Ninja Kicks

This past week has been a great week on tour with Team Ninja! We had a great weekend in Hamilton visiting friends and hanging out at the Magill house. Some of the team drove to Canada’s Wonderland and proceeded to get themselves sick from rides and bad food. I was not willing to pay for that kind of entertainment. Early Monday morning we left Hamilton for tour again and where we started with a few shows in the GTA. Christal and Ashley came to one of our shows to get some video footage and also to spend some time with the team. It was great to see them both again. We then traveled to Ottawa and have spent the last few days with the Lobban family. They are amazing people and have been treating us like Kings and Queens.

Brett, Road Team Manager

Lookout Sioux Lookout

We recently spent the weekend in the oh so exciting town of Sioux Lookout with the ever so large population of 5000. We arrived late Thursday night after traveling on roads that seemed to lead nowhere and seeing some interesting wildlife along the way such as foxes coyotes and even a moose. We were billeted with the amazing families of former Hero Holiday participants Jenna, Paige and Rylie, who were on our Dominican Republic trip this past summer. We performed a stellar show at the local high school Queen Elizabeth Secondary School and got a great response from the students of which a large percent were native given our northerly location in Ontario. Now you might think ok, what are you going to do in this super small town for fun, read a book or something, toss a stone or two? Well that was my initial thought as well. The father of one of our School of Leadership students; Carly, was gracious enough to give us a tour of the town. Along the way we crossed a bridge over a river and someone made a comment how it looked like it be fun to jump off of. The next thing you know we’re pulled over and leaning over the edge of the bridge ready to jump. Did I mention it was 8 degrees that day. So we jumped off that a few times and once we were too cold to continue, we loaded our wet selves back into the bus and cranked the heat. Another stop for us on our tour was to the local garbage dump where we watched and waited for the local bears to come by and feast on the trash. Apparently there can be up to seventy bears at a time there! But unfortunately, due to the time of year, most of them were hibernating and we only saw a momma and her cub.

The following day Jenna’s dad (billet) offered to take a few of us out walleye fishing on his boat. Four of us went, myself and Jamie were experienced, but Jenn and Nathaniel were new at this. It was beautiful out on the water and the leaves on the trees were just changing colour. Apparently it was a bad day for fishing for those parts but where I’m used to going I’d call that a pretty good day. I caught 2 walleye too small to keep, Jenna’s dad caught one that was too big to keep, Nate and Jamie got skunked, and of course due to beginners luck Jen caught the most bringing in 5 but only one sizable enough to keep. On our last day we went out to watch the local hockey team, the Sioux Lookout flyers play a team from Thunder Bay. It was a good game, only one fight though (is it bad that that’s my favorite part of the game?). All and all a pretty epic weekend especially for such a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Josh, Road Team Assistant

It’s Been A Hoot!

When you’ve spent as much time as I have on a bus you learn a few things. For example you learn how to sleep in any position on any surface and at anytime of the day. You also learn to appreciate your iPod and, most importantly, you learn how to hold your bladder for “just one more hour”. When we first embarked on the western Canada tour I was nothing short of ecstatic. Being from Vancouver, BC and having spent a good deal of time touring Alberta in the past, I had my own assumptions as to what it would be like. I thought I was prepared. So it’s a good thing Canada is such a beautiful place because from my window seat that’s all I had to look at. Cities and towns, mountains and prairies, it was as if the window was my TV and I’d lost the controller leaving me stuck with one channel for 4 months. We saw tons of wildlife. Anything from elk in the Rockies to prairie dogs in the…prairies. Justin (the bass player) was our self-appointed wildlife tour guide. While everyone else was sleeping in their seats he made it his duty to maintain peeled eyes so not too miss even one moving thing. Occasionally we were all awoken by Justin yelling “Wild turkey! You all missed it!” or “Another white-tailed deer!”. It’d probably be more pleasant to wake up to a gun shot. Nevertheless I appreciated getting to see all the amazing creatures I did wake up to look at.Even more wonderful then the nature though was all the people we got to meet along the way. All the different styles of clothing, humour, and music – of course they all had something to say about Justin Beiber. Gotta love YouTube. We must’ve taken thousands of pictures and for every one of those pictures there was a conversation. I think its amazing how little time we take nowadays to get to know others. Notice how in all those old movies people would never pass a stranger on the street with out at least saying hello. Now we just turn up Micheal Jackson in our headphones and cruise on by. I don’t think the world got busier, I think we just changed our focus. Whatever the excuse is I can’t use it anymore. It’s these kids and their stories. I feel like I’ve heard more then most people do in a life time. We live in such a beautiful country but there’s so much more beauty that’s so easily missed after first glance. It’s crazy to think that ten years from now there will be celebrities and politicians that are in high school right now. Then I’ll get to say “I met that person before anyone knew”.You have to imagine spending three days straight in a little room on wheels with the same ten people. It can get intense. It’s like a family you have no real relation too. Lucky for us we’ve been privileged to have spent a lot of time with some really amazing individuals. I can remember so many good times already. Snow ball fights at Alberta truck stops, suntanning on top of the bus in Saskatchewan, endless episodes of The Office, pranks – you know who you are. It’s been a hoot! I guess were lucky though. We got stuck with a bunch of extremely funny people. Although there is one thing that we all have in common. We all want to effect others, to make a difference, and show people that there’s so much more out there than what’s on your iPod (although I hope what’s on your iPod is Bondless!).Now were back in Hamilton, ON making food and filling time. Just weeks from the end of tour, I can’t help but look at this experience and what it’s done for me, and to me. I’ve gone through things that I can honestly say will have shaped me into the person I’m going to be. There’s something about seeing an entire country through the window of a bus that makes you think really hard about what is and isn’t possible.Joshua Anderton from the band Bondless

