International Festival Follow-Up

One of the Uzbek students here is a reporter for the news station in Uzbekistan’s capital city, Tashkent. He made a news package about the international festival and posted it on this Chinese video site, so you can get a feel for what the festival was like.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTM1ODk2NjQ0.html

At about one minute into the video, there’s a short clip of me speaking Uzbek. I’m just saying the normal greeting, “Assalomu alaykum.” Nothing complicated.

The International Festival

The International Festival was actually great. My part was not, but the other students really went over-the-top.

My display board was pretty sharp. I had some graphs comparing the U.S. and China’s economy, geography, people, and military, as well as map of the U.S. with China placed on top (I got these materials from www.mint.com). I also had some pictures of famous places in America, President Obama, and U.S. symbols.


Me with my display board... lame.

I had made a pretty good PowerPoint presentation, too. I skipped a whole day of classes to work on it, in fact. I even rehearsed giving my presentation in Chinese. But, welcome to China, they told us at the last minute that we didn’t need the presentations because it would be too bright outside for people to see and there would be no screen, anyway. Thank you, Lanzhou University.


Korean students perform Tae Kwon Do

The main participants in the festival were Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, and all of the Arabic-speaking students worked together for a good performance. Because these groups each had 20-50 students, I felt really left out standing beside a poster board by myself talking to Chinese students about politics and economy. I ditched my display and instead learned about the cultural differences between the Central Asian countries.


A young man and lady from Kyrgyzstan dance together


Girls from Uzbekistan wear traditional dresses and dance

During the festival, sometimes I felt extremely happy and sometimes kind of sad. I felt happy when I watched my good friends sing and dance, wearing traditional clothes. They are so proud of their countries and cultures. On the other hand, I felt really awkward because America is so lame and we don’t know it. I felt a really intense longing to be part of a distinct culture and to have such a strong national pride. These Central Asian countries only recently became independent from Russia (most around 1991) and they really have a lot to celebrate. Many of my friends remember when their countries were part of Russia and how hard life was for their families.


Me being interviewed by the Tashkent news station

Preparing for the International Festival

A previous post was about university communication and random meetings. Two weeks ago a meeting was called, and at the meeting, we were told that we needed to prepare a presentation about our countries for an international festival. Since I’m the only American, I thought this was quite a large task for one person, but nothing I couldn’t handle. We were told to speak for a few minutes about our country, and make a large display board. No problem.

The next week, another meeting was called, and I had to cancel plans with a friend to attend. There they told us we had six requirements to finish in a week:

1. Wear your country’s clothes and carry a flag across the stage.
2. Prepare a short performance, like a skit.
3. Sing a song or dance.
4. Prepare a powerpoint presentation about your country.
5. Make two large display boards with pictures of your country.
6. Prepare some of your country’s food to display.

Here are my responses to each of these:

1. Crap, I left my cowgirl costume at home!!! Also, I don’t have a flag.
2. I could imitate an American president and talk about things like stamping out Communism, the merits of democracy, and defending human rights…
3. Over my dead body. Do they want me dancing in a bikini or rapping about murdering people?
4. Ok, I can make a powerpoint. It’s going to be sarcastic, though. You can count on it.
5. Yes, I can do this. No problem.
6. Macaroni and cheese? Hot dogs? Gross.

The festival was supposed to be this Saturday, and I stayed home from class on Thursday to prepare. That afternoon, and third meeting was called. They are moving the festival to next Saturday because this Saturday is too cold. Excuse me, but doesn’t the weather get colder and colder as winter approaches?

Insanity. I’ll let you know how it goes next week…