Cast B Invades Boulder, CO

Last Wednesday was Regional Learning day and the cast travelled by bus to Boulder, Colorado. It was about an hour and a half bus ride.

I liked Boulder a lot! It was a university town (home to the largest university in Colorado, the University of Colorado at Boulder) with nicely paved sidewalks and a really cool outdoor mall called the Pearl street mall. (It seems like Colorado residents can't get enough of the great outdoors. They also have the 16th Street mall in downtown Denver)

We were dropped off at the Boulder Public Library for our morning meeting. We soon learned that "Regional Learning" did not mean sitting inside rooms listening to lectures or visiting museums. We were to do our learning by ourselves, through a scavenger hunt around the city !

We were asked to form a group of 6 people with at least 3 countries represented, with both male and female members, and were given a map and a list of things to look for and gather around Boulder. My teammates were Marita (Germany), Sophie (China), Johann (Sweden), Clara (Mexico) and Ellen (Staff, USA)

It was a very interesting day! Of course we had to deal with a few disagreements about where we should go first or whether we will just use the Internet to find info or to really run around town trying to get first-hand info. We also had a short discussion about the purpose of the hunt - should we aim for the prize? or should we just have fun? Well, we ended up getting both! (Yup, we won... )

Some scavenger hunt stuff we had to find out or get...

- Which Woody Allen movie was filmed in Boulder?

- Get a business card from a local Police Officer and ask about the major issues that they deal with in Boulder

- Get the name and classes of a Professor in the University of Boulder, get your picture taken with them in front of one of the campus buildings

- Get a beer coaster from a local microbrew beer company

and a lot more ! (there were 20 challenges all in all)

The Pearl Street Mall

Met her at the Police Station! She was a US Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines with the Mangyans in Mindoro. She loved the country and is now very active in the Fil-Am community and is even part of the Philippine Dragonboat Rowing Team! She invited us to go to the festival on Sunday

On a wall at the beer making factory!

After the scavenger hunt -- we all had the opportunity to go to the Celestial Seasonings tea factory for a guided tour of how the tea was made. It was a great time! Especially for the tea sampling part! (Photo shows me, Suzanne from the Netherlands, Vanessa from the USA, and Benjamine from Belgium)