Christmas fun

I have had a fair share of Christmas today. This morning my school had its Christmas party and this evening Lindsay and I went to see the Hong Kong Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker.

This morning's events were actually pretty fun. Last year, when I was working at Hess, the Christmas festivities were excruciatingly boring. There were some carnival games for kids to play, and that's about it. The event was quite obviously about making the school look good and trying to squeeze some extra money out of the families. You had to pay to play the carnival games. The management also put a lot of pressure on the teachers to make their performances look good. Taiwan is very machiavellian in some ways. Everything has to look good, and there isn't much emphasis on having things actually be good.

The big contrast with Hong Kong is that while the teachers certainly are under some pressure to make everything go well, the principal is confident enough in her staff not to interfere. Another reason that Hong is better than Taiwan is--I apologize for bringing up Taiwan. I don't really have much entertaining to say about Taiwan because it wasn't the greatest working environment I have experienced.

Anyways, things went smoothly today. The performances were simple and the parents ate them up. The nursery class presented a fashion show. Christmas is apparently somewhat like Hallowe'en here. Or maybe just for Christian kids. Our school didn't celebrate Hallowe'en because it's a Christian school. There were a few notable costumes. Chloe, a newer student, was accompanied to the stage by her mother. They were both dressed the same. Kurtis was accompanied by his older brother, both dressed as Peter Pan. Natalie, dressed as Mary, was accompanied by her older brother, dressed as Joseph. Ellie wore a big coat and reindeer horns. Luke dressed as a pirate. Lincoln, who cried during the rehearsal, managed a strong performance in his dog costume. There were many others that I'm not mentioning, but you can imagine what kids like this would look like in costumes:


They are pretty cute kids. These folks are only 2.

They have such great personalities, too. Once in a while I get reminded about how much of an influence I have over these little guys. In fact, here's an example:



The K1 kids performed a nativity scene, and each of the K2 and K3 classes sang and danced to classic Christmas songs for their parts.

A guest of honour of some sort gave a speech at the beginning. I have no idea what he said because it was all in Cantonese, but I gathered that it was directed at the older members of the audience as he spoke for nigh 20 minutes. I have difficulty keeping these kids on task for twenty seconds, so I'm sure most of them weren't really listening too attentively.

Afterwards they played games with their respective classes. I dressed up as Santa and went around to all the different rooms they were in. I was playing a beardless Santa, perhaps Santa in his youth. I really enjoyed this role because it gave me a lot of freedom to explore how Santa got to be the old, jolly elf we all know. Is Santa really just a philanthropist who loves giving? Or is there a darker side to him that we don't know about? After playing Santa today, I really feel like I have an understanding of what he is all about.

Anyways, kids love Santa. Contrary to my apprehensions, I was not urinated upon. Certain students were drawn to the fact that I was dressed up. One kid, Ernest, immediately busied himself with figuring out how his dad's camera worked so he could take a picture of me. The entire K2 class shouted my name when I walked into their room and started bouncing up and down because I was dressed as Santa. They didn't stop until I left.


As if all of this making merry were not enough Christmas cheer for one day, Lindsay and I saw the Nutcracker tonight. We decided to get dressed up just because we don't get much of a chance to dress nicely during the week. That Tchaikovsky really knows his ballet. I know many people would disagree, but I liken watching the ballet to watching cartoons. You just sit back and take it in. You don't have to think about what's happening; you just watch. It is one of the best forms of entertainment I've ever seen. I guess it would be boring if you watched it every day, but I don't see how you could do that anyway. I'd like to express more thoughts on the performance, but I just think that would take away from how nice it was.

oof... this is a long post. I don't know if anyone even reads this. I guess it's good just to have it here for reference.