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Merry Christmas!
After many busy days, Sarah and I are spending Christmas day in our pj’s: opening presents, watching movies, reading books, playing on the computer - anything as long as we don’t have to leave the apartment to do it! We are looking forward to taking a trip to Hainan tomorrow. Chengdu has very depressing weather during the winter, so we’ve made it a yearly tradition to get somewhere sunny during a winter break. Sarah and I wish you a very merry Christmas - one day we will be able to say this in person, or at least be on the same continent!
Christmas Season Update
It’s Friday, and I (Dan) am taking a much-needed day off from school. Between the performances last weekend, getting things squared away with the play through this week, and Sarah’s concert last night, things have been busy. Here’s how things have been going:
Last weekend, some of my students performed a musical adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and it was a huge success. The first play I directed here in Chengdu here was performed once, but the popularity of the plays has been increasing steadily so that this last weekend we had four performances in our small auditorium, and over 600 people came! It has been a thrill to work with these kids, and they had a great performance. I’ll try to put up some pictures soon on this website, but until that happens, here’s a link to some pictures on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=3D75811&id=3D689645346
Sarah and the other music directors at CDIS came together for a Christmas concert last night, and it was termed the best concert we’ve had in the three years we have been here. There were performances by the 2nd-5th grade choirs, the middle school band, a flute choir, Sarah’s 8th grade music class, and her high school choir, which was split into a men’s group and a women’s group for some songs
We got our Christmas tree this week; both of us really enjoy live Christmas trees, but it has been hard to find good trees to use. Sarah, on a tip, went to a local plant market and found a beautiful 7-foot tree. It lights up our apartment well!
The end is in sight: next week is finals week, and then we have two weeks off! Sarah has reserved a hotel in and flights to
Hainan, an island known as the Chinese Hawaii. It will be a nice break!
Christmas Season: Busy…
The Christmas season is upon us (I’ve been playing Christmas music in my classroom since the beginning of November, and stores have been advertising Christmas since September or so, but I still hold the American Thanksgiving as the marker of the beginning of the Christmas season), and with this season comes the busyness! Yesterday Sarah’s choir performed at a “Christmas bazaar;” this week we put the final preparations on the Christmas play for our four performances this weekend. Christmas concerts are coming in the following weeks, along with caroling. We’re looking forward to a break when Christmas arrives…