After two months of intermittent training I was finally ready to bury my Christmas Chorus. I had just come back from a week of training in San Jose, graduation was in 3 days and I was sure not only that my students had forgotten the song, but also that the principal, who had never been too interested, had forgotten about the Chorus' existence. I was surprised when I walked into her office that morning and was informed that my choir was the only thing anyone had prepared for graduation, that we were performing in three days, and that I needed to call everyone immediately and have a practice in an hour and a half.
Such was my brusque welcome to the little discussed dark side of the 'pura vida' atmosphere: the sudden virulent panic that sets in before anything important happens. I threw myself in with gusto, making this week of school parties and graduations the busiest week of school I've had in months. One night I spent four hours inflating balloons, I helped my host mother clean the school kitchen, and we practiced. Different groups of students showed up every day, and I was not told a definite time for the graduation until the day before.
It was raining hard the day of the ceremony, and I was surprised that when I got to school a swarm of ready chorus members surrounded me as I pulled off my rain clothes. I started to get more and more nervous as the time came for my students to perform. As the ceremony wore on parents started grumbling in the back, the song was the last thing on the schedule. When the time came I sprang up with my songsters, organized them quickly, turned on the music, and they started singing.
I could not be more proud of them.
Merry Christmas, Everyone.
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