International Week at school

So the girls had International week at school, and it was so much fun! On Wednesay they had to dress up in their traditional costume and walk in a parade. Each country was represented with their flag and all the kids walked behind their flag. On alphabetical order, can you imagine 72 countries were represented at this parade!!
It was amazing to see all these beautiful dressed up kids proud as can be walking and being cheered by all the parents and other visitors. It brought chills to my bone and tears in my eyes just to see it!!

Juliet's class

Jasmine's class

As you can see in these pictures there is hardly one kid from the same country, Juliet has 17 kids and Jasmine 16 kids in the class, almost all from different backgrounds. Isn't that just amazing??

The parade was held on the football fields of the school, with in the background the skyline of Johannesburg, a sunny day very clear sky, it was just amazing. As the headmaster said...truly a United Nations, we could take an example by these children. Working, playing together, no language barriers...at least if there is, they will work it out by just playing and being friends of each other...the language will follow! It is the greatest lesson in the world to just hang out here at school with all these precious children from so many different backgrounds and cultures, just being themselves and being proud of who they are. I just loved that parade of nations.


Then on Friday they had to represent their country by books, food, photo's of their traditional housing, artifacts from their home country. And then the 1st graders had to explain to the older kids in elementary school what their country was about. Show the older kids what kind of food they eat, what clothing they wear and what is so special about their country. The cutest speeches I heard....it is so great to see all the kids dressed up in their traditional dress standing behind a table with all the goodies from their country telling their fellow students what in our case THAILAND was all about. We of course could choose between Holland or Thailand to represent, since the girls have dual citizenship. But the outfit they had for Thailand is more princess like, so the choice was easy!! And they truly looked like little Thai princess's.
At the end of each presentation we could sample the yummy food each table had made. The Thai chicken sate with peanut sauce was a big hit...everybody loves Thai food, so the 50 chicken on a stick went quickly ;-)

But I enjoyed tasting all the new stuff, like the Korean, Russian, Tunesian food I hadn't had before. What a great idea this was and so well organised, it truly was an international event and experience! ....even for us, who already traveled so much, there are always new countries and cultures to discover. How fun!

Have a good day y'all! (click on the picture to see a bigger size)Mireille