize how submersed you've become in your own citys lifestyle, until you move to another. Granted, I've only been in Toronto for 7 days, but the amount of New Yorker that I am constantly recognizing in myself, while walking these Canadian streets is ridiculous. Seriously. Ridiculous is the best word to describe it. Nobody is in a hurry, here. Nobody needs to stand a quarter of the way into the street to be the first person to rush across the intersection the moment the light turns yellow. People look at each other as they pass each other in the street and smile. WhAT!?! Personal connections? People say excuse me, and hold the door for others. Can't find the local market? Stop into the closest liquor store and 3 of the cashiers will enthusiastically give you 7 different options and directions to take to find the most suitable grocery store for your needs. The most impressive showing of Canadian love? Going out for birthday drinks last night. A group of 11 of us. Our waitress greeted us cheerfully (the restaurant was packed), brought us all water immediately, offered without any of us asking, to do individual checks, moved us immediately into an inside table when requested, due to the weather, and then took multiple pictures of us....all with a genuine smile on her face and consistent patience. My conclusion? I'm a horrible waitress? Yes, but no...Toronto is awesome. Just awesome. And yes, while I do love New York....I do not miss the pace, the tunnel vision, the agendas...not one bit. Ya'll should come pay me a visit. This city is beautiful. (:

Welcome Back! New Contract, New Adventures!

hey all!
So I am so happy to announce that I've been blessed to receive another performance contract that will take me to brand new places! This time...Toronto, Ontario Canada, Los Angeles California, and various places along the coast of the Mexican Riviera with the Disney Wonder Cruise Ship. With this new adventure, and with my limited means of communication (text and skype only in toronto...e-mail only while on the ship), I figured I'd bring back my China Blog and re-vamp it a bit to keep you all updated if you're curious about my new life!


Sooo....


I guess I'll dive right in!


We arrived in Toronto last Friday afternoon, after a delayed flight at La Guardia, during which I was able to chat with two of my future castmates, Christina and David - both lovely fellow New Yorkers. Upon arrival at our apartment complex, The Rosemont, we checked into our rooms (I got a sweet, well-lit little studio). Friday involved an initial paperwork meeting, a mini exploration of Toronto to find pizza, and then a brief little mixer in the party room to get to meet a handful of us. Then it was off to bed for me...I was beat.


Sat AM:  
First rehearsal! Met our director, Phillip, our stage manager, Michael, and everybody else we would be working with for the next 2-8 months. Introduced ourselves, and our pre-assigned characters...I guess here is where I should mention that I'll be playing Cinderella in the Disney Dreams show, Cruella De Vil in The Golden Mickey's, and Bo Peep (after later auditions) in Toy Story.  

Next we had our dance placement evaluation....alllllllways my favorite part (ugh)...but despite my nerves, it went fine (:


From there we had our Spanish Web training which has been the best part of this process, thus far! It's essential an aerial circus skill where you climb a rope about 20 feet up, attach your wrist to a small loop at the top, at which point you can hang freely. At the base of the rope is a "web setter". This person spins the rope at the bottom which allows the performer at the top to spin at various speeds, integrating dance poses while spinning. We all were encouraged to do it, regardless of our performance tracks. Getting up was terrifying, but the cast was all really supportive of everyone, and once we were up, in the wrist strap and spinning, it was just freaking awesome. No other words. haha I was literally flying. And watching everyone else do it - it is just a beautiful, beautiful art! The spanish web is used in the Tarzan segment of Golden Mickey's....here's a clip from the show so you can get a better idea as to what i'm talking about. Between 1:12 and 1:40, you can see essentially what we experimented with on Saturday. And yes! We actually looked like that (:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRT6AAMa8c8


After web, we had our lunch break and then came back for our understudy tracking auditions. Basically all the mainstage performer girls, bout 7 of us, got together with our music director, Lona, to go over all of the princess music in Disney Dreams. Shot me right back to 7 years old, playing in the basement of my Gram's house with cousins, Jack and Pete, and Ah-ah-ahing at the top of my lungs, pretending to be Ariel. hahaha it was literally a dream come true! We each got be Ariel, Cinderella, and Belle....I've never felt more giddy and girly hahaha. We princessed around for a couple hours and then our day was done.


