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| Your sneak peak into the bag of presents before they were handed out. |
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| one student with her presents. It was more fun to hand them out than to take pictures, so this is the only pic I have of a student with a presnt. |
Christmas morning I woke up at 5am to a room full of girls
starting to get up and get ready for the competition. I read the Christmas
story in bed, then got up and got ready. After I got dressed, I got out the bag
of presents I had prepared and handed them out to the students. In each present
I put a little cake to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, a yarn angel because the
angels announced his birth, and three different candies for the three gifts
given by the wise men. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could come up with on
such short notice and I thought it was meaningful even though I ended up only
telling a few of them what the meanings were… Some of them didn’t really
realize it was Christmas morning even though we talked about it last night. It
has been really strange to me that many students here don’t know that December
25th is Christmas. They just think that whenever someone says come
to celebrate Christmas with this group that day is Christmas. However, they
were more than happy to receive a present and it giving away 43 presents made
me feel better about being away from home on Christmas. For it is better to
give than receive.
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| singing at the school we stayed at. |
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| warming up their bodies before warming up their voices |
By quarter to seven we were all ready and walked our bags to
the bus where we loaded them up, then went to where the school we were staying
at had prepared breakfast for us. I was amazed as they served one of my
favorite dishes when I lived in Chiang Rai that I haven’t had since I got here.
It was such a wonderful Christmas surprise. After breakfast the students sang
for some of the people at the school who had helped to take care of us, then we
went and were trying to find bathrooms when my phone rang. My family called
from the Christmas Eve service back home, so I was able to talk to a lot of
people from my church. What a blessing it was to hear all of their voices. It
was a little difficult to hear at times as we loaded on the bus, drove to the
competition, and walked to where they were to compete all while I was on the
phone. However, all of the moving and distractions kept me from crying as is my
typical response to hearing everyone’s voices that I haven’t heard in a long time.
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| warming up their voices |
When we got to where they were to compete they gathered and
warmed up. It was funny as the first thing they had them do was jumping jacks
before they started warming up their voices. They warmed up in the middle of a
lot, there were other groups around that were warming up as well, but ours was
by far the best of the 3 or 4 other groups I heard. However, there were over 30
schools competing so I knew our school was really good, but I also am biased
because I’ve worked with them, teach them, and love them all.
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| just a little sewing before the competition, you never know what you'll be asked to do, luckily I had a needle and thread handy |
When it was our turn to line up the teachers had to hold
onto purses, and wallets. It was so funny as we each had several different bags
on us and I had 3 or 4 in my bag as well. They did last minute checks of
uniforms to make sure collars were down, neckties were in place, and there
weren’t any dust spots from sitting on the ground. I was talking with the bass
boys and reminded them to watch the choir director and not me while I was
taking pictures. Roughly translated they said they would stare at the handsome
man (the director) while they were singing and then stare at the beautiful girl
(me) the rest of the day. Oh how they tease me, but there really was a lot of
truth in that sentence. Being the designated photographer the teachers made
sure I was allowed in and had me go in before the students. The only rule was
no video, only pictures could be taken while they were competing.
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| competing |
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| competing |
When they started they sounded so good. As they sang We Wish
You a Merry Christmas I almost cried to see all of them on the stage singing on
Christmas Day. However, I had to keep it together so I could take pictures and
I didn’t want to worry the students while they were singing. When they finished
they took a bow and filed back out of the room. One of the judges called the
director over and talked to him for several minutes. I was so worried they had
done something wrong and would be disqualified. However, the director came to
the back where the teachers were and told us that the judge had just told him
the only thing to change would be to add motions to the one song. The director
then told me it was my job to come up with motions and teach them to the choir
and that we were going to change from We Wish You a Merry Christmas to For the
Longest Time (the song I had been helping them with last week). We hadn’t even
been finished singing for 5 minutes and he was already making plans to go on to
nationals. We listened to the group after us and our choir was by far better
than theirs. The teachers then went out and met with the students. They were
given half an hour to walk around and buy things before meeting at the bus to
go to the beach.
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| with two of the female teachers and a student before leaving the school |
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