Harbin Day 2: Woke up this morning feeling refreshed after a long and much-needed sleep! Found the crew at the enormous breakfast buffet in the hotel before taking off to our workshop. There was an amazing variety of chinese and american foods to choose from, but i was mostly in coffee mode. Headed down to another university for our class at the music department and had another exceedingly warm reception by the staff and students, complete with photo rush and all! An interesting thing that has been happening in these classes is that although we have translators, several students ask their questions directly to us in French. Very cool to have a common tongue with a few folks! Nick had a slideshow going while we played today which was a nice touch. After that we were invited to a formal lunch with several of the University staff including the head of the music department, the director of international exchanges, a local radio personality, and a beautiful chinese opera singer who lives in Germany. Even more extravagant than last night, this meal was incredible! So many dishes on the giant round revolving table, and good old Harbin beer to wash it down. Toasts commenced and we stuffed ourselves silly, chatting away about various things when we learned that the director of the music department is a famous chinese singer! So we egged him on to sing for us and after just a little prodding he pulled out a karaoke track on his iphone and sang the heck out of unchained melody in English, even though he needed the translator to speak to us! And let the show go on! I got the beautiful young opera singer to do one after that and she sang Mozarts Marriage of Figaro in Italian while we all sat in wonder. What an experience! After lunch we received some gifts from the University people and went back to the hotel to chill for a while. Tonight we have another show where we played this morning and then another formal dinner! Cant wait! Tomorrow were flying off to Shanghai for two days off for the Sweeping of the Tombs holiday. Woohoo!
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 08:08:52 +0000
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