Preparing for Chinese Guests - Thursday Evening - May 12, 2005

Most of us hung out after class to help clean up in preparation for the arrival of the a Chinese coaches. We spent hours vacuuming, cleaning the walls, and windows, etc.

Rich still sucks.

Jiayinbeats down Francesco and Phil

Oh my god! It's coming off!

Watch out Alison!!!

Wait a minute... if i'm holding my camera, what's taking this picture?

Arrival of Chinese Coaches, Masters, Students at the Hartford Sheraton

After leaving the school cleaner than it has been for years, we headed to the Sheraton hotel in Hartford to greet the Guests. The girls left fruit in the hotel rooms.

Dang Phil Dang got the nice new digital camera i wanted. I'll just consider it a blessing in diguise, he will now share a greater burden of taking pictures.

The bus arrives, and Master Hu greets his old friends.

This dude was one of the bad guys in Shaolin Temple.

Even though we were in Hartford, the atmosphere was reminiscent of China... the hotel, the Chinese people, the pointless photos... yesssssss... China.....

Rehearsal for the show at Bulkeley Auditorium - Thursday Evening - May 13, 2005

Instead of team class, we met at Bulkeley Highschool in Hartford to run through the program. There were a few unanticipated problems like the size of the stage, the way the curtain wasn't where expected, and audio difficulties. We'd become really used to performing at Timothy Edwards.

Scott has been setting up audio all day, and he and his father did a wonderful job making the best of the conditions.

As if Master Hu didn't have enough to worry about.

We used the backdrop from the Zhejiang team show from 2 years ago... it worked great here as well, even though we couldn't do any cool backlighting effects like last time.

Francesco wasn't performing... but he's one of those guys who are always there now.

I'm a fan of the fan form; it's fantastic.

Marco helping put the banner on the stage. It was in a perilous position, because people kept on jumping on and off the stage not knowing it was there.

I wonder how the Chinese people feel about us stealing their form.

The tension builds in the sound department.

Hayaa!

Smack!... unfortunately, this group comedy routine was omitted from the performance due to the... incident.

I borrowed a nice digital camcorder from my friend Chris. Hopefully i'll edit everything i recorded into a mini documentary some time soon.

Double the whipchain, double the fun.

Umm yeah, that's realistic.

Uuuuggghhuuhhh... hey... it's almost like a foreshadow of the performance.

Come on Gwan!

This guy does a rediculously high butterfly kick.

Drunken sword guy will henceforth be known as "the man" according to marco.

Chinese Guy doing double hooksword. As you can see... all Chinese people will from now on be known as "guy".

The stage crew... without their expertise, thing could have gone awfully wrong

We needed stop watches to time the forms during the competition. But when Jiayin found that they were included free in multipacks of tic-tacs, they returned the expensive ones they bought earlier. That's what i call fresh thinking.

Guys looking over the official program.

Looking all cute... oh yeah, Laurie's not looking bad either..

After the rehearsal was completed, we returned to the school and the adults ate at Higashi, and the kids ate at Sal's, wait... i'm an adult. Hmm... so is Phil, Rich, Marco, Laurie, and... oh my god, Jiayin is almost technically one. What's going on here? This is wierd.

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