James Bond Prom 2007 ... a Success!

I can’t believe that it actually happened, but everything came together perfectly for Prom. I really had my doubts about how this would come together because we had had so many meetings that didn’t seem very productive … but the week of Prom, all of this awesome music/lighting/stage equipment showed up out of nowhere, and students pulled together to get everything done. In true Molly-fashion, my decoration committee procrastinated and did everything the day before/day of the Prom. The day before about 8 of us blew up (manually, no helium allowed!) 350 balloons and made a rockin’ balloon arch! It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, and it was so fun to spend some time getting to know a few of my favorite students. The night before we had a quick rehearsal to practice the speeches, set up the music & lighting equipment, etc. Then on the day of Prom, teachers kept bringing their classes to the gym to help out, so the decorations/carpeting/lights/etc were all set up under two hours! It was amazing how many people helped out … I ended up not really doing too much, but as the only American here, I just like to think of myself as the “Prom consultant” haha, whatever value that may have. So the decorations ended up being: one massive balloon arch over the door, a small stage for the DJ and band, a “fresco” on the wall with a lifesize James Bond/Prom 2007 logo (painted by students – very good!), lots of random balloons, and ongoing projections on the wall of various James Bond movie clips; we also had a VIP section for the prom committee members, of course! Sounds random but it worked!

So, onto the night of the Prom. It took about an hour for all the students to actually get into the gym. Had I already mentioned that the teachers and I made name badges with photos for each of the 400 students? Yeah, tight security … so it took a while for the teachers to identify each student and give them their badges at the door. The other English assistant and I, along with the president of the student association, officially “opened” the ball with a little speech. He spoke in English and we translated in French … not super fun to speak French in a microphone in front of everyone, but it was pretty quick! Then the Prom committee was invited to the dance floor to do the “Madison,” a line dance that we all learned together. After that there were random contests, lots of dancing (including a group of students who formed a huge circle to dance “Techtonic”, the newest dance among French teenagers), and a student band that performed at the end. Clean-up also went really quickly, and we were out of there by 11pm. Then some of the students invited us to the Prom After-Party (!!) but that didn’t work out and I just met up with friends downtown for the end of the night. It was quite the success, and at the end of the evening the principal said that they could for sure do it again next year, with the addition of a real dance floor, as well! Most random Prom ever … it actually didn’t end up really resembling your typical Prom, but that’s what’s so great about the French – they can take an idea from another culture, but it gets so “frenchified” that it ends up becoming something completely different … and just French. This was a great example of the way that the French go out of their way to think through little details for everything … from the photo/name badges for all the students to the scene-specific film projections, to the 100+ cakes made by students and sold at the prom, etc etc. It would take all day to tell you about all of the little, random things that we discussed at the meetings leading up to it. But it was a very fun activity to have for the semester and gave me something to do in addition to my whopping 12 hours of weekly work.