LIS International Day

Every year at LIS, they have "International Day."  I love it!  It's a chance to see the diversity of the students and their families along with the food, clothing, and musical traditions of their home country.  At LIS, we have some 56 or so countries represented from around the world.  Twenty-five of those countries participated in a parade and booths set up around the school.  This year we had Kazakhstan join us.

I'm impressed with the amount of work that each country's committee puts into the booths--decor, flags, banners, streamers, food, and prizes for the kids.  And I love seeing all of the color!

Here's Thomas with his friend Zequia from Japan.  They spend a lot of time playing the piano together at school.  She has been a huge inspiration behind Thomas' piano playing this school year.  In fact, one of the songs he's trying to master right now is a Japanese song called, "1,000 Cherry Blossoms", the English translation.  It's definitely a step up from the level he's been playing, but he's up for the challenge because "Zequia can play it."  :)  I talked with her parents at the parade and they said that having Thomas learn and play the Cherry Blossoms song has really motivated Zequia to improve her playing as well.  Awesome!

The parade:

After the parade, we visited each country's booth, tasted their food and the kids got their "passports" stamped.

We had some yummy food--Canada's french fries with cheese and gravy, waffles from Norway, scones from Russia, rice pudding from Venezuela, incredible meat from Nigeria, sticky rice balls from Japan, etc.  There were a lot of pastries from each country that I couldn't try because of the gluten, but I imagine they were good!

Visiting Kazakhstan and Russia got us excited for our next post to Latvia!

And last but not least, Angola.  They had some yummy ice cream that the kids loved and I loved the hair of the lady serving the ice cream (bottom right).  A wonderful day!  It was much cooler than last year which we totally appreciated and we loved the cultural experience!  It's so fun to be around so much diversity in one location and to feel the energy of everyone.