From there a handful of us headed to the gym to begin our first Insanity Workout. Luckily, David came uber prepared to the contract with the entire collection of P90X, Insanity, and any other dvd workout program you could imagine. We have since appointed him our cast "trainer". Anyway...took our first fitness test of insanity. died. went to bed. end of story.


Sunday? Our day of rest (: Not much to note about this day other than much sleep, reading, and television watching was had by all. 3 things that are completely alien to my lifestyle. So yes. It was quite a nice day.


Monday AM: More of the same as Saturday, as we still had Golden Mickeys, the Welcome Aboard Show, and Toy Story to cast and run understudy tracking for. More princessing was had and some reading auditions for Toy Story and the Welcome show....My age and height (particularly in these shows) brought about some new characters for me to be introduced to and considered for...ie. the "Mom" characters. It's a strange type to wrap my fingers around but it was new and fun!


Monday night brought our second day of Insanity. Over the course of our day off, we had adopted about half of the cast, if not more, into our workout program. Because of this, we asked to use one of our rehearsal spaces to accommodate our size increase, and David, once again, our fearless leader, led our workout. Rough, but do-able. Get ready...I'm gonna be the most ripped Cinderella you've ever seen by the end of this ride. WOOOOOOOOOOO!




Phew. Sorry to have written you all a novel. I promise that will be the longest one. I'll try to update regularly and only on the really cool things, so as not to overload on the info (:

America! oh wait....

So I'm finally home!!!

just kidding.

Still stuck in Beijing til the avalanche back west clears.  We were supposed to fly out yesterday at five, but our flight was cancelled until tomorrow at 5. But! A plus to the delay?  First class tickets!!! wooohooo! I've never flown first class before.  Cannot wait.  Sooooo, I will be back in the states at 5:30 on Friday afternoon.  Just in time for the Opening Ceremonies!!! Wooo!

So our shows in Beijing?  Quite eventful. Well, for me. And not in a good way.  Somehow, over the past week I contracted something resembling, quite perfectly, the bubonic plague.  And No (Mark and Mom), it's not because I wasn't taking care of myself.  I blame it on the Great Wall.  Anyway, this plague included the deterioration of every part of my body except my throat.  Good! you say, right?  Because I have to sing,  so not having my throat hurt is a good thing?  Sure, except that whatever monster was living in my chest decided to not allow me to belt, which is what the entirety of "Teachers Argument" is.    So long story, short.  I had no voice.  It was the hardest 5 shows of my life.  But it made me realize once again, how amazing this cast is.  They all stayed in the wings and cheered me on after the song, and always had words of encouragement for me throughout the whole process.  I love them (for the 4000th time). And I will miss my Fame-ly (copyright Justine Long) so so much.  And now it's over.  No words can really express what this experience was for me.  So I won't try. I'm sure you've all gotten the gist over the past 2 months (:  Thank you all so much for keeping me company! I love you all! FameinChina forever! Can't wait to see you!

