Jamie Bunker—Arizona, Music, Alto I

Today we went to Feng Chia University for a cultural exchange. Yesterday we had gone to the night market with Chase and Jessie, our Taiwanese guides. We met them again this morning and joined a group of high school students who were at the University for a summer camp/cultural Experience.

We played some icebreaker games to help us—the choir—get to know the Taiwanese students. They were very shy and unsure about speaking English, but many of them had a lot of English words and phrases. It was good for me to be the one who made the first move of introducing myself, because I normally wouldn’t. Usually, when you meet another American, you shake hands, but sometimes it’s hard to know what to do when you meet a Taiwanese person. When they shake hands, they use both hands. Sometimes they give a little bow, sometimes they don’t want to touch you.

I met a girl named Mandy—that’s her English name. She wanted to practice English, so we sat and talked for quite a while. She wants to go to a University in the U.S. she likes Miami because of the T.V. show CSI Miami. Her second choice would be New York City because of CSI New York. I think she might have a better time at BYUH!

In our group we learned a Maori haka from Sone. All the girls liked him a lot! I don’t think they understood why they had to get angry or mean during a haka. They didn’t want to yell very loud. I think the boys in the group really enjoyed it, though.

They fed us lunch and we went back to our hotel to rest for our concert that night. My roommate and I slept for at least two hours. When we got to the performance hall, we had a rehearsal on stage.

I thought that I was singing my best, but something didn’t really feel right with the choir. Brother Belnap said our voices were going five thousand directions, just like we had been doing while on tour. He told us we needed to become one and I realized that even if I was singing pretty well, it didn’t matter if I wasn’t in sync with the rest of the choir.

Ming asked us to pray for each other because some of us aren’t feeling well. She told us we needed to do what we are asked to do so that we can qualify for blessings from the Lord. Ming is on the spiritual welfare committee and she always leads by example.

The performance did go very well. We came out for two encores at the end. When we sang “Holding Hands Around the World,” I felt that we were really reaching our audience. The spirit was so strong. That song seems to embody what BYUH and the Concert Choir are all about. I feel we did unify ourselves in this concert, although mistakes were made. By the time we get to Hong Kong, hopefully we will be perfect!