Day 8 and 9

Day 8:

Today was primarily a travel day although after we checked in to our hotel we got to go and see the Ancient City Wall. This is a wall that is about 40 feet high, 50 feet across, and 13.5 km in long (in the shape of a large square). It was used to protect the ancient city of Xi’an from invaders. The kids got to walk around the top of it for an hour and a half and see the sights of the city. Many kids chose to rent bicycles for 20 yuan (rmb) and many of them managed to ride around the entire wall in approx 1 hr. Mr. Royer had some issues with the size of his bike and a rather uncomfortable seat and some of kids had a bike with chain problems which actually made them late to get back on the bus.

At dinner tonight we were told about an opportunity to see the WWF Panda rescue reserve and opted to take the kids there tomorrow rather than a walking tour of the city. Tomorrow is a busy day because we have our busiest concert so far and it will be a rather long day.

Day 9:

Xi’an is not nearly as big as Beijing but still feels quite crowded in parts. Beijing has a population of 17 million while Xi’an only has 7 million people. When we told our tour guide that our Vancouver area only had 2 million or so she sort of chuckled. I forgot to mention that as we came in to go to our hotel yesterday we drove by the shopping district and there is one “walking street” sort of like what Robson Street looked like during the Olympics……just think 10 times as busy! It was an absolute sea of people.

It is interesting to see kids grow and come out of their shells a bit while we are away….the “Mark”s in particular. Mark Tallman is having a blast and somehow manages to wedge himself into every photo that is taken! He also bought one of those Panda hats but Torri tugged on it to get his attention and tore a chunk right off!

Mark Dunn is a karaoke guru! We did a singing game on our bus once or twice and he completely changes when you put a mic in his hand. He gets quite a swagger about him when singing and has blessed us with a Rick Astley tune and a Burt Bacarat number. Speaking of singing, we have had many solo and group songs performed on bus ‘C’ since we have been touring…….even Erin Namgung has shared a song with us.

Our third performance was held at Xijing University. We performed for a crowd of 2000 + students and the kids sounded great. Once again I was thrown into some M.C. duties but at least I had 3 others to help me. I got stuck up there for about 5 minutes one time and the 3 other M.C.’s read from their script each……..and I had no idea when my turn was supposed to be!

This was a challenging performance to say the least. The sound engineers did not really know how to blend the piano sound with the choir and many people were talking throughout the entire evening of music. Audience etiquette at this theatre was not what we were used to and it was quite distracting but the kids rose above it. There were 5 Chinese instrumentalists who performed for us at the end of the evening and this time they had special effects! Moving lights, a bubble machine, and even snow fell from the ceiling on stage! This sure brought some laughter as we have never seen anything like it. The Chinese artists received the same amount of audience noise as we did so at least we know it was nothing personal!

**** side note **** What a surprise it was to many when the had to go and use the washroom only to find a 12 ft by 15 ft bay window facing the courtyard as the main feature of the room. There were no stalls per se and many kids ended up just waiting. More unique features that we aren’t quite used to! ****