Sat, June 21, 2008

This morning, we reported to the bus at 9am, but first was breakfast when we discovered that a wedding reception was going to be there later in the day so the whole room was decorated in pink!! We talk in and wonder if we are in the right place, but that was the breakfast buffet … I am never going to have pink at my wedding! Wow … that room was covered!! I’m thinking it’s because of the meaning of red in China, and she felt like lightening it a bit by going with pink.

At 9am, we headed to a market and spent two and a half hours shopping! I accidentally spent the rest of my money on souveneirs – which adds to about 500RMB and I only got halfway through my list. We still have the Pearl market and Silk street to go to, so there are plenty of shopping opportunities – I just need to make a budget. Sigh ….

Our new adventure is at the CCTV studio. For almost five hours, we spent our time on a TV set filming the dances to air on CCTV. It seems to be a part of a TV series called Dance World. It actually was a pretty nice set, although it was more for rock lighting then dance. There was a star curtain, flash bulbs, about a hundred moving heads, and par-cans galor! With the hazer running it was a cool effect, but definitely nothing we ever tried for Ballroom before. We’re always up for an adventure! I just ran sound from the side of stage and had a monitor to watch. It was a fun time! I only messed up twice – playing the wrong music, and having my headset off for the first time causing me to miss stopping the music when a dancer got injured. Downside to monitors, you don’t get the big picture – only what the camera man and editor wants you to see.

Our dinner for the evening was amazing as we were able to go to an Italian style dinner where we were spoiled with food!! Oh there was pizza, spaghetti, mashed potatoes, recognizable meat, actual dessert … it was great! One funny thing was a chocolate mousse actually had rum in it and it caused the whole back of the bus to sing the whole way back to the hotel – over an hour long drive!! They were CRAZY!!! Finally, Lee actually began to lead them in song, trying to gear them towards primary and reverant church songs. Well, primary songs went well … it actually lead to “The Wheels on the Bus” which lead to them mimicking people on the team – especially the leaders. It was HILARIOUS!!!! Eventually, we tried to calm down while Kaelynne (an amazing singer) sang “God Bless America,” and Shane sang a few lines from “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.” Unfortunately, we lost that calmness when Ron began to sing “The Lollipop Guild” from Wizard of Oz. He’s really good at it. We tried to get Benjamin to do Rubber Ducky because he’s good at that, but it didn’t work.

It’d say it was an altogether GREAT day!! We got back to the hotel around 10pm and had some good laughs along the way.

One thing to add about the day is that Jaren Wilken joined us for the rest of the week. He is the professional photographer for BYU and took some great pictures of us last year at Blackpool. Already today, he took several pictures, many of me working or just standing around – meaning I stood on center typing on my laptop as specials were angled at me and he got some good shots of me in a special light w/ my laptop in hand. As he put it, a great Apple advertisement!!