So on Friday, because of the dance performance, we got to leave school early, which was about 1 and we all hopped onto a bus to Beijing #55 high school. There was a band that had 2 people on the electric guitar and 1 person on the guitar and a electric piano, and one on drums. Only one girl was singing and she was pretty good, except sometimes she was too quiet.
A group of 5 or 6 Korean boys were doing a hip-hop routine. There was one girl we picked up from the Beijing #80 middle school who danced alone. The school we went to was really small and it was not an international school.
The auditorium we performed in was nice, but it was different than I thought it would be. Instead of an audience, the only people really watching were the judges. Other school group’s came and went. These later on, we realized, were the try-outs. The real performance is later and the best performances will perform in front of a real audience.
We were able to watch a few other performances though. There was a poetry reading, play, and a few dances. One was a group of 15 or so reciting the Chinese pledge of allegiance. I wasn’t sure though. Another was a Cinderella play, but it was a little different than the actual story. One group did a hip-hop routine with all boys and they did okay. Another group was all girls and they also did something similar. Our groups, besides us, did pretty well. It was fun going somewhere else for a change. Coming back, the traffic was horrible and it took us over an hour.
On Saturday, I went out with friends to buy souveniers. We went to Yashow and Soshow, by subway. The subway system here is pretty easy to figure out. On the subway sometimes there are disabled people who ask for money. They are not like the poor people I saw in America, a lot of them have mutilated limbs or are blind. There are always lots of foreigners in Yashow from every part of the world. The places are now partially decorated with Christmas decorations. We even saw two people dressed up as Santas.
