Last day of school, final performance today. It really has the “last day of school” feeling, even though we were only together with the students for 3 weeks.
Students have been working on Pop up books, and I got to read some of them about their thoughts about the differences between Americans and Chinese. Some of their thoughts were VERY interesting!
Morning classes where regular, hour-long classes that gave me the chance to have the kids do some writing about working with me. One child wrote, “I will remember you until the future.” Got lots of love notes, in English and in Chinese. I also was able to get through for one class and have them tell me their Chinese names and I tried to say them. Some were really hard for me to say.
I was able for two classes to tell them the classic American ghost story “Whose Got My Golden Arm”. It worked like a charm. One 4th grade boy told me it was VERY frightening! Bringing these children stories that they have never heard before was a great joy!
We had short classes in the afternoon filled with handing things out and doing final evaluations, then we moved into somewhat chaos.
It was decided to have all 100 students gather in front of a new mural that had been created during the camp for its dedication. It was so hot, and they were crowded like crazy. I had to break up an honest to go fistfight between too overly hot boys. The sound system was terrible and no one could hear.
THAT was a picnic. Then we had official photos taken with each group of 25 campers. This took nearly an hour. We had a little time left before going into the final ceremony and speeches.
A couple of us ended up supervising some students wading in a shallow pond on the campus catching tadpoles with their hands. I was afraid that they would fall in and have wet clothes for the remaining time, but they were okay. Then there were speeches for an hour from everyone: a student, teacher rep, principal, government officials, you name it.
And THEN, the performance began (oh yeah, first they used some kind of cool cardboard tubes that shot confetti all over the stage which then had to be cleaned up before we could get kids up there.)
The students pulled through, as they had the two weeks before. These are very talented kids.
My group performed some Latin American and Caribbean music: La Bamba, The Banana Boat Song (day oh, me sing day oh…) and did the Mexican Hat Dance.
The older students had a series of songs about Africa and African American experience, including a kid who did an amazing “rap”. The youngest ones sang This Land is Your Land. It really did bring tears to my eyes. That somehow we were bringing a deeper understanding between peoples.
Then we had a feeding frenzy of students wanting our emails, wanting to get their photos taken with us, wanting us to sign their camp t-shirts.
This is the closest we will get to being a rock star, for sure. It was really special and pretty sad to say goodbye to these lovely children.
Then VERY quick showers and we were off to the official banquet with the Chinese teachers at a very swanky hotel.
Lovely, with great food and lots of “toasts” and more photos all the way around.
Then, we had rented out a private Karaoke disco in the hotel. For the next two hours people sang their hearts out. It turns out that the Chinese love Karaoke and can sing in English and Chinese. Some of the very shy Chinese teachers were excellent singers. I did my part on Twist and Shout. Lots of dancing and singing and fun.
Headed back to the hotel at 11, tired but pleased at finishing up in a beautiful way.
No comments:
Post a Comment