International Night

We have had two grilling days discussing the causes of and possible solutions to gender inequality and unsustainability which have provided me with so many ideas for what I could do for my  Take Action project that I don't know where to start!  But after our packed schedules, the planning team have put together some amazing social activities for us in the evening to let off steam and have fun with our new friends.
On Saturday we had International night, where everone set out a table which reprsented their country and wore traditional dress.  On our United Kingdom we had Union Jacks, red double decker buses, shortbread, Olympics posters, photos of our lives in England and objects which represented the Beatles, Harry Potter and Doctor Who.  We were a bit stuck as to what to wear for traditional British dress, but we ended up going 'Ascot style' - fascinators and all!  As I have had happen to me all week, people were constantly coming up and squealing over our 'cute British accents'!  When I get home I'll miss people automatically liking me because I'm British.

Seeing everyone else in their traditional dress was amazing too and it made me jealous that we don't have such interesting traditions.  We had great fun posing for pictures with each other and explainging why we were wearing what we were wearing. 

While this was all going on, we were treated to some amazing dancing and singing from delegates from all around the world, and most of the audience joined in by clapping and cheering and dancing along. 

As the Korean chaparone pointed out to me, this kind of show is priceless - nowhere else would you get to authentically experience so many different cultures in the space of a few hours. 

I managed to get up the courage to perform one of my own songs (because I'm English, so that makes it English!), which I think looked a little bland next to everyone else's performances, but I was happy to find that it got an amazing reception.  Another unique experience was doing the Cha Cha slide with the Africans, many of whom had  never heard it before, but could still perform it better than I ever could!
I returned to my bed that night exhausted, and wondering how I was ever going to say goodbye to all these people - good thing we all have Facebook to keep in touch!