Chinese Talent Contest

Hello, it's been a while! but I've been super busy. Life as an exchange student, it's kind of ridiculous. So, as some of you might know, this past Saturday was the Mandarin Speech Contest and I wrote and helped translate a play abou a Taiwanese exchange student at Hogwarts. I have to admit, I was glad when Satuday finally came! I was tired of bribing everyone to come to practice and having them treat me like I was pulling their fingernails out. I got to the theatre and found out that, against their promise, there was not a projector to project the English version so the exchange students could understand what we were saying. So that was frustrating.

So, imagine my... shock when 9:00, starting time, comes and my Dumbledore, who has the first lines in the entire play isn't there. The first act was the girls from, my class, we were singing the Chinese alphabet and dancing. Luckily, we managed to switch with Imme, the Dutch girl, and ended up going later. Harry Potter: Act 1 was the 5th act and the dance was now the 7th. By the time we had to get ready to go, Mari (Dumbledore) was still not there! So I ended up being Dumbledore. Luckily, she showed up in time for the alphabet and I restrained myself from strangling her. I mean, c'mon! That was the only scene she was in and she blew it! You know what her excuse was? She slept in!

The second act went okay, until we the scene with bubble tea where Ron tries to puncture it and it explodes, but we couldn't do that because it would make a mess. So we changed it and he ended up stabbing his arm. But the guy, Andrew, who played Ron has acted before so he got all into it and fell on the floor and dropped the tea and it ended up exploding anyway. Me and Dan ended up cleaning it all up while they kept acting.

The third act went better. Beforehand, I covered Chris's, the German playing Voldemort, face with talcum powder so he looked a little like Voldemort. It actually worked better than I thought, he looked really scary! I was in this act as a Super Junior guy. It went pretty well. I ran out of memory on both memory cards, so I couldn't film the whole thing. But other people did, so I'll try to get it from them and put it up on facebook.

At the end of the show, they gave out awards, which was pretty disappointing. Instead of giving awards out to entire acts, they gave them to individual people. We all had to wear numbers and they picked who was best. Malfoy and Ron from Harry Potter got an award each. They gave 5 of them out. And awards to the 2 best acts. The boys from our class did a song and dance and they won first place for best act. The other awards went to the people from the top class. Still, it was a little disappointing. I don't mean to sound selfish, but I put a LOT of work into that play, and the only mention of me was when an American girl was introducing our play and said it was written by a Canadian and sort of gestured to the Canadian girl standing next to her, which was not me. Another American girl, Josette, did a dance to a Chinese song by Super Junior and sang along with 3 of her classmates. They put a lot of work into memorizing the lyrics and doing the dance and they didn't win anything. Rotary told us there would be an award for fluency, best costume and creativity plus best 5 acts would get awards. Josette mentioned to me yesterday that they top 5 awards went out to the best looking people. I don't really agree with that, but it's true that the Taiwanese people are pretty shallow and all the judges were girls. Oh well, I did my best and it obviously wasn't good enough. I'm over it. Until next Speech Contest!

We have to take out Mandarin exam next week. This will determine if we stay in our current class or get either promoted or demoted to another class. I'm in the middle level class. I like it, but there are an excess of Americans. Christmas is also this week. I can't believe it. It doesn't feel like Christmas, but I have to say that the temperature has dropped considerably. Yesterday was really cold and I had to go mountain climbing with my Rotary club. Then I went out with Josette, Aurelia and Quentin, both from France and Miguel from Mexico for dinner. It was a lot of fun! I'm actually wearing a scarf and jacket now and my hands are freezing! I should have brought gloves. And I'm inside! The thing with schools in Taiwan is that they're practically outdoors. There are windows surrounding the class and the halls are a floor, a roof and open space. I'll have to take more pictures I don't really know how to describe it. My fingers are so cold, I'm sure I've made a typo somewhere in here. Also, the apartments here have tons of AC, but no heat! So I'm pretty cold at night and it's hard to get out of bed in the morning. Aurelia said last night that you know it's cold when the Canadians are feeling cold. Surprisingly, I'm the last Canadian to feel cold, and I'm from the most southern part of the country!

When I meet Taiwanese people, they always ask either one of 2 questions: 1) Where do you come from? and 2) Did it hurt? (pointing at my nose) I've also had, Is it real? (also about my nose) then they scream when I pull it out and show them. But when I tell them I'm from Canada, they answer with 'Vancouver? I've been to Vancouver before!' or 'My (insert relative here) lives in Vancouver!' and then I say no, I'm from the other side of the country, I've actually never been to Vancouver. I actually had one lady that asked where I came from, I answered Canada and she said 'Montreal?' and I said no, it's closer to Toronto and she said 'Montreal?' and I said no, it's sort of close to Montreal, kind of close to Ottawa. And she said 'Montreal?' and I said yeah, I'm from Montreal.

So, going back to Christmas, I'll be at school for Christmas. Christmas Day is my school's sports competition because Boxing Day is the school's birthday. So I need to be at school early on Saturday. I haven't had a proper sleep in so long. Since over a week ago, I've been going to bed at 11:00ish and waking up at 6:00. I couldn't sleep in this weekend either because of the Speech Contest and mountain climbing. And next weekend is my school's birthday. I'm not sure what my class if doing. I think we're selling food and they want me to help them out, which I'm happy to do. Thankfully, I don't start until 11:00. I'm also making them cards that say Merry Christmas in both Chinese and English and taping some hershey's kisses and hugs that my parents sent me to them and some candy canes whichI found here for really cheap. I'll distribute those on Friday.

Well, it's almost time to head back to class. Sorry this took so long. I'll write again to tell about Christmas and my school birthday. Happy first day of winter!