Well the end of the semester has arrived, and it was a doozy. Tests, projects and goodbye dinner to be had by everyone. I will be heading into a two month break, I will mostly be working and self studying for Chinese. I am going to continue to travel to the areas around Chengdu, but otherwise it will be a pretty relaxed summer. Today I though I would talk about something that was neglected the last month — preparation for Sports Day. This entry is the lead up to the wonderful event.
The whole idea of USAC students attending a Sports Day began on our way to Emei Shan. On the bus ride Wentao made several announcements. One of them was a call for dancers to preform during the Sports day parade. The initial reaction was not particularly excited, no one volunteered. So in true Jenn fashion I volunteered to help organize the dance and get people together for meetings. (I also volunteered Jesse without his permission, but no worries.) Slowly people fell in line for it a we had 12 dancers. Our first meeting was a brief one, we created a Wechat group called Traditional America Folk Dance and we were off. The first real practice was very small, one of the many one day holidays that occurred over the semester. Evalie came with a dance already made for a particularly up beat song and we were off. The first practice ended well, and I was genuinely excited for the first time since volunteering to organize the whole production.
After that we had several practices, switching of dancers, and last minute ideas. The dance was ready. Our dance crew was Jesse, Nigel, Josh, Evelie, Tanya, Raphi(former USAC student), Sean, Jack, Connor, and myself. The last independent practice was done out on the field and it was blast. Lots of laughing and enjoying ourselves, and teaching the last minute joiners how to do the dance. We did preform the day before when we had a group practice, and it went really well. Our dance was to be combined with a singing number, these two things would make up our entire performance. At times it was a little bit frustrating organizing everything, but it really worked out in the end. I have uploaded the video, please enjoy the performance. We were not the best dancers there, but we had a great time and that was truly all that mattered.
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| This is Lynn, one of the USAC interns. He was our cheerleader |
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