In a very unusual turn of events, our kids and their classmates were asked to be part of an infomercial for the city of Shanghai. It will be a short commercial advertising the city of Shanghai to people living outside of China. We got a phone call a week ago asking if 10 kids from our school could come on Friday...here's what put it over the top for Alex...the kids would be in the commercial with Yao Ming!
Now for those of you reading who don't know much about our school, I'll fill you in a bit. It is small. And the kids are small. We have a pre-k program for 3 and 4 year olds with about 11 kids, a kindergarten class with 6 kids, and a grade 1/grade 2 combined class with 5 kids. We are also still in registration process with the government. We are not a big school (yet!). But someone who knew someone else heard about the school and thought it sounded like it would have the kind of kids who might want to be in this type of commercial! So they called Alex and we ended up bringing our kindergarten class and our grade 1/2 class out for the commercial shoot on Friday.
This is the China Pavilion from the Expo site. The area is mostly shells of buildings now that were put up by different countries for the Expo, but the China pavilion has a nice showroom and they bring in art shows, etc. now. This is the backdrop for the commercial.
The kids getting all set up for the first scene...
Vera's spot was right next to Yao Ming! He was really nice and chatted with the kids between shoots. The director is on his right. The city of Shanghai flew him up from Australia to direct the commercial. Wendy is in the light pink sweater. I wish I knew what they were talking about. Vera's got a little attitude on her face here...and the director is laughing, oh my.
More chatting with the kids. The little girl in the cream colored sweater is 'Kate'. She is in the grade 2 class. Some of you may have heard her story from some of our newsletters we've sent.
Exciting moment for Alex! Yao Ming's daughter is just a couple months younger than Geneva. I bet she's a lot taller than Geneva, though!
Yao and Vera just hanging out...
Alex and the teachers did a great job of keeping the kids happy between shoots. Here they are singing Christmas carols for Yao Ming.
Wendy's teacher is in the white hat. The group of five kids right in front of her is Wendy's grade 1/2 class!
Trying to stay warm! It was really chilly and windy.
Filming the 'art award show' scene. Once again Alex had a chance to chat with Yao Ming. This is probably right before he passed him a brochure about our school and our family Christmas card.
So it was quite a day...the kids were exhausted when we got home. We put them in bed at 6:30! (one of the fabulous benefits of having very few clocks around the house is that the older ones don't spend that much time worrying about what time it is. It also gets dark at 5pm in Shanghai in the winter...that helps, too). But what an amazing and exciting experience for the kids (and us)!
3 comments:
This is so incredible!! Thanks for recapping here! Glad the girls - and Alex- had fun!!
This is so incredible!! Thanks for recapping here! Glad the girls - and Alex- had fun!!
Wow Jenny! This is awesome. I knew Yao Ming was a big man but seeing him next to Alex (who I also think of as pretty tall) put him in perspective. What a neat thing for your girls. If you get a copy of the commercial you should definitely post it!
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