You will be happy to know that the 2 concerts over the weekend went quite well. Nobody was more surprised than me. The fact that the children sang hardly a note in tune seemed to make no difference to the appreciative Chinese audience. (I'm kidding, the kids were actually great.)I use the term 'appreciative' loosely because the amount of noise being made by them and the children who were getting ready for their performances almost drowned out the acts themselves! Chinese organisation within the concert Hall also left a lot to be desired with parents being able to sit with their children even when they were clearly told that they had to sit upstairs. The fussing and mollycoddling of their only child had to be seen to be believed.

I sat through about 10 acts and I actually enjoyed most of them. The costumes the children had on were absolutely amazing and it was a shame that I could not wander around taking heaps of photographs having to stay in our allocated seating area. There was some variety in the acts with a kung fu exhibition, gymnastics, dancing, recitals and lots of cute little kid stuff that I am sure we all remember from our kindergarten and primary school days. I did manage to take a few photographs to preserve the memory. The parents of my choir children were very happy with the performance and I guess in the end that's what mattered most.

That was on the Saturday. On the Sunday we travelled by bus to Yixi, where we have another branch of our school, to help them out with their performance because they only had 7 kids compared to our 30. There's safety in numbers when we talk about singing children. The concert Hall here was smaller but it was superb with full acoustics, comfortable seating and a wonderful stage.

With a lot less kids there were a lot less performances but I did manage to get pictures of one particular group who were dressed in amazingly beautiful costumes that included a huge peacock feather that stuck straight up in the air from their heads making them at least 6 foot tall. Ranging in age from 6 to 10 they were also cosmetically made up with lipstick, rouge, eyeliner, mascara and false eyelashes. Can't really work out the necessity for such a level of make-up that made such little girls look....well......older for one thing and a bit vampy for another.

Again, our little performance went over exceedingly well but we didn't stay for the rest of the show and herded the kids back on the bus after hundreds of photographs taken by the school and doting parents and of course add in the 'must have' shot with the foreigner and I was home an hour earlier than I would have been if I had been teaching classes that day. Bonus! I have given the choir next week off and I am scratching my head about what tunes to teach them given that we will have a lot more time to practice.