youtube clips for this blog are at http://youtu.be/Y7Vpt3vXI7M (drumming), http://youtu.be/sVxYglz5xfI (choral piece), and overall view of the day
Every day is international day
at our school but once a year we call it International Day. The difference is
that we can dress up and be a country – usually one we are from. I chose to be
Australia because I sort of am an Australian – a duel citizen, being born in
the States and only living in Australia for 22 years a bit less than a third of
my time on this planet but enough Australian and with no one else representing
it I tossed myself into the nationality pool for a day. Narda
could have been the real Australian but she joined the Dutch having been born
there. We are both Australian by next-after-birth spot; though she was a boat
person having arrived with assisted passage during those days Australia was
flirting with that part of Europe to come and be them back in the 1950s. Now
days a boat person is frowned upon and the unhappy lot get tossed into
detention centres. I was a plane person arriving in
1981 and Narda was a boat person so really I too am
an Australian though I am told I sound more like I am from New York.
I wore my son’s clothes as one does on these types of days. Leigh played for Australia before signing
with the LA Dodgers and this was his shirt he wore on the U-18’s World Series
in Canada in 1998.
Last year we had the Drum Club
come out from Dalian and they did not fail to entertain and get us all moving
again this year. I made a bit of a clip and put it on youtube
drums http://youtu.be/Y7Vpt3vXI7M -
though only three minutes of about half an hour I recorded. Like last year this
was the first warm – sort of warm day, of the year it got up to 16 centigrade
which I think is 61 ferinheight
only because Narda says that 16 turned about is 61 –
and as she has reminded me in the past she comes from the clever country as
Australians say – but I too am sort of from the clever country and I never know
stuff like that.
I took hundreds of pictures but
I got smitten by pictures of shoes which is unusual as
I am not into footwear a whole lot except for the practical purposes of not
stepping in dog shit and stuff like that. Maybe it was because I had on my
son’s baseball shoes that he pitched in when he played for the LA Dodgers. I
have had them in my closet for a decade – well lots of closets as I have moved about
a dozen times since getting them in 2003 and I had never put them on. They fit
well and being baseball shoes they have cleats on the bottom and being in that
shoe frame of mind I took these photos amongst hundreds – not of feet but of
people too.
A highlight to the whole day for many was the world premiere
of a song written in several languages by Lana Mountford
in the state of Washington for Dalian American International School and
Directed by Tyler Smith. The work was done through emails and Skype and though
the performance in our gym is not as good as in a concert hall this gives a bit
of a sample of it. My film class Skyped Lana at the
start of her work last October and again last week. She is part of a group who
write choral pieces for schools. I am not the go to person on this so I am
writing from a very limited perspective which is that she was given a poem and
had to compose her music using several languages. She said was fine with the
English and Spanish and I think German parts but writing sections in Chinese
and Korean was her biggest challenge. I put it on youtube
but it does not do the piece justice. My video suite is two rooms away and I
have been listening to them practice for many weeks. Having it played in a gym
with people milling around and speaking themselves in many different languages
made it more difficult. Nevertheless here is my clip of it on youtube, http://youtu.be/sVxYglz5xfI
Our music teacher Tyler Smith
Had them right on target…
There were lots of other
performances as well as parade of nations at then end
– I carried the Australian flag as mentioned earlier and there were dozens of
countries set up throughout the school.
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