International Day

International Day

International day was last weekend. These two lovely girls are some of my students, dressed up for the big international day event at school. Different countries have different booths, with activities, food, and info. Everyone tries to get dressed up and have a festive time. I wore red white and blue and helped kids do a puzzle of all 50 states (“50 states! So many…”), and monitored the hula hoops. No U.S. food available, but plenty from other countries, I had Turkish, French, Myanmar, Thai, and was so full I had to skip the Korean. It was a nice day, good to see people taking pride in their heritage and take interest in others. There were performances as well, and hands down the Koreans were the stars. Their pride in their country and their unity was quite impressive, something that I can see in my own Korean students in the classroom as well. They did a beautiful fan dance, and then a dance music number with almost 25 kids.

Todd was busy that day with his community service club. He started a club in the middle school for community service, and they decided to do a fund-raiser at International Day by selling drinks. He was very involved in keeping them organized and focused, and their booth was quite a success and raised quite a bit of money. I think he’s proud of his community service kids and how they are “stepping up to the plate”. Their next step is to find a focus for where to apply the money. Perhaps an orphanage, perhaps helping the neighborhood around the school. There was also a bad fire nearby on Friday, which they thought that they might be able to help out with.

We were in for a surprise on December first when we went to a nearby hotel to buy some good bread. Christmas decorations were up! The bakery had a whole gingerbread display, lights were everywhere, and even at school the kids want to do Christmas decorations. I was caught a bit by surprise, but hey, if they want to do secret santa, who am I to say no?

I hope all of you are well and enjoying your December.

Love,
Meghan