The cultural performance had each group performing each item they had prepared beforehand. The A-Team had a presentation on Singapore's culture planned, Group B with some cultural games, Group C with a wayang kulit (shadow puppet) show, Group D with a NDP song singing session and then finally Group E with another NDP song.
With the many local freshmen who were our audience for the night.
The A-Team with our cultural costumes. Gave out some ketupat made with ribbons at some point and the local students got so excited. Too bad there wasn't enough to give everyone though, since I wasn't exactly expecting such a large audience.
For this presentation, we had to borrow traditional outfits from our friends of different races. I had to borrow the white baju kurung from Diyanah. Thanks, by the way! :D
For this presentation, we had to borrow traditional outfits from our friends of different races. I had to borrow the white baju kurung from Diyanah. Thanks, by the way! :D
Since I was rushing to get to the lecture theatre for the cultural exchange, I left my camera in the dorm room, so I don't have much photos of the actual event. ):
Nonethless, I enjoyed the local student's performance. They sang, they danced, they acted and we laughed. I didn't expect them to provide us with so much performances, and actually felt guilty that we didn't put even more effort into our performances.
The performance the girls have been waiting for! We practiced for weeks to finally be ready enough to perform the well-known Wonder Girls' Nobody. Credits to Brenda for sharing the video with me!
The roomates with Agnes and Jamie the awesome dance teachers who taught us the dance countless times with much patience.
The final pose.
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Personal reflection
I mentioned previously how much I liked to share our Singapore culture, I think. So today was a great chance to do so, and I was glad for it. In fact, I was hoping we'd get to do more cultural exchanges on this trip.
Nonetheless, I'm glad the crowd wasn't unresponsive during our presentation, especially due to the language barrier. I tried my best to translate the slides from Mandarin to English, so hopefully it didn't have any discrepancies. They seemed to be rather interested in our Singaporean culture, too, as most other locals here have.
We must preserve racial and religious harmony.
We value our diversity and are determined to stay a united people.
Today was another great example of the great hospitality shown by the locals. We ourselves were preparing for performances too, and I know first-hand how hard is it to come out with a performance and then get everyone together to practice and rehearse. The thing about their performances was that it all actually seemed flawless. There weren't any hiccups (not that I know of, anyway), and even the emcees did a great job.
The amount of effort put into all the local students' performances today was imminent and I'm really grateful for it.When I was handing out the ketupats as gifts to the audience, you could really see that they were making an effort to speak English to us. I was really touched by this gesture, since it's probably not easy for them to speak a language they're not familiar with, just like us when we were trying to explain our culture in Mandarin.
One thing that this trip has proved to me, with my own eyes, was my previous impression that the Chinese were unfriendly and fierce. I have really never been more wrong.
