Another Very Exciting Adventure, by Carol

Jim and I had a very exciting adventure yesterday.We were asked to be extras for a series being filmed in Nicaragua to raise awareness of sexual exploitation of women in Latin America. Our friend who invited us indicated that we would show up at the hotel where it was being filmed at 6:00 a.m., have breakfast in the background of the scene, and that was it! So .... we get up at 5:00 and just as we're ready to walk out the door the phone rings and we're told they won't start until 7:00. We get there at 7, and the cast and all the staff, or whatever they're called (probably about 50, or so, folks) are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and they're serving breakfast for all of us. We don't start filming until about 9:00, by which time it's already hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk (real-feel yesterday was 106 degrees). I thought of Mike, my nephew who works as seconds in real Hollywood movies from time to time, all day yesterday, wondering how on earth he could love doing this as much as he does!!! At 11:00, as sweat was literally running down my LEGS, as well as back, chest, head etc., one of the sweet assistant directors apologized for the delays and I asked if she had some idea of how much longer it was going to take and she smiled and said they hoped to be thru at 4:00 that afternoon!!!! So, we sucked it up and repeated and repeated and repeated the scenes over and over again. They fed us well, all typica foods, and kept us in drinks, and there were globs of Conde Nest Traveler magazines, in English, so we made the best of it we could. A couple of our friends came in around 2:00 to add to the extras for a new scene (FINALLY a change), and that made the time go a little faster since we had friends to chat with in English. We actually had a bit of acting to do since we had to greet each other as if we were all meeting for dinner, then walk to a table, be seated, speak with the waiter, then mouth words as if we were in a conversation! This proved to be a bit difficult as the words we mouthed extemporaneously were designed to test the ability of each of us to NOT crack up:) Anyway, Samantha, the sweet ass't director, was almost right about the time we would finish, but it was more like 5:30 when we finally dragged our asses home!! When we got here we walked straight back to the pool, threw off our clothes and jumped into the 90 degree (honest) pool to try to cool off. I can tell you right now, neither fame nor fortune could tempt me to do that every day for a living!!!! I now have a much larger appreciation of Jennifer Anniston now that I see how hard she has to work for a living -- I'd whine too!!! BTW, before we left we found out that we actually get PAID for all this fun .... we walked away with 200 cordobas each, which is approximately $9.03 each :))))))))))) The scenes we shot yesterday will air in Nicaragua sometime in October, and the series appears in the Dominica Republic!