1...2...3 Don't Mess Up!!

       If you've talked to me in the past few months, you've probably heard a lot about preparation for performances.  The Taiwanese go ape shit for these things, and you begin practicing for them months and months in advance.  I was a lucky duck and ended up with 3 performances all within 10 days of each other.  That meant a lot of cram rehearsals and prop making all at the same time.  There is an incredible amount of pressure put on the kids, especially for kindergarten, which is a little sad as they are just chidlren, and aren't performances supposed to be for fun?  No, not in Taiwan.  They are stressful and a lot of (unpaid) extra work. 
     Performance Number One was for the end of my Tree House 2 class.  It was on the 4th of July, and I mentioned before that we did Snow White and the Four Dwarfs.  We began practicing for it at the start of April.  I had to make a script for them that would be 30 minutes long, as well as include some songs and dances, and then play a game with the parents at the end.  Oh, and give out a special award to each student for something they're good at, and give a speech telling them how I'm leaving and won't be their teacher for Tree House 3.  My Taiwanese co-teacher made a 10 minute video with clips and pictures from over the semseter and showed it at the beginning of the performance, so overall the show lasted about 45 minutes.  The school rented costumes for the kids, but I made the backdrop and a few other props for them.

 The kids goofing around before show time.

     
        Performance Number Two was a graduation.  The main set of English classes here are called Step Ahead.  They start at level 1 and go through to 16, it takes about 4 years to complete the series.  I got this class at level 13, and now they graduated.  This one took place on July 12, and didn't involve as much work as the kids are so much older and able to make most of the props themselves.  They were also supossed to be able to write the scripts themselves, but it was a bit of a disaster, so they chose what they wanted to do, gave me the "script" and then I rewrote it so that it made sense and had enough characters for everyone.  There were 2 plays, and for some unknown reason one group really wanted to do "The Little Match Girl," only they changed it to "The Little Match Boy."  The other group wanted to do a news story about Jeremy Lin.  I had to write a conflict between him and Kobe Bryant.  Yeah.. that was interesting.  They also performed two songs, "Lollipop," no, of course not the Lil' Wayne rap version, the one by Mika, and "Golden Age" by.. I'm not sure, but it's that catchy song from the Heineken commercials.  I had to help choreograph a little, but the Taiwanese teacher was more involved for this.  This show lasted about an hour, and I also had to give a speech.  We began teaching these kids the songs in like Novemeber, so it was a slow and gradual process of learning everything, and they all did a good job.  No pictures from here because, well, the kids are older and didn't have costumes and not so cute, and I felt weird taking pictures of 13 year olds.

        Performance 3 took place on July 14.  It was kindergarten graduation.  There are 3 levels of kindy:  small, middle and big. At my branch there are 2 small classes, 1 middle, and 2 big.  Although it's mainly about graduation, it's also a chance to put on an all school performance.  Soo many shows to prepare.  The small and middle classes each did an English show, a Chinese show, and a music show.  The big classes did an English show, a music show, and a Japanese show.  So in total there were 15 shows.  For each show there was a costume change.  I had to get 20 three-year-olds into 3 different little oufits!  At least the order of performances was varied, so it wasn't too rushed.  The foreign teachers had to put on a little skit, so I was dressed as the Evil Queen of Hearts.  There was a Snow White, Alice, the Mad Hadder, and the White Rabbit.  For some reason the Taiwanese staff ordered these outfits for us, and then we had to make up a play for how they all came to be together.
       For my class, I had the kindy kids do "The 3 Little Pigs."  There were wolves and pigs and they were super cute.  I painted 3 different houses for backdrops, and worked with the kids a lot for them to be able to move around the stage and not get lost wandering about.  The wolves moved from house to house, howling!  They also sang 2 songs with little dances.  I didn't have to do much preparation for the other 2 shows, as the Taiwanese teachers took care of that, and they have a music teacher who did that show.
      We had to arrive at the venue by 1130 am, it started at 1, and ended around 4, then clean up til 5, and it was all finally over!  Since April we've been taking time and even full days out of teaching to practice, so it will be weird not having to do that anymore.  It's a pretty glorious feeling not having to worry about it.  It would have been even worse had I had a big class, because they were graduating from kindy and the teachers had to give speeches, put on longer performances, hand out diplomas, all sorts of stuff.

Costume Change number 1:  Music Show
       

Costume Change number 2:  English Show

Costume Change number 3:  Chinese Show

The Chinese Show was about forest plants and animals and then some evil people (in the witch hats and capes) that wanted to turn them all to stone! 

And the final outfit change was normal clothes, after it was over, some got very dressed up! 

        The manager of the branch was so kind and had arranged to take allll of us out to supper afterwards.  Foreign teachers and Taiwanese teachers, totaling around 25 people!  It was a very nice place, 5 courses and we were stuffed to the max.  Now, Tree House classes ended on Friday, Kindy ends in 2 weeks, and I'll be done as a teacher in 4 weeks!  Oh sherbert.. where has the time gone!?   

 The Kindy Foreign Teachers, being awesome!

 All of the LongTan Taiwanese Staff together. 

Before supper we had an hour to kill, so we went with the Japanese teacher, Neko, to get some drinks.