Cultural Days are back! After a short interlude, we came together to celebrate European Cultural Day on April 13th. Our European students decided to change things up a little, and do away with the traditional show at the end of the night. Instead, there was a murder mystery storyline that ran throughout the day, with a fascinating skit during lunchtime, a formal dinner, and a scavenger hunt in the evening that allowed our community to learn about European culture while trying to solve the murder of an Italian man (played by our very own Grade 10 Italian student, Marco).
Tiyi (Class of 2018, France) shared that the reason why they wanted to go a different route with their cultural day was partly because they were one of the smallest contingents on campus. The scavenger hunt format came as a suggestion from Jerry (Class of 2019, Slovakia), and while initially skeptical, they all decided to give it a go. “We wanted our cultural day to have an impact and to educate people who might not know a lot about Europe besides art and food. Most of all, we wanted students to be able to enjoy the event and take it as a break from stressful school life.”
The event was definitely not without its challenges. Tiyi explained that cooking for the event was one of the hardest things they had to do, because they had to cook a lot of the desserts and snacks for the gala dinner in between classes and immediately after school. Additionally, since they ended up using most of the Asama building for the scavenger hunt, clean-up took much longer compared to the other cultural days. Yet, she admits that these challenges were worth it because they were able to present the students with a unique experience that they are sure to not easily forget.
“The most iconic moment of our Cultural Day was after the closing speech of our formal dinner, while our very well-dressed guests were enjoying their homemade tiramisu. The lights went off and the mystery began! All the guests were very confused when the acting started. They had to figure out who had assassinated Marco according to clues given to them in our next activity. This is what made our Cultural Day special.”
– Sofia (Class of 2019, Portugal)
