The Talent Show

To close out the camp there was a talent show. The evening also included an Olympic trivia contest interspersed between performances. This thing was painfully long--it started at 7:30pm and went past 11pm. As it was Friday, and these kids had been wearing the same two t-shirts since Sunday, the whole room smelled like an old wet sock. To make matters worse, this girl next to me (pictured) kept touching my arm hair. She was pretty much petting me just like that gay guy a month ago (don't ask...just check out the earlier post). I kept telling her to stop, but there was no getting through to her. Erica finally offered to trade seats, since she was that girl's teacher and knew she wouldn't mess with her. Well, part of the stench, we believe, was from that same girl--we think she crapped her pants. Jes and I passed these Febreeze-like wipes between us to cover our noses. Erica regretted her decision.

Anyway, Sam stole the show with his rap performance (see 1st pic), but my own act didn't fare too badly either. Earlier in the week I played 对面的女孩看过来 (Girl From Across, Look Over Here) for the kids in class, and they went nuts. This is the kind of song in China that everyone knows--old and young alike. After class that day I was back in my dorm, and I heard a lot of the kids from my class just hanging out singing it. It's kind of infectious. Anyway, they begged me to sing it, and I agreed.

However it wasn't singing, I found out. They wanted to just coordinate a dance to the words and lip sync it. I had it pretty much memorized, so I thought this was a wussy way out. I wanted to, and did, sing and dance simultaneously. We practiced for the first time just 4 hours before the show.

The show ended up going pretty well, except that by the time we got on stage we'd been sitting there for close to 3 hours, so people were getting bored. Oh yea, and my microphone didn't work. I was pretty much shouting, but only a few people heard me. However, we had a few fun parts...I threw in a "大家准备好了吗?!" (Is everybody ready?!) right before the song went crazy. And then at the end when I said "Forget it, let's go home" to walk off the stage, I picked up one of my dancers like a surfboard under my arm. My four dancers were the four trouble makers James, James, William, and Kobe Bryant. Oscar was down below helping us with the dance movements--he didn't want to perform after he got the busted eye, but he still wanted to be a part of it. The picture at the end is of all my squad.