Love Is The Movement

I want to introduce to you a very important member of the LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute) Road Team 2. His name is Papi and like most of us, he is a work in progress and growing each and every day. Let me explain. Every time that we set up at a school and put on our Think Day presentations we use duct tape to hold cables down (so we don’t’ trip on them) and to hold together whatever it is that might have temporarily broken that day (i.e. guitar straps). After all is said and done and we’ve spent time hanging out with you after the show and all the gear has to come down, we are left with lots of bits of used up tape. So instead of just picking them up and putting them in the garbage, Alex decided that we would save each piece of tape and make a tape ball affectionately known to us as Papi (named after the popular iPod game series Papi Jump).Papi started off as just a little residue of tape, but now is almost as big as a volley ball andgetting bigger each and every day. By the end of tour Papi will likely be as big as a basket ball. As I sat back stage and snapped this quick photo of Papi near my guitar I was reminded of the popular quote coined by Mahatma Gandhi “be the change that you want to see in the world”.On the LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute) Tour we arrive at your schools hoping that our presentations will encourage and help at least one person. Sometimes we set up and go home and we really don’t know if we’ve made a difference in anybody’s life. But each of us at LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute) hopes that our efforts and our presentations are creating bits and pieces of change in the hearts of each of you. The type of change that we want to see in the world.I think the truth is that even though we can’t see the entirety of the connection that we make with you, that like Papi, if we were able to pick up visible and tangible pieces of change, that we would see that there is something real and amazing that is growing across Canada.At LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute) we are committed to reminding all of you that your life is worth living and that that each of you has something special to give back to our world in your own beautiful and unique way. Everyone has a plan and a purpose and each of us needs to decide to work at taking up the challenge of becoming the change that we want to see in the world around us. To be the hands and feet of change – To realize the hope and potential in ourselves and others. To be responsible and help those who are marginalized and in need all around.Always remember – Love is the Movement.Jonny, member of Hearts in Stereo on the Road with Team 2

The West: Tragedy, Glue, and Shania Twain

Change: to become different or undergo alteration. The road never turns around the same corner twice; we are constantly moving, constantly on a different path, constantly changing. There’s been some changes on our team, but when are things not always changing? It is how we adapt and how we deal with changes that make us all who we are. Every day when I get on that bus, I know only one thing won’t change: the Bondless boys will always get in a tickle war and someone will always sing Shania Twain.We have been welcomed with such hospitality and kindness on the west coast, but it is the willingness of some students to open up about their dark pasts after the shows that has been the most touching. Bondless performed at a memorial for a girl who was murdered in Duncan, BC last month. Seeing how a tragedy brought a community together made me ask why we need a tragedy to connect? I believe, based on the students we’ve met thus far, it is because pain is the emotion each one of us can relate to the most and when we have the opportunity to heal others it also allows us to heal our own pain. Simply sharing a story that breaks a heart allows so many others to mend, including our own. With every show it’s like a piece of my heart seems to be glued back in place and I wouldn’t change sleeping on a different floor every night for anything.I am inspired by the strength of each and every student that stands up to us after the show and says “me too” and those who may not have the courage to say something but somewhere in them something has changed. We are all changing, whether we like to believe it or not. I mean, how else would we grow? A seed starts somewhere in us that inspires us to change, so why not try to plant that seed as many places as we can?Love, trust and hope.xo Em, a School of Leadership student on the road

Hippie-at-Heart!

