This week was full of ups and downs. Two of our soloists for the programme were ineligible for practice because their classmates had chickenpox. Since they were pretty bummed, I asked them to come in yesterday afternoon to do some private training. I thought they would be able to sing some acapella, but quickly realised they could not. Frantically deciding what song we should sing, I settled on "My Favourite Things," because there is a butchered version by Ariana Grande that a few kids knew so I worked with that. Yet some of these kids are lacking so much confidence that only three people seemed to put a conscious effort to practice. But, the song works out with three singers, and I had a great time teaching these kids who were willing to learn. Andrew came in to help too, for which I was really thankful; it’s too bad that we couldn’t teach singing together because I really enjoyed the dynamic between ourselves and between the teachers and students. Classes went a lot better than I expected, and the children were pretty open to learning the material. For some reason, many of the problem students I had for my later classes in previous weeks were no longer there, so who was left were a fun batch. I thought we had one more week of classes next week, but it seems like we only teach for two more days, which seems a bit unfair to the last batch of seventh graders, especially since I thought they were the most well behaved.
The second thing of note was the pressure I saw mounting on the other groups. Joan came into the office to finalise a few things, and her looming presence over the group significantly hampered the mood, especially when she threatened to remove kids from the groups and leave holes in the choreography for synchronicity. The dance instructors were NOT having it, especially because they were not even done teaching the dance, and the ominous consequence of cutting actively soured the mood in the room. Acting was an entirely different nightmare, as the directors and Joan seemed to have different ideas for what the program should be, and there was some substantial clashing and forced revision; on top of the already rowdy group of kids that seemed to be difficult to handle. The overall atmosphere was one of palpable stress, but mainly because the students cared so much for the 九中 students, and they really wanted all of them to perform. I actually had a great time staying until after midnight with Andrew and Jillian one night to help them with their script after I already had spent two hours with some singing kids. It was fun discussing and translating as a bonding experience, and it beat going home to probably do nothing much. But I learnt two lessons from this aspect of the week; quasi-humorously, if you’re thinking about applying for Zhuhai’s 15th, 20th, or 25th year- don’t. Last year had a semi-relaxing time on the school stage and could run their own programme, but this year, since some people INSISTED on having the performance at the television station, excessive and unwieldy amounts of freedom and creativity were sacrificed. The stress from other years seemed to be at the end when they were preparing their acts for the show. For a while, we didn’t even know if we would all get to perform in the show, and it ended up that the dance groups were robbed of half of their time. This leads me to my second point- I’m chilling. Yes, I’m constantly working overtime and helping projects for which I am not even a part, but our portion of the programme is set, cutting people doesn’t really influence us, and when Joan came to listen to our singing, I felt like I just carried the group with the piano to placate the authorities. Easy. They got off our backs.
I have some strong opinions about our volunteering venue though. We went to the autism centre before and it was far from volunteering. We just paraded around and danced for a while with no training on how to interact with these children aside from a 10 minute briefing by me (which I am by no means remotely capable of providing such training). At the site, a few students were getting bitten or hit by the students, and being kind Duke students, did not say anything about it and brushed it off. I thought that after that, it would be over and we could really volunteer at a site where our services would be meaningful and we could actually serve. To illustrate my point, I will use Friday as an example. The seventh graders had their running examination and they seemed pretty intimidated (they were drinking Red Bull???) A few of them wanted us to come down and cheer them on, and it felt like a win-win for everyone at that sight. We got to interact with the children in a new, more sociable way, and hype them up for their test, and they got to interact with us in a novel way and have us serve as a sort of cheering squad for them- both sides felt like they were gaining something from this interaction. But we were called away to again go to the autism centre, where we first sat eating fruit for a while, and then danced the same dance we did last time and teach it like we did last time. But aside from being repetitive, the next part was what took the cake for me. I was “asked” to talk about my brother and out family’s situation for 15 excruciating minutes, but I cannot say know to our professor so I had to do it. But for me, it was almost surreally disrespectful for me to share about extremely personal situations to not only Duke students, but to autistic children themselves siting in a circle, and some parents. If the kids understood, they must have been hurt; if not, there was no point of me saying anything there or me being there at all. One could claim it was for the parents. If that was the case, I am thankful for those Duke students who asked questions to make it less awkward and discuss the topic, but the parents said nothing. They were on their phone or making sure their child didn’t make noise, but were obviously disengaged from the conversation, making it seem that my vulnerability was pointless. The one mother who did ask a “question” lauded that Chinese families don’t have as much resources and I was lucky- a far cry from a question. Lastly, though I don’t doubt Yanan’s capabilities in anyway and it was unfair to put her on the spot as a translator in a highly specific domain with niche vocabulary, these factors combined to make the translation into Chinese rather basic, losing much of the nuance that I tried to state for the Duke students to better understand the situation. Knowing some Chinese, I could hear that some details that I purposely included weren’t being translated, but I am in no place to question the translation abilities of my superior. However, this only furthered the feeling that my emotions/feelings and story were useless as it wasn’t worthy of being translated in a nuanced way (though I know that wasn’t her intention, but it was how I felt at the time) not worthy of being heard by the parents on their phones, and not understood by any of the students at the centre. After I was done sharing I felt empty, and wanted to leave as fast as possible and go far away by myself so I could recompose myself in private. I hope this situation never happens again to anyone, and that our volunteering would be a better match between our capabilities and the needs of our environment around us.