Master of Ceremony

Donnerstag, 12. Mai 2011

Master of Ceremony

As some of you might know, I was invited to a school summerfest a few weeks ago. Not only was I some sort of chief guest, I was one of two people that was gifted a colorful ribbon, that looked like this:

Now imagine, you are dressed up properly, hold a speech and then are wearing something that looks like it was stolen from Alice's Wonderland.

Anyways. The basic function was to award students on their academic efforts as well as their achievements on competitions such as best poetry reader or fastest runner.

Sitting all the way up front and facing firstly pre-schoolers pulling hair and picking their nose was fun. The older students were sitting in the back, and the parents in the back back.

As I was informed two days prior, I wasn't only to smile and clap, I was supposed to wear a tie and hold a speech. Now wearing a tie was not the problem, the speech of some sort was. Speeches in Bangladesh are extremly formal in language, contain wise words and are hard to pronounce. Luckily I was introduced as the person, that doesn't speak properly (which I think is not true at all).

After all the speeches, that pre-schoolers somehow didn't really care about, came the fun part: the prizes. Apart from "Spiderman and Barbie pencil cases" and money stipends, kids were awarded - check this out - dishes!!! No joke. If a student did well, he or she might have ended up with a set of four plates for the family dinner table (one for fastest runner, one for best singer, one for most academic...).

All in all it was a fun experience to have joined these "festivities" with songs, recitations and mostly happy kids. Well, I guess I was the only one who didn't end up with a plate. But I got the colorful ribbon and a jute bag!