A True International Festival!

Let me just describe the atmosphere for you...acceptance, enjoyment of others, diversity at its finest, kinship, respect, bonding of community...all of these words were our feelings Friday night as we witnessed our first International Festival. Everyone kept telling me, "This day contains my favorite activity of the school year," and now we know why.

About 25 booths representing different countries were set up in one gym so during the day children could walk around, gathering trinkets from each country visited while adding a stamp representing that country to their pretend passport. For example, France gave out small Eiffel Tower key chains and stamped passports with an Eiffel Tower. This was all followed by a parade including about 250 children from about 40 different countries. Each country had a theme song, their country sign, and dressed representing their country. Guiding the American kids was a child dressed as the Statue of Liberty followed by children steering a boat coming across the Atlantic Ocean. For the United States, the children had turned in white t-shirts ahead of time for tie-dying either red or blue. All kids from America wore blue jeans and waved the American flag during the parade. The chosen song was "R.O.C.K. in the USA".

R has his back to us here, but is waving his flag.

The ironic thing is the stereotypes we're taught to stay away from while living in the United States were celebrated by these countries and we all had FUN! People from the Netherlands paraded on bikes with baskets attached full of tulips complete with their native outfits. Students representing Sweden came out with ABBA outfits covered with blue and yellow sequins dancing to "Waterloo". Australians came through with inflatable kangaroos and crocodiles dancing to "We Come From a Land Down Under".

UK kids with their red double decker bus!

I just sat misty-eyed during the parade because I was astonished at how some children were the only ones (high school kids mind you - talk about having guts to get out in front of everyone!) representing their country. They were so proud as they walked across the small stage in the gym and the other school children just cheered them on to let them know we understood what it must have taken for them to parade in front of a huge crowd carrying their country sign and flag all by their lonesome. What dignity and pride!

The finale consisted of Belgium being represented with enormous fries and some guys walking around the gym on stilts.

The parade is done during the school day, and then around 7 the nightly festivities started with a repeat of the parade for all the parents and the booths changed up during the evening hours to contain food and drinks native to the countries. We tried some from all different countries...with our favorites being Namibia (who knew that was even a country in Africa?) and Germany. The kids couldn't get enough of the German sausages. I'm going to have to figure out where to get those things so I can put some pounds on these two little ones!

We left feeling a sense of community and acceptance from our truly international Belgian school!