Theater, Cramming, Macklemore

The last three weeks following Project Week have been a strange roller coaster of having too much work or the exact opposite.  I spent the entirety of the first week preparing for a play, the next week cramming for 7 major assignments, and the last week with the strange feeling of negligible schoolwork.  To top it off, I ended up meeting Macklemore after randomly ending up in the front row of his concert.  After this slightly eclectic collection of events, I decided to make another incoherent blog post to portray another month in the jumbled life of a LPCer.

An ad for the play

Immediately following Project Week, I realized I had to immediately transition back to an overbooked schedule.  The IP (short for Independent Project, which is a student directed play), which I had begun rehearsing for a few weeks earlier, had to complete rehearsals for performances on Thursday and Friday. This play, titled "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist", revolves around a maniac's attempts to infiltrate a ridiculous Italian police force that is trying to cover up a suspicious suicide during an interrogation. Unfortunately for the cast, we had only rehearsed Scenes 1 and 2 of Act One and still had to learn the other two-thirds of the play.  This meant that schoolwork and extracurriculars were put on the back-burner in order to rehearse from 4-11 each day.  Somehow, we managed to more or less learn the script by our dress rehearsal with the theater teacher on Wednesday.  As an idiotic amateur police officer, the majority of my actions revolved around being bossed around or injured, and my actual lines were generally short and stupid. For the dress rehearsal, we accidentally skipped a page and a half, but the teacher's comment was something like, "I really like this and great job on shortening it for this school".  If only we did that intentionally. The next days we performed, and somehow we pulled the show off remarkably well given the time frame.  I'd say my first play in high school went pretty well, at least better than the embarrassing plays of elementary school where I was forced to wear a genie costume for an hour.

The one highlight of the week

After celebrating the survival of IP and a friend's birthday at the tallest restaurants in Kowloon, I had another realization about the upcoming week. Coincidentally, my Geo test, Geo presentation, Chem test, Math test, English presentation, English in-class essays, and TOK presentation were all in the upcoming week.  With all of that, I effectively locked myself in my room and ruined the rest of my weekend with studies, while the gloomy weather outside reflected my mood.  I pushed through the week though, and by Friday, I was quite relieved about the upcoming free-time as a result of finishing so much.  For the first time ever, I had absolutely no homework, so I spent a weekend watching movies, sleeping, and spending time with friends.  I got a few evil glares though when people asked what I had to do for the weekend and I replied honestly with "nothing".

Some of the delegates

The stra
nge weekend of nothingness progressed into another regular school week.  I had enough time to finish assignments, but I was able to stay more balanced with life too.  On Wednesday, we technically had a day off of school, but in reality it was dedicated to a school wide Model UN (MUN).  If you don't know what MUN is, it's a simulation of the processes of the UN on issues of global importance, where individuals serve as delegates for different nations in a day of debate.  I was the Nicaraguan delegate, and in my committee, we focused on the issues of organized crime in Latin America.  At the end of the day, they gave superlatives as "awards" for our work.  I earned the honorable title of "most likely to be nuked", most likely due to my fact checking of the Costa Rican delegate and proposed economic sanctions on the US.

The next day was another interesting day.  A few weeks prior, a friend invited me to attend the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis concert for that day, so I'd been really excited to go for a while.  After a day of school, some beach volunteering, and a quick dip in the pool, I headed out to Asia World Expo, nearly an hour and a half away by MTR, intending to meet up with my friend Sam.  Along the way, the MTR was shut down for technical issues (a rarity considering the near perfection of Hong Kong's public transit), so I had to find a bus, and I was worried I would be late.  On the bus, a group of students from a different international school were chatting, and somehow we ended up making conversation.  One of the student's asked me if I was from LPC and if I knew his sister who went there.  When he said her name was Sam (the same Sam I was meeting up with), I had one of those "small world" moments.  Anyways, we made our way to the concert hall, and I managed to find her, and my other friends, Abraham, Vincent, and Dele.

Waving the Hong Kong flag

As we waited for the concert to start, I realized that we had a minor issue.  Apparently the queuing system for our ticketing section wasn't first come first serve, instead based on the order of ticket purchase.  Due to a collection of ticket numbers ranging from 50 to 2000 in our group alone, we decided to just sit together at point 50 so we wouldn't be separated.  What this meant, though, was as we rushed into the hall, we were in the front row, exactly in the middle.  This prime location allowed us to be within 15 feet of the stage, with some of the best views in the room.  The atmosphere of the concert was incredible, and my first concert ever continued to get better and better as Macklemore performed.  Between the live band, Macklemore's music, and the excitement of the crowd, I will definitely remember the event.  At two points in the concert, the security approached us, telling us to be prepared because Macklemore would start crowd surfing where we were standing.  Ironically, after we passed Macklemore into another section of the crowd during "Can't Hold Us", a group of five foot tall Hong Kongers literally couldn't hold him, and he nearly fell.

Before the crowd-surfing failure

Near the end of the concert, one of the security guards approached me, noticing my Michigan t-shirt (which I wouldn't have wore if I hadn't went swimming before), and asked me if I was from the area.  Saying yes, we then had a conversation about the Detroit area, since he was from there too.  He asked me what I was in Hong Kong for, and after a little, he asked if my friends and I wanted to get backstage passes.  Needless to say, I accepted, and as soon as the concert ended, we were thrilled to get to meet Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, and Wanz.  After a fifteen minute motivation speech and Q&A session with the singer of "Thrift Shop"'s chorus, Wanz, we were ushered into the room where Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were.  Despite only having a few seconds to chat with them, it was pretty remarkable that I was able to randomly meet them due to the shirt I was wearing.  After leaving the concert hall, we were all pretty stunned by the turn of events that evening, and we returned to LPC, with the memories of the night ingrained.

After a semi-productive Friday, I entered another weekend.  It's been pretty good, with only a few minor complaints like the fact that my March Madness bracket is getting destroyed and I have an entire English book to read by Monday.  In the near future, there will be the Latin American cultural evening, and a chartered boat trip with the return of warm weather.  Anyways, these last weeks have been pretty awesome, (f*ing awesome to quote "Thrift Shop") and time has continued to fly by during my first year in Hong Kong.