Finally, we won!

Finally, we won!! The hard work had finally paid. The much awaited day, where we would all go show the world people what the IC UCAS students were made of, had come. As usual, the much tensed students got into their different buses off to the new beautiful UCAS campus. Of course we had some memories still fresh in our minds. Memories of how hard we had trained the previous weeks. Memories of how poor we were in singing at the beginning, and how we had improved in a short span of time. We were amazed.

I could see the teachers from the international office a bit worried, maybe doubting if we were up to the task yet. Their biggest fear was us failing them and the IC UCAS family at large, but we could not allow that to happen. No, not today! We were all united, a kind of unity that drove our spirit and morale to perfect at the stage, and giving all our best to the chorus singing. We did well, we did our best, and our best was enough for us to emerge the winners.

Who would forget the choir director? Mr. Togo, he also scoped an award as the best choir leader. Funny enough, he could not understand much Chinese that he did not know that he had won yet. Throughout the practice period, he had stood with us, showing us all our mistakes, correcting us and guiding us.

We made a lot of memories, memories that will fill our social media accounts and pages. Our rich diversity of the IC UCAS community, from all over America, to India and even Africa, was seen in our traditional clothes and attires, which earned us respect from all over. Every Chinese person could be heard saying “piang liang!” to mean looking beautiful.

The day ended well, a day to remember and a day that memories were made, both in our minds and even in the international arena. It was a day to remind us what unity and cooperation can do. What we can achieve when working together despite all our backgrounds, and what the world expects of us.

Thank you.

by Kevin Babu（Kenya）

The harder the effort, the sweeter the result

Qi Lai… Qi Lai… Qi Lai…

The harder the effort, the sweeter the result was the final destination of a real teamwork that is full of non-Chinese who sang the National Anthem of China competing with other fellow Chinese students of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS). The history of the International College (IC) of UCAS has been re-written with a new chapter with this fabulous win of being champions of the best category in the year 2015.We were altogether almost 100 from very different countries, cultures, traditions, and styles, yet we all had to sing one song that is sung by the most number of people in the world. So it had be perfect, and we did perfect. I being a member of the IC, UCAS Chorus team, personally feel exuberant after coming to know that we really won the competition and that will earn me self-belief that an actual hard work will never go silent. Hence, today’s experience will be a special one for my studies. Every one of us was very happy with our own cultural dresses, and were trying to make memories with others through millions of photographs, it was really fun. Though it was a bit far away from the Beijing City, we never felt away because our teachers (Laoshis) were always with us guiding us through each and every step towards the victory. It is true that we being the contestants wrote the history of the IC, UCAS, but the most important integral part of the victory was played by the ever loving Laoshis, through taking us in the correct path for proper pronunciation.

The live Pianist, Peter from Rwanda, has been wonderful with his piano and personality that gave us a lot of courage to sing a foreign national anthem like ours. His dedication has been paid off while the triumph of our own Jack been awarded as the best conductor.

All in all, this has been a perfect performance that had to come through a lot of organizing that included yelling. I think this event is a big chapter for the IC, UCAS, but one of the biggest events in my life, and I take this opportunity to thank you all for getting me into this wonderful loop of singing.

by Naveen Jayalal Dissanayake（Pakistan）

We arose, braved hard, marches on

We Arose, Braved hard, Marched on..

Nature is full of diversity right from our social, cultural, racial and political differences down to ethnicity and personal believes; but behind all this, we are all united by being human. Human beings who are motivated to break all the defiant tags that try to divide us, human beings who are inspired to compete and be the best at all times.

And this is what was exhibited today when the ninety two IC-UCAS students drawn from different countries worldwide united and roared in defiance of their diverse social, cultural and racial backgrounds to sing, in one accord, the Chinese National Anthem, 'Qilai'.

Our human nature pride was reaffirmed today by all the words that came of our mouths when singing as the congregation, happily clapped and sung along.

We, the IC-UCAS students arose, braved ourselves and in unity marched on to win the highly coveted 2015 UCAS Chorus Competition, first prize award, not only did we settle for that; our own chorus conductor Mr Jackson Togo was feted as the best in this competition.

It is said practice yields perfection, this is by far very true as the many, countless cold evenings of rehearsals paid of today: but it is good I say this team I belong in made me believe that unity, trust and commitment counts a lot too when it comes to prosperity and success. We are all proud!

Cheers to all 2015 Chorus organisers, participants, our pianist Mr Peter, our music training teachers and above all the international office-UCAS for making this possible. Thank you all.

God bless UCAS, God bless China, God bless us all.

by Atoni（Kenya）

国科大国际学院留学生感言不断

We won the champion! Yes, we won the first prize, and also the best conductor award! The funny thing is when the best conductor award was announced, our conductor Jack was still packing his belongings and not aware of it at all. He finally knew it after being called for several times until others received the award for him. Now we are like "it might be the only award in this entire world that you don't know you have won!"

Honestly we were not sure if we were the best, and other colleges have all kinds of fancy performance like Kong Fu and calligraphy, and we were kept asking "Tan Laoshi, Tan Laoshi, where are we now? Are we still the top?" Surprisingly the answer kept to be "Yes" till the end.

The Chinese students were in good order spirits. Before I came to China I thought most of Chinese are not so tall, and now I see them are very tall, not only boys but also girls! Now I know we really need to live in a country for some time to really get to know this country.

I love our International College so much. We come from all over the world and we get along very well. We have learned Chinese and some major courses and make a lot of friends. Everyone is very good at his/her field and this half year is really very valuable experience of my life.

We have done our best to practice in the last few months. There were lyrics of the song posted everywhere in our dorm and we kept asking our Chinese teacher how to pronounce them. LOL really appreciate them. Without them all these wonderful things would not happen.