Sing on!

 This morning was the English song competition in Boaco and I was invited to be a judge.  I honestly didn't want to be a judge because I didn't want to get involved in the drama, but I agreed to do it. 

The students did a good job and the presentations were really fun to watch.  There were three of us judges, me, another PCV (my sitemate, Kelli), and an English teacher from a primary school (not participating in the competition).  We scored each individual team, then discussed all of our scores after and averaged the totals.  We discussed some issues that took place, such as one team who sang two songs that we're supposedly a "mix", but really one song starting immediately after the first.  That in my book is not a "mix".  Also, that same school chose their lead singer to be a student who is from the US, and English is his first language.  Does this seem fair for an English competition?  Not really...  Anyway, we decided to leave that out since that wasn't stated in the rules (but we told the representative from the ministry of education it needs to be in the rules for next year), and we just decided to deduct the team 5 points for performing two songs instead of only 1 like they were supposed to.  It was a hard decision, but it really wasn't fair to all of the other schools who only performed one song, and the rules stated one song would be performed (not in a very direct way, but it was clear enough).  Also, the songs were completely unrelated: "I Have Nothing" by Whitney Houston and "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer...

Well, this team was moved from first place to second, but we didn't announce that specifically.  We just announced the top 3 schools in order and gave them positive feedback, but also stated that performing two songs was against the rules.  Edwin was the teacher in charge of this school and he was not happy with this decision and he left the place clearly upset and didn't say anything to me, or anyone else for that matter.  I hope that he can cool down and understand the decision that we made.  I still feel bad like I let him down, but I wasn't the only judge, and it was a decision we made, along with the ministry of education representative.  I know that he'll probably be mad at me, but I hope that he will realize sooner rather than later that this soon will pass, and we can't win it all. 

I truly feel that the students who won did a great job--I even got the chills when they were singing the romantic duet.  These students are from the public school, which doesn't win very many things, so this was a neat opportunity for them.  Also, the boy student in the duet, was Edwin's past student in the Access program, so I feel that he should be proud of that.