Never in a million years would I have thought that today, I would be going into high schools all across Canada, set up this massive sound board that controls all the sound for our show and learn how to live this glamorous life on the road. This is all so new to me, but it’s very easy to take myself out of my life in Victoria and travel on a bus, live out of different homes, churches and schools because I am a “hippie-at-heart” as my team would say.We do not know where our next meal will come from and that’s okay because every day is an adventure. One thing that troubles me is that I have limited options during mealtime because I am a vegetarian. If there is one dish for a meal and there is meat in it, I will take out my protein bar and use that as a meal replacement because I am Zoe Bigauskas. I have something to say about everything and I can pull a fact out of my brain at any given time, so the team just laughs and giggles because I often just “pull a Zoe”. It’s important to joke around and have fun on this four month long tour, the ten of us are together every single day and when the going gets tough, we have to work through every thing like a family. Talk about things that have been working and things that we have to improve on. To go into schools every day and show students what it’s like to be a responsible person, the importance of giving, and the power of hope, it needs to start with us.I never thought I would have such a huge impact on people’s lives in a positive way. The students we speak to are just people and I was one of them just last year, a student in high school trying to make a purpose out of my life. It’s interesting how a lot of the times I don’t share my story but people still come up to talk to me, open up their lives to me and I know that I am able to be a listening ear to those who seek help.I approach students every day and they often let me know that our presentation has truly impacted their lives. I realize that these students do want to do something different about the way they have been living, they want to make a change, and that’s what makes me get up every morning.Sometimes it is easy to lose focus of our goal, but just keeping in mind our purpose and our message, it makes me want to take out all the gear from the bus, set up my sound board, and get ready for another engaging show. I know that each presentation there is always a chance for us to reach at least one student in the crowd and that alone is what keeps me going everyday.Zoe, a School of Leadership student on the road

My Real-life Music Video

Today culminates two amazing weeks in one of Canada’s most beautiful provinces. We’ve now covered Nova Scotia through and through and have been from the easternmost end to the westernmost. The shows we’ve had over the last two weeks have been excellent and we’ve met some amazing people along the way, both at the high schools we’ve presented at and the home’s we’ve been billeted in.The Nova Scotia leg started out in Sydney. Arriving after a long and snowy ride from Fredericton, we were happy to get some sleep. Thanks so much to Joe and Jema for putting us up and feeding us! The next day we headed next door to Florence to play at Dr. T.L. Sullivan Junior High for what was a great show for a great bunch of kids. Cape Bretoners are very kind and personable, and everyone we met while there was great to us in this way.From that point we headed west to play shows in Monastery, Halifax, Weymouth, Yarmouth, and again in the Halifax area. We had some great crowds at each show along the way, but most notably were the shows in Halifax and Weymouth. The energy that these kids had was amazing and we all really enjoyed playing for such a lively audience. These Nova Scotia shows have also been excellent because we’ve received a lot of great feedback from students who were especially touched by the messages in our personal stories. It’s always our hope that what we’re doing has a significant impact on the lives ofstudents. To hear first hand that it has is a great feeling!We’ve now just finished up an awesome weekend in Halifax where, despite a little bit of rain, we had the chance to do some extensive exploring through one of Canada’s most beautiful urban centres. Like all Nova Scotians, the people we met in Halifax were great. This is especially true of our last billets, Kermit and Jane. They, along with the rest of the team, were involved in coordinating a prank that I will not soon live down. Jonny, Alex and I were walking home from downtown Halifax when from behind, Jacob appeared, startling us and saying that he had just been walking around and saw us out of the blue.In perfect succession, Matt, Zoe, Jamie, and Joy all appeared within no more than one minute of each other. I don’t get overtly excited about many things, however, this seemingly random but magnificently orchestrated rendezvous of nearly the whole team had me telling the story about ten times to everyone.From Kermit and Jane to strangers and their dogs, I was adamant about letting everyone know about how we had all met up at the same location on the way home by chance. It came back to bite me, however, when over dinner Jamie asked me to tell the story one more time. At its culmination, I was devastated to find out that it had all been a prank and that Kermit had been depositing my team embers on streets nearby where I had been walking. What I thought had been a real-life music video as actually staged! Outraged, I continued eating and tried as best I could to not let my displeasure how.We are now on our way back to New Brunswick for an exciting week that will also take us to Prince Edward Island for four nights. I am especially looking forward to PEI because I haven’t been there since I was 15. We’re looking forward to the rest of our time in the east, but also can’t wait to get back home.We’d like to give a big thank you to all the staff and students that attended our shows, and also to the people who have so graciously billeted us in their homes. That’s all for now. Take care!Ryan, Hearts in Stereo

It’s A Dream Come True!

