International Day at school - our little effort at world peace

Our fifth International Day at our school.  The fifth time I stood with other moms, tears streaming down our faces commenting on this... this is why we wanted to bring our kids overseas and what we want our kids to take away from this experience.  Over 60 nationalities are represented in our school, over 40 in our Parade of Nations and booths where members of the community can taste the food, see national dress and scenes and artifacts.  Countries that sometimes don't like each other very much.  But that doesn't matter here because the kids and the parents are friends.  We comment that if every kid in the world went to a school like ours, we could solve a lot of the world's peace problems in a generation (well, with one omission - when the Israeli flag is in our Parade of Nations, then I really will know that these kids could solve any peace problem - ones that our generation and the generation before us haven't been able to solve).  Some day.  I think it could happen here.

The morning starts off with a Parade of Nations where the kids dress up in clothes from "their" country and walk around the soccer pitch in a parade to "We Are the World".  So many kids at our school have multiple passports and/ or nationalities that they have to pick "who" to be this year.  I saw three kids in one family all walk under different flags!  My kids were bemoaning the fact that we "only" have American passports and that is *so* boring!  Our nanny, from the Philippines, let them know that they were very, very lucky to have those passports and that many, many people in the world would love to "only" have an American passport!  Amen.  We all get a bit patriotic seeing that American flag.  The parade starts with the UAE national anthem and the UAE kids lead the parade.  The other countries come in alphabetical order and then the giant American group comes last and the parade ends with the USA National Anthem.

Later in the morning, the kids come at different times to visit all the countries.  The elementary kids have "passports" that they get stamped at the different countries they visit.  I got to take a group of 5 kids from Meredith's second grade classroom around.  I only lost three of them!  Luckily, I found them at the end (and they weren't too concerned about getting lost - whew!).

Our girls off to International Day - they all got new shirts (thanks, Etsy!) with US maps and hearts where they are from (San Francisco and Charlotte for Regan and Jane and Charlotte for Meredith and Anna).  Anna was mad and wouldn't smile for the camera!

Gathering for the Parade of Nations (separate post).  Anna's grade is making the peace sign in the middle of the field while the bigger kids gather by country.

Meredith getting her "passport" stamped by the Statue of Liberty at the USA booth (they served chili and chocolate chip cookies at the US booth)

A bunch of American (and Canadian) girls doing a line dance to "Boot Scootin' Boogie" - so cute!

Emirati drums

Syrian musicians and dancers

Then the Syrian moms joined in the fun

Norway booth

Yum!  The Indian country booth outdid themselves with food this year!

Clara (from Mexico) making cold, slushie, yummy mock margaritas.  They were so refreshing on our 100 degree day.

Drummer and dancer from India - they were fantastic (and enthusiastic!)

Emirati drummers, dancer and the goat skin instrument

I took the 2nd graders around - it was fun visiting the booths with Meredith and her friends

Flat bread (Morocco booth??)

Henna painting in the UAE tent

Palestine outdid itself this year - they had a booth and this little museum

Inside the Palestine museum

Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty setting the example that we can *all* get along!

Uncle Sam (who is an alum of our school and now has his kids there) and me

The Philippines booth - with the cheddar cheese ice cream (of which I am not a real fan!)

The Canadian Sugar Shack was an extremely popular pit stop on this unusually warm February day.  "Snow" with boiled, reduced and thickened Canadian maple syrup.  Real Canadian maple syrup costs a fortune here so this treat was a real financial contribution by the Canadian families.  Thanks, Canada!

And here is a video of the US national anthem at the end of the Parade of Nations - definitely a neat experience to hear and see.