Chinese Pageant Dress, Plus KTV Lights Up My Life

That Christmas Pageant Andrew and I are hosting? Turns out it's a much bigger production than I anticipated. We'll be doing the introduction and closing, as well as making commentary between each act. Watch out, Dick Clark??

Pageant hosting in China is a really big deal, so yesterday my school took me to a dress rental shop to find a ballgown length pageant dress to wear. We found a beautiful cranberry gown that actually fit me (I am a giant here), I was shocked. And happy. I love wearing beautiful dresses! It's being held outdoors and I can't wear a coat while I'm onstage, brrr, but even so, I'm pretty excited to get to wear the dress. (And because my gown is floor-length, I'm totally going to be rocking some legwarmers. Shhh...) Definitely a new experience in my Rebecca Life Handbook.

Btw, a cultural note: variety shows are extremely popular here, and the girls who host the shows on tv are known for being charming and beautiful. If you are a variety show hostess on tv, you have probably the same cachet as a flight attendant in the 1960's in America. It's a very interesting subculture of Chinese culture, and I'm still trying to understand why they are so popular. At any given time on local tv, you can find a pageant or variety show.

So anyway, I'm sure you want to know more about my dress, right? It's a heavy, thick, satin-type material in deep cranberry with silver embroidery details. Here's the hemline (the red is the lining, it won't show when I'm wearing it):

Here's a shot of the bodice detail:

We'll take some proper pictures that night, I'm sure. I have to wear four inch heels to keep the hem from dragging too much, good thing I've been doing my foot yoga high heel practice. And as I told Andrew, I'll so be wearing hand warmers in my underwear, ha. (Note: I have since learned this is a bad idea, it burns. Nixing this.)

Two of my students will be on stage to translate for the audience, a girl and a guy, and they get to dress up too. Here is her dress. How cute is she?

We had a lot of fun picking out the dresses. If my life were a movie, it would have been a great montage scene.

Last night we had a birthday party for one of the T.'s, and I shot a short video while we were performing to Prince's "Cream" at karaoke, known locally as KTV. I watched it today, and my first thought was, "Why did we think it was a good idea to leave the strobe lights on in our room all night? Hello, epilepsy!" On the other hand, it kept us awake. I love that you can do all night karaoke here. Hope you've all had a good weekend!