by Cherry Ngo (Class of 2024)

Right before winter break on December 19, 2018, Developing Virtue Girls School organized its annual Christmas banquet. There were performances, food, and activities. The banquet started off with some entertaining performances. Delaney, a 7^th grader, stepped on stage and sang a powerful Christian song called Hallelujah. Her voice was mesmerizing and lilting, making every person in the audience stop and give her their attention.

After Delaney’s performance, there were much left of my schoolmates to perform, too. There were two freshmen, Rachel and Heidi with their humorous and amusing skit that made our days so much better.

Sola and Vanessa, the sophomores with their violins, the sounds of the violins were harmonics. It’s not that easy to make a violin sounds good, but Sola and Vanessa played it so perfectly that the sound of it made everybody fall in love with it. Then there were also Jane’s impressive Kung Fu presentation, the whole Freshman class singing “Walking in the Winter Wonderland,” and Mr. Levin as the Santa Claus giving out candy to good children.

All the work of the talented students were rewarded with what they love the most afterward. Guess what the reward was and guess who was there: The dorm mother Heng Dzu Shr—with food! There were cheesecake, fried rice, sushi, noodles, and vegetables of all kinds.

Once the food arrived, the Juniors, our emcees, called students to go get food by grades so everything would stay in order. When the junior high class was finally called, one of them  rushed out of the door bumping into several people in her class. She said later, “Even though I ran with full speed, I was still standing at the back of the line.”

For some students, it was a chance to perform on stage and overcome stage fright. One junior high student reflected, “Even though I walked on ‘stage’ panicking, when I walked off, I felt like a champion. Though the decision to perform was an acutely last-minute arrangement for me and my partners, I think it really paid off.”

Afterward, students swept and mopped the floor carefully, cleaned up all the trash, taking off all the decorations and headed back home with all the amazing memories they just got from this meaningful Christmas banquet. With excellent performances along with scrumptious food, the Christmas Banquet was awfully well-done, thanks to all the Juniors who organized and hosted the event.

Photography: Sola Long (Class of 2021); Thuy Nguyen and Rachel Blythe (Class of 2022)