Sioux City, Iowa

Shocked!

Out for dinner with the girls

What a place to leave behind my teenage years. After a day of flights from Utah to Iowa we arrived in lovely Sioux City where we would spend our next six days. It was my 20th Birthday on the Tuesday and my friends did a great job at making my day special. They threw me a surprise party which I had absolutely no idea about. They even had my performance director in on the act. Myself and three of my girlfriends on tour went to a delicious Italian restaurant for dinner and when I returned my PD(performance director) had told me that I had a skater evaluation so I was to meet him in the lobby. When we returned from dinner he was waiting for me with his notebook in hand. We began to chat about how my experience on tour was going so far and he informed me that he asked for a room upstairs to be opened for the evaluations. However, when he opened the door I was greeted with a loud SURPRISE and amazed to see that the room was decorated with balloons and streamers! It was an awesome night!!!

Moreover, the week of performances was quite funny as we had extremely large ice which was about 17headers long when we are use to performing on ice that is around 10headers long. This was a challenge to re-adjust choreography of the show to larger ice and what made it ironic was that we had huge ice but an extremely small venue.

Also want to share about a great book I am reading right now called Sacred Chaos. It talks about finding God in the busyness and chaos of life and how through all of this there still can be time for a relationship with God. It’s been a cool book to read on my tour and has helped me stay grounded with my priorities and to see the greater picture of what Gods trying to teach me through this experience. It’s been cool and I have found that it is fitted for my life but also probably for many people’s lives because most people tend to have a million things going on at once and seldom have time to stop and really think about what this life is all about.

That’s all for now but more to come next week…

Salt Lake City, UT

This week we stayed in an apartment which was such a blessing. We had a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. We through dinner parties, and baked cakes and brownies it was awesome to have a little more space to relax in. A few people from tour went skiing and snowboarding as the hills were open.

Highlight:
- Skating at the Olympic Stadium
-WestGate Mall: A huge outdoor mall right beside the arena.

Wanted to give a link to Disney Website where you can get tickets and check out the tour schedule: http://disney.go.com/disneyonice/

Boise, ID

Ninjas!




Cats!

Christine and I on our walk

At the Hockey Game

Boise was surprisingly beautiful! From our hotel room we could see the mountains and across the street there was a river that ran behind the University. It was a little bit of a shock to be in cold temperature but fun to wear a scarf and mitts again. I realized that it had been over a year since I had seen fall.

We were playing at the arena on the University campus. On the Sunday there was a University football game. WOW I have never experienced University football like that. They started tailgating first thing in the morning and by the time the game started the parking lot was packed out with people.

We had our Halloween party in Boise, which was so much fun, people went full out! We rented out a bar for the night and by the end of the night it was packed with a pancake and waffle, ninjas, the fresh prince of Bellaire, animals, drag queens, white trash, Elmo, and many more characters. Christine, Kim, and I went as Cats!

There wasn’t too much to do in the city but we kept ourselves occupied with the mall, a Pilates class, the gym, a walk beside the river and watching a HOCKEY GAME! We went to see the Idaho Steelheads play the Alaska Aces!!

Sacramento, CA

Our quick Halloween Costume

The Capital of California! There was much talk about the election while we were in Sacramento and we saw tons of protesting outside of the government buildings. We stayed at a hotel right beside Old Sacramento. Old Sacramento felt like a country western movie, with saloons, a wooden boardwalk, and horse and buggies. There was also a mall right beside the hotel which had a movie theatre in it which a group of us saw High School Musical 3 at..woohoo!!

San Jose, CA

We stayed at a beautiful historic hotel downtown. It was nice as it was walking distance to everything including grocery store, arena, bank, and Starbucks. On our first night a large group of us went to see Tina Turner, which was so much fun! This week was more of a mellow week of reading at Starbucks, watching movies in the room, and walking around the city.

San Francisco, CA

Goldren Gate Bridge

Lombard Street

Alacatraz

LOVED THIS CITY!! I would love to go back to this city, so much to see and do! It’s been my dream to go to San Francisco so I was so excited to be staying for the week. We were really fortunate as we were staying right by the Pier. We were able to walk or jump on the bus to get everywhere.

Here are some of the highlights from myweek:
-Alcatraz
-Walking Golden Gate Bridge
-Shopping at Union Square
-Dinner in Little Italy
-Visiting Haight-Ashbury
-Chinatown
-Sushi!
-Pier 39
-Cold Stone Ice Cream

San Diego, CA

Sea World!


Sea World!



Fun in the Waves!

San Diego made me feel like I was back in Australia. Beautiful beach! We were so excited to have a few days off because we had been working straight through to learn the show for the last two weeks. We spent our first day off relaxing at the beach and jumping in the waves. The second day we had the opportunity to go to Sea World, which was amazing!! Also, two of my friends who I met in Australia last year came to see the show and visit. They live in LA so they drove up for Saturday night’s show. It was so great to see them!

Bakersfield, CA

Rehearsals

Local High School Football Game


View from my hotel room


Kim, Justine, Me, Christine

Where it all began…
I arrived in Bakersfield expecting it to be how we all picture California. But when I arrived I realized that Bakersfield was not exactly the picturesque California City. It’s more of a small town in the desert. However, we stayed at a nice hotel right beside the venue, which was super convenient.

They flew the “newbies” two days before the rest of the cast so that we could learn the show and be placed into rehearsals once the rest of the cast members arrived. The show that I am on is called 100 years of Magic. It’s a collection of Disney shows and has over 60 characters throughout the show. We have a large group that travels as there are 47 skaters, 18 crew, 5 fulltime staff, and about 40 FCP (concessions). Can you imagine the chaos when we arrive at a hotel or airport?

It was really exciting to learn the show and to meet everyone that I would be traveling with for the year, but also a lot to take in at once. For the first week we spent most of our time either on the ice, watching the show on our laptops, dancing around our hotel room singing Disney songs or of course relaxing in the hot tub. We also were adjusting to cooking out of a hot pot, grill and coffee maker.

It felt like opening night came quite quickly and when it came we were all excited to be performing in front of a crowd!