Go Oilers!

88 again

I've been doing a lot of traveling over the last couple weeks. Two weekends ago, I went over to Omaha again to perform with 88improv. I worked with Nate and Sarah Schoenfeld at a really swank country club for a dinner. It was a great show. Some of the best improv I've been involved in for a long time.

We played this game called Genres which is kind of hard to explain if you don't know it, but it essentially breaks down into everyone having to make up showtunes on the spot. Well, I'm horrible at this part of the game. I can't make up songs on the spot (let alone sing on tune). Over the last couple weeks I've performed with the 88 crew, it's gone something like this:

Tim: I don't care
If you don't share
About the fair
With that pair!

Jason: That Pair!

Just basically me repeating the last line of what the other improver says as best I can. Well not this time! This time I made up my own song about ear piercing with Nate and it worked really well. It ended with me singing about Nate giving me a kiss on the ear, which, in improv, he naturally had to do since you're always supposed to agree with everyone.

Oh, Canada!

So Troy and I headed up to Alberta, Canada this past weekend to lead a retreat. He played some rock your face off music like normal, and I spoke. We had a blast.

First of all, it was about 30 to 40 degrees warmed in Canada than it was in Iowa the entire time we were there. It was great!

We were speaking in this little town called Neerlandia. When we were renting our car at the Edmonton airport, we asked the ladies behind the counter, "Do you know where Neerlandia is?" And one of them asked, "Did you say Narnia?" While that would have been pretty cool, it was not what we'd asked. So after several phone calls and lots of map searching, we finally found the town which was located two hours north of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

It was strange. It was just like Iowa in most ways. At 6:30 am, I left my house in my little dutch pig farming community on Friday morning, drove for an hour, got on a plan for four hours, drove for two more hours, and got out of the car in a little dutch pig farming community. It was all a bit surreal.

We had a great time with the 100 or so students and adults at the retreat. Troy and I discovered that all Canadian punctuation is spoken out loud.

Eh = .
Right = ?

For instance:

Jason: Hi, I'm Jason!
Canadian: Good to meet you, eh You had a good trip, right

They also put gravy on their french fries, and they love hockey. Both of those quirks were very agreeable with me, so we got along great.

We also started marketing our new Happy the Dog Ministry t-shirts, which I'll have to post on here soon. The kids seemed to take to them very well, and we sold a lot of them.

Sunday morning, we led worship for about 500 people in the Neerlandia Christian Reformed Church, and we had great time. Troy even got everyone, and I mean everyone, up and dancing to Undignified.

So, in short, Canadians were great. It was my first time out of the country, and I had a blast spending time with Troy all weekend. We met some great new friends like Becky, Joelle, Sandy, Cindy, Janice, Rob, Rick Rick, Randy, Randy, and many others who I'll think of immediately after I post this blog.

Till next time,
Jason