Christmas Show at Christian University

Saturday, 18 December 2004

Tonight's show was a success. Matt and I went to a beauty shop to get our hair washed, conditioned, and straightened. We got our eyebrows done too. We wanted to get our nails done, but we didn't have time. I headed to Christian University at around 4 pm. I hung out with Jun and his mother P'Maiy, once I figured out where we were going to perform and waited for a couple hours for the van of our students to show up. Luckily, I brought a book to read while we waited. After discovering the program was about an hour and a half behind schedule and we weren't even on the program to begin with (Phu's father had arranged for us to come and perform, but he had no idea about the program, how it was going to run, and told me "I don't know the Christian way." I was thinking in my head, "Well, I know the Thai way, so this is going to be a long night of waiting."). We tried to change the program so that we could perform first. They told us we would be up next. "Next" turned into another hour and a half later. After we rehearsed a few more times backstage, the kids did fine. The hundreds of people in the audience loved our performance of "Over in the Meadow", and the kids did an awesome job with our last minute arrangement of English conversation. The audience oohed and aahed and clapped after each sentence the students said in English. The students sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas" with their Santa hats on. It was very cute. Our performance was definitely more original and unique than the other university students' who did lip syncs and dances to popular Thai pop songs. The president of the university came up to me afterwards and thanked me for bringing the students. She was very impressed. The students handed out brochures about our English Program. It was definitely a good way to do some PR and market our program. By the time we were finished, it was after 8:30 pm and everyone was famished. We ate about a 5 course Thai dinner, door prizes were given out, I met and visited with some American professors who teach at the university, and then by 10:30 pm, it was time to head home.