Everybody Rongcheng tonight (everybody have fun tonight!)

Last weekend we accompanied a bunch of my musically-inclined students to Rongcheng, a small fishing community--home to an annual international fishing festival, actually--where they performed a variety show for a bunch of poor, dirty kids. This is the kind of stuff I am sort of opposed to; I grew up in the public school system, and I fully support free (or cheap) education for everyone. So the idea of my students and my school being the "haves" going to Rongcheng to show off for the "have nots" gave me a weird feeling.

But as soon as we got to the school and saw the bathrooms the kids and faculty have to use, I was immediately (re)thankful for my position at Daguanghua. The Rongcheng school had bathrooms worse than the bus stations--outside, communal troughs. I asked a colleague how bathrooms like this are effectively cleaned, and she explained a gross process that involves a giant hose and a shovel.

The school itself was in a really cool area, though. It was on the side of a mountain, overlooking the sea. Rongcheng has a lot of beaches, too (like Weihai), but there was something very choppy and untamed about the water there, so it was appealing for different reasons. It reminded me of going to Sokcho in Korea. We will definitely be going back there soon. It's close to Weihai.

When the bus pulled up the first day, we still weren't quite sure what we were doing or what the itinerary was. All we knew was that I was singing a song with some of my students. The song is called "God is a Girl", and it's blasted from every freaking hair salon in Weihai. The lyrics are really stupid "God is a girl, however you live, do you believe it? Can you receive it...?" over and over and over. I didn't have the heart to tell my boss that there are some people in the world who might be offended by the notion that god is a woman (excuse me--girl) and that a bunch of little Chinese kids with makeup on are dancing around, singing it. When I mentioned my upcoming performance to Cecilia earlier in the week, she started to go off on a tangent about how "they'd better not play that song around me...".

Cecilia got fired. They can play whatever they want around here now.

Ten of my students are from Rongcheng, so as we got off of the bus on that first day, different cars full of parents would pull up, bringing ice cream to everyone, opening up entire trunks full of watermelon and bottled water. The first day we were performing outside. And we had to erect a stage. I thought for sure there were going to be other schools performing, but no. We just had to allot a lot of time for the stage erection and practice. There were so many people from our school there, too. We brought a sound guy, a security guard, random parents, you name it. And we all crammed on one tiny bus with all of our props and sets. All of the kids had to sit three to a seat. It makes me fondly remember riding the bus to work everyday in Columbia, the seats on either side of me empty. Oh well.

As it actually got down to showtime, the security guard had to usher all of a bunch of local little kids and parents away, back to the audience. They all wanted to look at me. They had probably never seen a foreigner before. I tried to talk to some of them and to be friendly, but they were just too dumbfounded. They would (quite literally) turn around, scream and run away. Funny stuff. I explained the idiom "I won't bite" to some of my school folks, and they thought it was funny. But they were very proud to have their own English teachers to show off.

The first night's audience was probably the biggest crowd I've ever performed in front of. Not only were there children and teachers there in the audience, but it was more like half of Rongcheng was there. So many people. The song was fine. The two little kids who were also singing "lead vocals" were mic'ed, too, so basically the audience heard some screaming kids trying to unintelligibly sing and dance to that damn song. It was funny. And I was really awkward, but I tried to channel my inner cheeseball (a la Branson), pointin and waving to a lot of little kids in the audience.

The second night we performed at a nicer school (bathrooms inside!), and I got a huge round of applause just for walking on the stage. Again, they had hyped me up as their "beautiful American teacher" or something like that (I think that's what Rory heard. It was all in Chinese). The second day wasn't nearly as fun as the first. It was raining, and it seemed like we were waiting a lot more than the first day. And to top it all off, on our bus ride home our driver went the wrong way on a roundabout. Not once. Not twice. Three freaking times.

But it was a nice way to spend a weekend. As we were all falling asleep on the bus ride home, we heard my principal say "xie xie, Julia..." (thank you, Julia). I love my job.