An Outing of Acrobats

First of all I have to say thank you so much for reading all my long-windedness and leaving comments of encouragement etc. Being over here in such a new place and far away from family and friends, you guys don't even know how much it means to me. So, thanks.

The girls from our church ward invited us on an outing to the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts where each week their students put on a Performance of Chinese Acrobatics followed by a tour of their Jun-ju Museum and then a performance of Beijing Opera. The acrobatics was cool, a couple times they had to try a trick 3 or 4 times to land it which actually made it more realistic but didn't take away from the performance. All of my children seemed dully impressed, at one point Kohen leaned over and I was expecting a question about the logistics of the crazy and amazing stunts he was seeing, instead he asked in wonder, "How do they change costumes so fast!?"

After the 1/2 hour acrobatics they had us go upstairs to the museum which was about 75% over the kids heads. Our tour guide above with Kohen is actually the girl in the picture behind her with the blue robe on. Below is Aly standing on what she thought was her own stage. At one point she asked if the long feather on the headdress of the person on the pic behind her was a snake, all of the Chinese tour guides following us everywhere thought this was hilarious...I am still unclear why.
The costumes they wear are really ornate, one interesting fact is that the most royal and high color you can wear is gold but that color is reserved only for the real Royal Family and so they aren't allowed to wear gold on stage and instead wear red to denote royalty... interesting.

This was a bunch of mannequins all dressed up like in the Opera and they were more than a little creepy. I thought Kennedy's expression below was an accurate read of how we all felt about them.
The 1/2 hour Opera was entertaining enough. Who knew that Chinese Opera singing literally sounds like a crying/dying cat and I am so not exaggerating. Not sure how much of that I could handle. They had English to the right of the stage that would tell us what was happening in the story and that had some funny mistakes in it. I especially love when the two main characters fell in love and promptly "left to go to bed"! Hello.
I made Nathan slyly take this picture of the Chinese girls who were staring at our row of American kids. I told you they stare unabashedly- I meant it! In this picture you can see 4 girls who were completely loving their life for the free entertainment we were providing. You'd never know the stage was actually in front of them. :)