Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Happy Chinese New Year! Tonight is actually New Year's eve but today marks the first day of vacation. We have an odd vacation schedule these next couple of weeks. We taught Monday and Tuesday this week and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday next week. It's been a bit of a grind since winter break so I'm very happy for the time off. My one complaint is I'm taking an online class so I've got some work to do during this break. Bummer, but not the end of the world.

Yesterday at school we watched a New Year's celebration. There was a troupe from Tainan University who did a couple of performances and some groups from KAS did some dances as well. It started off with firecrackers, as do all celebrations here. First you have to scare away all the ghosts, of course. In this case, there might have been some pretty scared preschoolers because, boy, were they loud!


The drums also help to keep the noise level up. Next up was the lion dance from the Tainan group. They were clearly telling an elaborate story, which I didn't understand, but they were great fun to watch.


Do you notice a certain sameness to the crowd of students watching? Lots of dark-haired kids dressed in red. Just about everyone at school wore red, the color of good luck and good fortune.


The grades 1 to 4 sang a song. There were many parents on hand to take their pictures and capture the moment on video.


One of my favorite performances was by the after-school Chinese fan dance club. It's a group of first to third grade girls and one boy and they were adorable!



One of the things I like best about KAS is that there are kids from preschool through high school interacting all the time. It feels like one huge family. Little brothers and sisters get to see their siblings in the hall and they all see each other at performances like this. 

I hope that this intimate quality doesn't get lost in the new building. Not only is it much larger, it's also a little more segregated, as most of the upper school is housed in one half and the elementary in another. We only have four and a half more weeks in the old building so we'll see pretty soon how it feels.

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