No Wonder you're a Wonder

We went to the Great Wall yesterday.  Now.  I didn't really have too many expectations going into this trip because I had heard mixed reviews about it.  People had complained about walking/climbing it, said it wasn't that impressive, there were always too many people there, it was too touristy; You know, the works.   So when we pulled up to the entrance of the Mutianyu section of the Wall and were swarmed by merchants and peddlars, all trying to shove great wall paraphernalia, it didn't help quell the tourist trap fear.  BUT. Have no fear because as soon as we got on the ski lift and saw the outline of the wall along the top of the mountains, all that trepidation dissipated (showing off my verbal SAT scores right there, ehh? haha).  The views at the top were breathtaking.  Mountains surrounded us on all sides and we could catch glimpses of little villages nestled in the valleys.  To make it even better, it was a gorgeous day.  Absolutely freezing, but not a cloud in the sky and blue as blue can be.  We turned right to hike along what appeared to be the easier route.  Along the way we made friends, or maybe more accurately, Jake made friends with two Chinese sisters who were selling snacks and beer.  He used his blonde hair, boyish charm, and stunning good looks (vomit) to get us some beer and snickers bars for pretty cheap.  Once we hit the end of the walking part of the wall, separated by a "do not trespass" sign, which we immediately ignored and hiked a good while past, we hit a deteriorated pagoda and stopped to sing what else? but a couple verses of "Bring on Tomorrow". Just to leave our Fame mark in the universe (:  Later, we found out that another group of our people heard us when they were about a mile away.  Once we turned around, we still had about 4 more hours to kill so we decided to climb up the opposite side of the wall to try to hit the highest point.  I'm pretty sure I have never sweated more in my life.  It literally felt like Field Hockey pre-season training times 45.  There were points of this climb that had about 400 steps straight up (and when i say straight up, I mean COMPLETELY vertical, climbing with hands and feet) without rest.  It was such an adrenaline rush and SO worth it once we hit the top.  I can't even try to describe the beauty that was what we saw.  I'll of course post pictures, but even that won't do it justice. The word "Awesome" in the dictionary, should actually only be defined as "The Great Wall of China".  I hope that you all can see it at some point in your lifetime.  It just makes you feel like the world is so so so big and perfect and beautiful. Go go go! While we were up at the top, these two women from Cambodia reached the summit and as they both climbed up the final staircase, beaming, sweaty and exhausted, the younger of the two said "Way to go MOM!" The woman turns out to be 68 years old.  Honestly?  I'm 24 and I don't know how I did it.  We all cheered and congratulated her, and she was just so happy and proud. They were the sweetest women. It was just wonderful.  HSFJKHDKFJHDUIGUFNG! Literally the best day ever!  When we finally pulled ourselves away from the beauty, and made it back down to the ski lift (the downward descent was actually rougher for me because of my stupid knee), we took a toboggan ride back down to the base of the mountain, which was the PERFECT ending.  A high speed torpedo ride down the mountain of the great wall, with no safety walls on either side and greeted by two ferocious looking Huns at the bottom. Haha perfect. Just perfect.  The bus ride home was spent playing games, teasing each other, reminiscing about the past two months, and of course me crying about how we are leaving china and each other in 5 days.  We ended the day at a Belgium pub with REAL, non-chinese, thin crust, wood-fired amazing pizza and Tsing-tao, my new favorite cheap ass beer.  Could not have been a better day spend with better people.  

Someone really needs to find a way to condense this blog post into a hallmark card.  Pretty sure it is the biggest piece of emotional cheese ever.  I'm just getting to that mushy, life-loving place right now (: I love you all and will see you soooooon!

Internet sucks in China

So I swear I have tried to post before this, but internet connection has been crappy in the past two cities, and now that we're in Beijing, it costs money to use the internet! So - quick little update!  Wuhan? Nice hotel....not much else to do.  That was our relax and sleep in and go to starbucks city.  Fuzhou? Beautiful weather, BEAUTIFUL theatre (our best by far), and dairy queen.  I wore sundresses. I sunbathed on the deck of the dairy queen.  It was heaven.  Now we are in Beijing and I literally think that this city secretly relocated itself to the frozen tundra.  Shockingly cold.  But so far, lots and lots of fun.  The first night we got in late and were CRAVING american food.  Hardrock Cafe was our dinner joint of choice.  We bought the place out.  I had a salad, a veggie burger, macaroni and cheese, and split fries with rach.  It felt so so good.  We were exhausted and crashed early that night.  The next morning we had hotel breakfast (best yet!) with waffles and blueberry pancakes and PRUNES! Then we headed to Tianemin (sp?) Square and the Forbidden City. A beautiful, sunny, freezing day.  Cool sites and beautiful views.  Had famous Beijing Peking Duck for dinner at Da Dong.  It's apparently THE place to have the duck (: It was delicious! And they made us mojito's for 30 yuan.  Headed back to the hotel and then headed back out to bar street, where the girls got separated from the boys accidentally in the cab ride and the evening turned into girls night, which was fine and dandy.  More descriptive details to follow! Love!

life: always keepin' us on our toes

well, well, well. It's been a while (hah how many posts have I started out like that, eh?), and boy has a lot happened.

