A Night at the Improv

Recently I had the opportunity to take several of my students to an improv workshop hosted by another international school here in Beijing. My kids loved the experience and we all learned a lot about improv acting. The classes were taught by members of the Beijing Improv, an English speaking theater group here. I thought it would be fun to go see them perform and I found a couple other girls that were up for it. I hoped that it would be a little less raunchy than a similar performance in the US. We started the evening with food at a new Russian restaurant that Tiffany really likes. Unfortunately I had several misses with my ordering. I ordered a salmon dish that was not at all what I expected. The real dissapointment was the dessert. I ordered cheese crepes thinking that it would be a sweet cream cheese filling. Sadly, it was a crepe wrap surrounding melted mozzarella Cheese. This would have been good with tacos or pizza, but when I was looking forward to a sweet dessert, it did not satisfy.

After that we went to the hutong where the theater was located. On the way we checked out several interesting shops located in the hutong. One of the funniest things I saw was a doll of Obama. The intereting thing was that it was in a shop full of communist wares. The Obama doll was in a superman costume. And his neighbors on the rack were Fidel Castro and Chairman Mao. I am just going to leave it at that.

When we got to the theater it was almost full. The event was a charity, so there were no advance tickets. We found seats, but many more people still came in. At one point a guy asked all the rows of seats to move back so some people could sit at the front on the floor. I kept picturing maximum capacity signs in every store, restaruant, and theater in the US. Maximum capacity and fire hazards are apparently not of great concern here. We were packed in that theater like sardines.

The first half was absolutely hilarious and really quite clean outside of some tasteless audience suggestions. There was quite a bit more crudeness and language inthe second half and I found that dissapointing. Overall it was a fun night and something different. I enjoyed it overall and was glad for the night out on the town.

In other news it snowed in Beijing this week. It was exciting for the students but also frustrating as it meant three days of indoor recess. Apparently the school rule about no outdoor recess when there is snow is very firm. I did get the opportunity to take one of my friends kids out back of my apartment and build a tiny snowman. We also had a snowball fight which fulfilled my inner craving to play in the snow. Thank goodness I had an 8 year old available. None of my friends were interested.
In general it was life as usual in Beijing with the snow. I kept thinking how school would have been cancelled in South Carolina. THe interesting thing was there were no snow plows, and very few shovels. Apparently the snow removal tool of choice is a large broom with long plant fibers on the end. Basically the same thing the street sweepers use to clean the streets. It did not seem like a great way to clear the streets and sidewalks, but that is what they used.

Well that's all for now. Hopefully I will have something much more interesting to write about soon.