Well, last night was an interesting one, to say the least. The day started out normal, as details about what the afternoon and evening entailed were a bit murky at best. While I'm usually out of the loop as far as how things are going (or supposed) to go, I don't think I was much less informed on the specifics than the others about our plans for tonight.
From what I can remember, last week at some time we were notified that we would be performing for some people on Wednesday the 25th. From what I heard, it was going to be some of Jake's (our contact) friends, and we were to perform whatever we'd like for about 20 minutes. We began thinking of some tentative ideas for what we would do, but from what I know we put more concentration into other things such as our english corners for the students at the Harbin Institute of Technology, our Bible study at the Milk and Honey Land Cafe, and passing out flyers and connecting with students. So it wasn't until yesterday or so that we put some thought into the specifics of what we would do.
On tuesday, we learned that we would be performing only one song of our choice, and it would be at a university on the north side of town. Early plans was to perform Hey Jude, but instead we switched to Katy Perry's Firework, which we did sing (and Jacob played guitar) at our english corner on Friday afternoon.
So today our plan was simple – we were going to hand out some flyers at HIT for a marriage seminar, and than perform Firework afterward. So my team and team Peculiar Treasures met at the Milk and Honey Land Cafe, where we met our contact who was going to take us to where we needed to go. First we handed out the flyers, which was something we had done before a couple times (except before the flyers were for english corner), and that went smooth. We then got in a van and drove out to the university. There we met some students who were having their english corner, and we stayed and talked to them for a little over an hour.
There is when we learned that we were in fact playing at the New Student Ceremony, in which there were 2000 incoming freshmen attending, among others. A little different than expected. And only a little over an hour until go time.
We then went to eat at the cafeteria before our concert. Going into the bathroom, me and Jacob realized the floor underneath the urinals was wet, and the pipe that went from the bottom of the urinal to the pipe embedded in the concrete floor was non existent. Very cool.
After eating a little, we headed toward where we would be performing. It was a large outdoor stage situated in front of a very large grandstand – which was packed along with hundreds of students sitting between the stands and the stage. Pretty intense I thought. I definitely didn't see it coming. After observing some performances, including an opera singer and dancers who were pretty dang good, I felt a bit out of place. None of us really knew all the words to the song, and our only practice was at english corner (very casual) and one time through about fifteen minutes prior.
As we ran up on the stage, I was thinking 'what are we doing?'. Our contact, Lolly(?), went up with us and began shouting Chinese in one of the microphones (she told me afterwards that she said:(paraphrase) Give a big welcome to this group of Americans here to sing some American music). The crowd started cheering, and Jacob began to play.
The only parts I really know to the song is the chorus and the bridge, so I spent a decent part of the time lip syncing. All I remember seeing is Kaylaynn and Kaitlyn on each side of me, and a ton of people (many waving blue light sticks back and forth) in front of me, cameras flashing from all over. Bright stage lights made it a bit hard to see much of anything at first, but my eyes adjusted. At first I felt a bit awkward, but I quickly got in a groove and really began to enjoy myself (YOLO) and having fun. While I still really have no idea how we sounded, the crowd did seem to enjoy us.
So far the idea of having no expectation on and for the World Race has been an understatement. Time and time again things have changed, new meetings and other things pop up, and it makes it super difficult to plan far in advance. This was complete polar opposite to what we had expected, but hey, it was pretty awesome.
This is our life. It's crazy; it's adventurous, it's unexpected; it's fun. Keep a positive attitude, and this trip is going to be incredible.
