July 2, 2007

Everyone getting their Awards, originally uploaded by eiratansey.

Awww, today is Jay’s birthday. We had a birthday cake for him at dinner. The cake was pretty tasty, but I do miss American style cakes and desserts. Cakes here are fluffier – like angel food cakes without as much of the good sweetness. And there isn’t much frosting on cakes and it’s not very sweet or creamy. Still – it’s cake.

Today we got to judge an English song contest. I guess being native English speakers was the only qualification for being judges. Our friend Killy sang this song called “God is a Girl” that Kellie (our American Kellie) and I helped her with a few weeks ago. This guy (who’s English name is Oscar) sang the R. Kelly song “I Believe I Can Fly”. While his English pronunciation wasn’t as good as the others, his performance was ridiculously wonderful. The “I Believe I Can Fly” guy and Killy had really good performances. I thought there was going to be one overall winner, but as it turned out, the top four (including Oscar and Killy) got “distinctive awards”. I guess my American sensibility was like, “What, no winner, winner?” Ah..

We also sang – or attempted to sing – the Butterfly Lovers song. In Chinese. It’s such a beautiful song and we butchered it pretty badly. They clapped for us, at least.

July 4th is around the corner – I rarely get patriotic, but being in China has made me feel very proud to live in America… I kind of want to bust out some patriotic songs in a few days.