Let me just say, this profession will never get old....maybe uninteresting is a better word to describe it.  So opening night in Nanning, Eric went on for his first time since he's gotten here.  So much respect for him, learning Tyrone in such a short, short time.  It's not an easy track, but he did great and it added a completely different energy to the show which was really refreshing for us, I think.  Cut to opening of the second act, with the junior festival....I enter stage left, begin to count the students, look at Ashli and Presilah, and see them start to mouth something to me, as the black stage apron curtain begins to descend in between us....what? Not supposed to happen.  I have no idea what's going on, I turn and look center stage just in time to see Richard get hit in the head with the curtain bar, disappear behind it, leaving just me and Jamie in front of the curtain, wide-eyed and completely disoriented....Sooooo....I do my lines? I don't even know what happened.  Pretty sure Jamie and I just went right into auto-pilot and somehow, miraculously, it worked perfectly.  We finished our scene, Caroline and Adam entered at some point for a little staging improv, and the curtain came up just as the junior festival music started to play.  Perfect timing.  I wish someone got it on tape, cause let me just tell you, I don't remember any of it. Hahahaha, again, love my job.

Saturday, Adam was walking down meat street (which is where I ate hammer-head shark. I forget if I mentioned that in a previous post....same street where we found the dog on a meat hook, and half of an Alligator.  The shark meat was freaking amazing, and we had a dessert of candied strawberries on a stick.  Oh! and the best homemade vegetarian dumplings of my life, made my the sweetest, tiniest, oldest chinese woman I have ever met.  10 dumplings for 5 yuan. amazing.) and found a vendor wrapping fruit in a newspaper that had an article about Fame in it.  There was a big group shot of the cast at the end of Hard Work Reprise and then another picture of, who else, but Ms. Bell.  Yup, you know, the star of the show, me, singing "Teacher's Argument" hahaha hysterical and so so so random.  Rachel (our interpreter) translated the caption underneath the picture as "The cast showing emotion during songs".  I think you can find the article online (granted it's in chinese, but whatever), but I need to get the website from Adam.  I'll post it later if I can get it.

Fast forward to Tuesday, our day off....About 12 of us decide to leave the city to explore "the caves" (I don't actually know what they were called) in the rural hills of Nanning, about an hour bus ride outside the city.  First mis-hap of the day, Michael and I miss the first bus filled with the rest of our people and have to get on a second bus.  Problem? We have no idea where we are going or what stop to get off at.  After an hour of me having an internal silent heart attack, we come to our first stop and miraculously catch up to the bus with the rest of our crew on it.  Crisis #1 averted.  We purchase our tickets and head off to the caves.  On our way, Jake spots a monkey, a gibbon, I think.  We walk towards it and put our stuff down to take pictures.  Next thing we know, we are swarmed by gibbons and one steals Adam's entire can of pringles.  We are all hysterically laughing when all of a sudden, we hear Michael shriek as a monkey rips open his bag of juice that he has just purchased for his blood sugar.  3 monkeys haul off with all of his juice bottles.  Jake discovers that he can feed the monkey's oranges and they will come right up to him and take them out of his hands.  Some of us get the monkey's to climb on us.  It's amazing.  We start feeding them the odds and ends of the snacks we have with us; apples, oranges, granola bars.  It's pretty ridiculous how intelligent the monkeys are.  They stole people's cokes and juices, but when I offered them my water, they weren't interested at all.  Not enough of a treat, I guess (:

Things started to turn ugly when the monkey's began to fight with each other.  Next thing we know, Jake has been bit by one on the back.  I went to the bathroom and came back and Jamie had gotten bit as well.  Time to leave the monkey area hah.  Jake and Jamie got hauled off to get rabies shots, and we continued on to hike up the mountain. Beautiful views, I'll post some pictures.  Climbed back down the mountain and toured the cave.  It was pretty awesomely huge and impressive-aside from the cheesy chinese kitschy lights that they hung everwhere.

Bussed home.

Caroline, Rachel and I decided to walk around the mall when we got back to Nanning.  Walked into a couple shops, tried a couple things on, and somewhere along the line, Car put her purse down to look at a shirt, 3 Chinese girls swarmed the shop, pushing us out of the way, giggling, and throwing clothes around, then left.  15 seconds later, Caroline realized they had taken her purse with them.  We tried to find them but couldn't, the mall security got involved, and next thing we know, we're in a chinese police station infested with rats, filing a report, and Caroline is getting finger-printed.  Poor Care.  Could have been worse, her purse only had her ids, credit cards, and debit card in it.  Just very inconvenient.  Seriously. Never a dull moment in China. Hootie hoo!