Our first school recital

The last day of the school term last week marked a rather eventful day for both Spud and us, as Spud did her very first school recital. On stage. In front of a hundred parents and teachers.

While it was cute and all, I thought the whole thing was a little bit of a rip-off as they charged 450 baht (abt. SGD 18) per parent for admission ticket plus lunch, and, parents had to fork out almost 600 baht (SGD 24) prior to the event to pay for her costume. That totalled to almost 1500 baht (SGD 60) for a 3-hour show listening to kids screeching - I mean LISTENING, as we all booted a wooden ass by sitting on a plastic chair for the entire time.

The "hi-so" looking program

Not quite my idea of fun, but we got into the spirit of celebration soon enough watching all these young brave kids belting their guts out and dancing their feet along to the rhythm of the music that were played. For the amount of money we paid, we were given a rather "classy" program booklet and were served quite a decent lunch after the show.

It was quite a novelty for us to be watching our little tot *trying to* perform and mimic what their teachers do in front of the stage. As most kids stood around, while, perhaps wondering what the hell was going on, they did their part well. At some point, they did what toddlers do best - they jumped and bounced along, on cue, to the parts of the song they knew they should be jumping about. 
 

To be able to witness how Spud reacted in such a situation was priceless – she seemed happy and unaffected and going with the flow, and did not freak out when on stage. When she saw us in the crowd as she made her way back to the dressing room, she grinned away and acknowledged us with a “Mama!” or “Papa!”.  She was comfortable being independent from us during that time and it felt nice. She looked like she had loads of fun while at it.

The kid that stayed put !

It is worth a mention that there was this 2 year-old toddler who was sitting next to me and literally stayed put on the chair for the entire 3 hour session. The only time she got down was to pick up her hat she had dropped and when her Mom moved forward to the stage to take a picture of her son. The sheer fact that a 2 year old toddler sat so calmly in that seat amazed me to no end. I could not help but asked her mother (who was sitting right next to her on the other side) how she managed to get her kid to do that – for there would be no way in hell, we could ever get Spud to sit still in a chair. Not even for 3 seconds. Life really is ain't fair. 

I forgot to bring my point-and-shoot (duh!!, bu tthanks to mobile phone camera, I managed a few snapshots from the event. It was also the very first time she sat on Santa’s lap – the school's tradition for kids at a Christmas recital – and at that point, I could tell that she was not too comfortable sitting on some strange-looking bearded man and wanted to get off as quickly as she could. 

Getting ready to start dancing to "Can't help falling in love with you"

Standing and looking around as the music went on

Queuing up for her turn

Her first Santa encounter

Caught her mucking about in the dressing room before the show - can't help but asked her for a kiss!

My guess is that we’ll certainly be looking at many more recitals to go from here on but this was certainly one of those "firsts" moments to be savoured.