I can remember walking into my high school gym, and being amazed by the transformation that took place in little under an hour. My gym had been changed into a stage for what looked like a rock concert. I bounced in my seat when the music started, and the lights began to flash as the band ran out. Little did I know, it was no ordinary rock concert. It was a one hour motivational speaking presentation, where personal stories were shared with everyone. The stories touched the hearts of many, and had me talking about it for weeks after.

Now, three years later, I found myself lying on the stage floor, peeking under the curtains on the other side of the stage. I watched the kids faces light up as the lights were dimmed at the start of the intro video. It was a phenomenal feeling to be able to relate to what they were feeling; not that long ago, I was in the audience feeling that same excitement. I couldn’t believe, and still can’t, that I am a part of something as huge as LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute)’s Think Day presentation. When people say “it’s a dream come true” many people laugh because it is such an overused phrase, but sitting in my high school that day, I spent every second of the show thinking about what it would be like to be the one up there on the stage. And now I am.

These past couple weeks, we’ve spent countless hours training and preparing our personal stories, getting them ready to do our East Coast tour with “Hearts in Stereo”. Weeks ago, when we started, I had no idea how we were going to make it as amazing as the show I saw at my high school. I think Team 2’s hard work has paid off and after having our first show today, I am so excited to see what the rest of tour will bring.

Matt, a School of Leadership student on Team 2

This Doesn’t Feel Real.

As I walked to the bus at 5:30am, I had no idea what to expect for our first show. Was this actually happening? The week before was full of show run throughs…I never thought the day would come that I would actually be talking in a school. It didn’t feel real.  Sitting in the cold bus trying to stay warm, I put my iPod in and frantically began reciting my story over and over in my head. I tried to catch an hour of sleep, but it was impossible!

As we pulled into the school parking lot it was still dark and it felt like we were just going to a new location to practice show run throughs. We began setting up and it started to feel more real. There were kids coming into the hallways and looking in the doors to see what we were doing. They could hear the bands music and were already interested!

It was almost ready to start the show and all of the kids started cramming into the gym. I started to get really nervous. This WAS really happening. We are not just practicing in a room full of empty chairs. There were 12 & 13 year old students and teachers waiting to hear what we had to say. It had to go smoothly. Allie, Shane and I took our places at the back with the sound board, lights and laptop and waited for it all to begin. Our team leader, Shane, said his lines and the show began! Everything went great and then it was my turn to go back stage and prepare to speak. I have never spoke in front of people, other than my close group of friends. I was always the quiet one who’s face got bright red when she spoke and kept to herself. As I stood back stage my mind went completely blank and I didn’t think I could do it.

As I walked onto the stage, in front of all those kids a huge feeling of relief came over me and it wasn’t so bad after all. I felt relaxed. All those kids wanted to hear what I had to say. They were actually interested. They looked up to me. It was amazing. It was the first time I wasn’t scared to be in front of so many people.

After the show the girls went crazy for the band, Bondless and the rest of us took opportunities to talk to the students and get to know them. I have never been asked for my autograph before or been asked out by a 12 year old boy… twice! Just to let everyone know, I did have to shut him down. I think he understood.

After we got back onto the bus to head home, I was already thinking about our next show and how excited I was for it. I am excited to get on the road and meet more amazing students!

Jessica, a School of Leadership student on Team 1

It’s Almost Over.

Oh Brandon, Manitoba…you were filled with extremely cold weather, movie tickets, and of course, in team two fashion, bus doors that wouldn’t open all the way.On Wednesday, we made our trek to Kinnesota, only to be greeted by a community potluck dinner just because we were in town! It was a great night, filled with amazing food and a Matee Step Dancing Group. It also happened to be Eddie’s 23rd birthday, (which we weren’t supposed to remember) so he kept warm in the cold winter night with his new leopard print snuggie.The next day we had a big event at the Alonsa Community Centre. Students making their way there from as far as an hour away, came to enjoy a Think Day presentation, a Think Global, and an Aberdeen concert to follow. The place was packed, and everyone had a good time!Making our way to Rosenort, we walked in the door to arms wide open, tables with place settings, and steaks on the barbecue. Yep, you could’ve guessed that we were at the Brandt’s! They are an amazing family… so much so that I didn’t want to leave! (They didn’t want us to leave either, so it was fair).After a show in Winnipeg, where we had many family, friends, and previous Hero Holiday’ers, we drove back to Dryden, Ontario. It’s crazy to think that I’m done province hopping now, and I won’t be leaving Ontario until I go to Mexico after Christmas!Tour has gone by way too fast! It seems like just yesterday that we were in Burlington learning how to set-up all of the gear, and getting to know everyone. 5 provinces later, with a week and a half left, I’ll be back in Hamilton anxiously awaiting going home for the holidays!Merry Christmas,Sarah, a School of Leadership Student on the Road