UN Day

Our school celebrates United Nations Day / Interntational Awareness Day every year in the fall. All the students and staff come dressed in traditional clothes from their home countries. There is always an all school performance of music, class by class presentations on different cultures, and all school feast/potluck of international food, and this year the high school studied and debated current resolutions being discussed in the UN.


Dana, myself, Kate and Lara dressed up for UN Day.
Dana is pretty self explanatory I think. Kate and I are wearing our traditional Vietnamese dresses while Lara is sporting her Costa Rican skirt.

UN Day assembly. Lots of musical numbers about culture and diversity. So neat to see some of our students, who maybe can't put together a sentence in class, but all out singing on stage :)

My 2nd grade elves are a little unique. They've been obsessed with Hawai'ian culture ... or what little they know of it, since the beginning of the year. They greet each other by saying "Aloha" and every time we have a Friday dance, many of them pretend try to hula. So when we were asked to choose a country to present, my elves automatically asked for Hawai'i. Of course, there is just one problem with that. Hawai'i is not a country! But, since the elementary is only studying International Awareness, we created a presentation about Hawai'i before it became a US State. We found out that we had to do this presentation on Monday, so they had 4 days to get it ready and present on Friday. Oy!

Also, in case it was hard to hear, here is the script:
- Did you know that only 50% of Hawai'ians vote?
THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS!
- That's because right now Hawai'i is a part of the United States, but before, it was its own kingdom.
NO WAY!
- The Hawai'ian people have their own culture, language and lifestyle.
LIKE WHAT?
- There are only 13 letters in their language and an apostrophe is called an okina.
- The Hawai'ians tell stories through dance. When they move their hands, it means something different.
LIKE SIGN LANGUAGE.
- The Hawai'ians have many legends. Legends are stories that explain the world around us.
- Hawai'i is made of volcanos, so many legends are about FIRE.
FIRST we will show you one legend, THEN we will show you one dance.
- The title is "How Maui Made Fire" ENJOY!

As the girl "mud hens" were setting up for the legend, they accidently knocked over the background set, causing a domino effect which eventually landed on the drums. Oops ... no performance is perfect?

And the actual performance of "How Maui Made Fire"

 

 

And after the legend, they set up for their hula dance. Unfortunately when I went for my computer to get the music, my laptop decided to restart. I knew it would take about 5 minutes to shut all the way down and be up and running again, and we were the last to perform, so I told the kids I would sing it. Again ... no performance is perfect? I was so nervous, I ended up leading the dance wrong. Poor elves! They really did an amazing job!

 

Also, the story for the dance, (since we said the movements are very important and tell a story), it's about the lifestyle of the Hawai'ian men. Waking up early, taking the canoe out, throwing out the fishing nets and pulling them back in, then the men try to show their toughness :)

 



 

Other than that, we feasted on a potluck that the mom's brought. Such a wonderful day!