rocky top

this whole week, i have been in the mountains of appalachia.

joey, heather and i made the 11 hour road trip last sunday morning to southwest virginia. joey and i are teaching here at the community's MAD camp - music, arts, and drama - to the kids of the surrounding area. the camp comes but once a year, and the kids (ranging in age from 8 to 14, in three levels) travel from up to two hours away in the mountains to get to the community school we teach at each day.

since we are mainly improvisers, we've taken a real shine to generally teaching them the lessons of acting in improv. these kids are blown away by improv and love it; on day one, we tell them nothing they say can be wrong, and not much more could put you at ease in the world.

we face some difficulties, though - kids having to travel so far, those who are home-schooled and haven't dealt with ever leaving their parents - camp or otherwise... general shyness, lots of that sort of thing. for the most part, though, the kids are on top of it and ready to play, and the rest is cake from there.

joey and i have become obsessed with a few of the campers. i just realized that maybe they could find this blog, so i won't say who... though, if you've heard us talk about this camp in real life, you probably know who. joey can do a spot-on imitation of about 50% of the people we've met here, and for that alone, he should be famous.

i'm going to write more when i have access back in chicago again. hang in there...