Having worked with a whole series of schools struggling with enrollment in BC it was with tremendous pleasure and a real sense of awe that I experienced the weekend of the Rose Festival at BSCIS. I had no idea....
Remembering that all information is printed in Japanese I was fully informed of everything... only I understood nothing. I knew that the school was in an uproar but I didn't know what was emerging. So ... I just finished an amazing weekend showcase of all of the huge variety of activities that happen at my school.
I along with 2500 other attendees enjoyed a huge varietty of events. There was the Japanese tea ceremony open house, required course for all grade twelve girls.
There was the home room decoration and project competition. There was the Volunteer Club soap making,
the Kendo club haunted house...
There was a performance of Annie in Japanese and traditional harp playing.
There was the calligraphy club displaying their work...
The proud teachers in their best outfits in the PR room (most of my job was to be there as the unique foreigner!)
And excited dads selling goodies as a fundraiser for the school.
Then add to that a breath-taking fashion show put on by our girls who specialize in fashion. They enter our school with this interest and spend hours and hours and hours designing, sewing and showing their clothes. There were a wide range of themes. Check out the ... yes, tartan;
The Vulcan new Star Wars theme...
with the lights off... and imbedded thread of LED in the dresses!
The Bon Bon look...
A corsets theme...
A wedding dress of course...
And the finale, paper (!) dresses...
It was stunning to see the variety and the effort that was put into these fashion works of art and how carefully they were shown. My question... where does all of this get stored?
The weekend also included main stage performances by the many different singing and dancing groups here including several full on rock bands:
A performance by the orchestra:
And a teen-idol type group inspired by the teen group AKB48, the most successful pop group in Japan today. (Check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKB48) This show came complete with screaming fans to set the stage!
Saturday night was a much anticipated event with students and staff only. This was where students could let their hair down, perform, have fun, laugh and celebrate. The most anticipated part of the show was where new staff (this included me!!!) are expected to put on a show to amuse the 1200 girls. I got roped into this early on with the group of new staff, some younger than my own daughters who took great delight in trying to teach me the moves of one of the girls favorite boy bands.
The dance:
The real "piece de resistance" that was hotly anticipated was me perfomring a solo (!) skit in Japanese (!) based on a very popular American entertainer that all kids know with a spoof on "Why the Japanese people..." Take a look at the real link and see how I compare....
This me talking about small Japanese portions of food:
This me talking about how "easy" it is to write Japanese...
It was pretty amazing to be performing in Japanese in front of 1200 screaming girls. This was not an experience that I had listed on my bucket list but hey... why not? It was fun! :)
So... back to Physics, Math and Chemistry in Japanese/ English. As I walk the halls I get giggles and waves and I hear people saying: "Why the Japanese people..."
Come back to Canada, and do that performance at the Langham.
ReplyDeleteYour new career.