This was the Canadian Civic Day long weekend. As uasul, the long weekend was full of activities. Sat Aug 3 was marked with a very valuable vocal lesson and a joyful dinner with some friends sharing same interests. Sun Aug 4 was filled with a lot of colourful memories from the internatinally well known Edmonton Heritage Festival. Mon Aug 5 was a day gave me the first time experience of rafting on a wild river!
Sat Aug 3
Previous lessons were focused on 喉咽壁靠拢, 声音从吼咽壁及鼻腔的后方发出, 高位置放置发高音等. The song assigned was Torna a Surriento. This was absolutely a huge challenge but the teacher expected to see results. I did try hard to understand and practiced a lot. Even though I felt kind of sick on Friday and had littel sour throat on Sat, I still show some extent of getting the techniques. The teacher was ok with my improvement. I think this is so important to me. The teacher [Mr. Hegang Dong] was a former professor of Shanghai Conservatory of Music (上海音乐学院) and I appreciate the opportunity of learning from him a lot. I do not want to drop off the valuable class.
I like the song Torna a Surriento but never thought I would be able to learn this song by myself. If I can learn this song under Dong Laoshi's instruction, that is already a huge achievement for me.
The dinner of the day was such a joyful event. The guys were all friends that are interested in singing. We drank a bottle of 二锅头(friends called it 裸体二锅头) while eating hot pot. I am from a family that drinks (all 白酒) and I do like drinking. The 二锅头 tastes so good! I stayed at the friend's house until 1:00 AM to be sure the alcohol was gone! I think that was the first time I drank Chinese alcohol in Canada.
Sun Aug 4 - Edmonton Heritage Festival 2013
This is the event that I go every year. This year I tried to get together some friends that are interested in performing arts especially folk dances and folk songs. It was not really well organized but still good.
I planned to go see some Latin dance but did not see really good ones as other years. Instead I saw a pretty outstanding Chinese Taiji performance. Surprisedly there were 4-5 friends in the performance. Hhahahahh.
Another pavilion that surprised me was the Ukrain pavilion. Very nice dancing.
Russian's dance looks nice too. But for some reason the male dancers did not look like Russian. hahaha.
Irish folk dance is always a favorite for me.
I still owe some photos of Italy Pavilion, Poland Pavilion, Little German Band, and a few very outstanding pavilions of Latin American nations. It was a meaningful and fun day.
Mon Aug 5 - Rafting on White Water River
Never have I thought I would go to adventural activities like rafting on a wild river. However under influence of the group of 16 people, I went. It was so much fun and excited. I love it. I was so surprised by the braveness of the group. One lady on our raft claimed that she could not swim before we took off. And the funny thing was that she was the only one felling off the raft out of 4 rafts, 36 people. It was during a surfing and I guess it should be very hard to swim, but what we all saw was so good looking swimming. hahaha.
The trip was organized by a very busy friend but it was really well organized! A lot of appreciation. Attached below are some photos from the raft company.
As I always say, "Life is short. Enjoy when possible.", especially in the northern Canadian city 爱城 that summer is so short.
