Choir practice has begun

Bass practicing

On Friday, one of the teachers came and interrupted my class to ask me if I knew how to buy sheet music off the internet. I said I wasn’t sure but that if it was all in English I could help him after I got done teaching. We had agreed to meet at 3 and one thing after another we didn’t meet til 4. However, we were able to find a copy of the music for the song he wanted for free which was really good. The song was The Longest Time. I had never heard it, so he pulled up the song on YouTube so I could listen to it and see if the sheet music he had printed was the same as the YouTube version. He then asked if I could help teach the choir the song this week as they compete on the 25^th(Christmas) and haven’t even started learning the song yet. I explained that I have never been a singer in my life but that I could try to help them and at least work on pronunciation with the students and help them learn the words.

the altos after many hours of practicing

Yesterday we were supposed to have started practicing, but then every time I went into the room they were practicing a different song so I would go and teach my next class. After school I watched as the one guy was teaching the Bass their part of Duh, Oohs and the occasional for the longest time. I felt I needed to watch them practice so I would know how to teach the Alto’s the words whenever they decided I should start teaching them. Well, today was the day. The main choir teacher told me that today I wasn’t go to teach my classes, just to work with the Alto’s on learning the words all day. So, having listened to the song in the choir room for about an hour yesterday I was starting to get a good idea of the tune and the words. This morning we went over the first verse many times just saying it, then practicing singing line by line until we had the first verse pretty well down and moved onto the second verse. After lunch, they were to go to their first class and so I went and taught my first class after lunch as well. Then, we met in the office where they had a computer with the song downloaded on the computer and listened to the first few verses over and over until they had them down and started on the first bridge. By the end of the day this is what they looked like and what I felt like. Just think, we only have a week until they have to have all 4 choruses and the two bridges memorized. It’s going to be a LONG week.