Foreign Language Singing Competition

last night was so much fun.

I attended the annual Foreign Language Singing Competition.

I was asked to be a judge, so Ned and I invited our American friends and (the ever ready for fun) Sun Peng. This is the event of the year for students. The foreign language department offers majors in three languages: English, Russian and Japanese. There were 16 finalists, and 2 songs were in Japanese, 2 in Russian and the rest in English.

Half of the contestants were my students, and I was so excited to see them wearing makeup, beautiful fluffy prom-like dresses, matching costumes, and the boys wore matching white jackets and tight jeans--hot! There was a giant screen behind the stage that showed colorful images that corresponded to the theme and feeling of the song. The announcers were beautifully dressed and professional. There were 3 of them: one spoke in English, one in Japanese, and one in Russian, depending what language the song was sung in. They announcers gave a brief introduction in Chinglish--something like this "This song expresses happy forever ecstatic feeling life journey we experience to you."

The performers were like mini pop stars. One of the performers, my student Jack yelled to the crowd, "Are you happy!?" He sang the song, "By the Rivers of Babylon" and won 3rd prize. My tall, cute, dimpled Mongolian student Alex sang the romantic and catchy tune, "Take me to your Heart" and had all the girls screaming and waving their glow sticks. The girl who won 1st prize sang "Jambalaya" a southern tune, and wore a short, gold dress and wiggled her body charmingly between each refrain. She mispronounced a lot of the words, but she was so cute and alluring that she won my vote, a perfect 10! Two of my male students sang a gangster duet together. They were both wearing matching white sport jackets. One of the boys was in my Mongolian class, the other in my Chinese class. The students in the Mongolian class were all standing up in their seats with their arms around each other smiling and laughing and waving at Allen who was up there on stage, nervously singing his heart out. When I turned around and saw how supportive and proud they were of their fellow classmate, my heart just burst. They were all beaming with their mouths hung open, and their hands clasped together. They sure let Allen know they were proud of him. Students here have a real sense of community, more than I've know or been a part of anywhere else. I feel proud to be their teacher.

The whole night was good vibes all around. Also, when they announced my name as a judge, and I stood up the entire crowd gave out a roaring cheer, and that made me feel pretty happy, too. At the last minute, they asked Ned to be a judge, but he declined so our American friend Ricky got to judge. We both had a good time admiring the students costumes, laughing at the ridiculous scenes of kittens and puppies being played to accompany some songs, and getting our paper cups of green tea refilled with hot water between contestants.

Today in class, we talked about the contest and the beautiful dresses the girls wore. At the end I had 15 extra minutes so I asked someone for their MP3 player, and we played "Take me to you Heart" and as a class we all sang the song together.



Chinese people + music = fun.