Charles' school year started with an exciting offer from his music teacher to join five other boys and travel to Warsaw, Poland and sing in an international boys choir. The American School of Paris joins with 12 other European-based American and International Schools to bring students of diverse nationalities together to have fun and make music. The Association is called AMIS. This was their first event of this school year. Charles had never sung in a choir before and it took him a few days to "get his head around it" but in the end decided to go for it -- and had a great time.
Kids from grades 5 to 8 came from Moscow, London (2 schools), Warsaw, Paris, the Hague, Antwerp, Aberdeen, Düsseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt, Zurich and Ankara. They arrived on Wednesday and rehearsed 3 times a day until Saturday evening when they gave a concert to a packed hall in the American School of Warsaw.
Catharine and I flew over on Friday morning, a 2-hour flight from Paris to Warsaw. Using the Internet, Catharine had very cleverly found us a stylish loft apartment on the top floor of an old apartment building in the very heart of historic Warsaw. We took a bus from the airport and dragged suitcases over cobblestones for about a kilometre. We met Thomas, a young architect who owned the apartment. He told us that under the communists the old area had been inhabited mostly by very poor, disadvantaged people. However, the area is being bought up by the new middle class and renovated. Thomas's building was still mostly older people but it was beginning to change-over.
His apartment had a spectacular view of the river Vistula, which runs through Warsaw, and the older part of "new" Warsaw, which is old by North American standards. It was situated on a height of land above the river's flood plain on top of the old fortifications, which have been partially restored. He had decorated it in Ikea, so while it was "cool," it had no real character. Nonetheless it was comfortable and familiar. The halls and staircase, on the other hand, were dingy and looked like they hadn't changed since the communist era. In the halls, we met a mixture of well-dressed middle-class people and old Babushkas with scarves tied around their grey heads, hunched and shuffling up the four flights (without elevator).
We spent two days sight-seeing, eating in Polish restaurants and did some clothes shopping. The Zloty is worth about 4 to 1 Euro and yet prices are roughly the same (meaning about 25% of what we pay in France). Catharine got about 5 new things including a velvet skirt that she wore to the choir performance. Our favourite meal was in a Pierogie house where we spent one afternoon drinking beer and eating Pierogies shoulder to shoulder with the Poles.
Saturday evening came and Catharine managed to order us a taxi which sped us at terrifying speeds (especially considering the mechanical condition of the old Skoda) to the outskirts of Warsaw, where the school was situated behind the gates of a heavily guarded compound. We were greeted by 2 intimidating security guys who had to check our names off a list before letting us in.
Inside it was a beautiful facility. The concert hall was especially impressive. We took our seats and chatted with the people around us. To our right was a family from Munich. The father had grown up in Germany but had spent some years in the States and in Moscow and had returned to work in Munich. Like the Polish family that Charles was billeted with, they had put their children in the American School because that is where they saw the future -- learning English and working internationally.
The boys finally came out and we were introduced to the choral director, who was the music director at the Moscow school. The accompanist was Russian. They had together arranged about half of the songs in the program. The boys sang an interesting mixture of traditional ballads, folk songs, classical pieces and a fun rendition of Route 66.
Charles really enjoyed himself. And judging from the way the boys were moving on the stage, they were enjoying themselves as well. We celebrated afterwards with lots of good Polish pastries and cakes, and went home proud parents.
We're back home again. Charles slept for four hours this afternoon from sheer exhastion. But he made some good friends and I think if he has the opportunity he would sing again.
I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story. View the photos or the slideshow.
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