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The annual international culture festival, Culturefest, organized by the International Students Association (ISA) brought food, style and talent to the field house on Saturday.
Baobao Jiang, an alumnus from China, said, “[Culturefest is] an opportunity for international students to get together and to represent their countries.” The event lasted from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and attracted more then 600 people from more than 50 countries and 20 organizations.
Three coordinated areas including the food court, the talent show and the style show helped bring cultures together in different ways.
“I had Sri Lankan beef balls and rice and Chinese dumplings,” Erik Harriman said. The third-year student from the U.S. said there were some interesting tastes in the food court. International students brought spicy chicken from India, cheese and ham croissants from France, fried beef from Saudi Arabia and other different tastes. They had been cooking for a few days and got up early to prepare the food court.
Students with different accents were standing behind the exhibition tables in their traditional clothes. A student from India, Anan Ya, was showing her talent on the visitors’ hands by painting Mehendi with a brushed pen. “It’s relaxing and it feels very cool on the skin,” a visitor from Orono, Faith Cole, said. Mehendi is a temporary form of skin decoration made by henna extract and tea.
The Saudi Arabia table had traditional dresses, Thob, hanging on top of the booth. Homoud Alhajri, ISA vice-president and a student from Saudi Arabia, said, “I am glad we have a chance to serve our Arabian beverages, our clothes, our history. Some people have no idea where Saudi Arabia is and thought it was a desert.”
“The tables are different from the style show and the talent show because people can speak to us and ask us questions about our cultures directly,” Alhajri said.
Yana Kim, the coordinator of the talent show, said the event is not just showing pictures and decorations, “It displays expressions from different countries. People can learn the cultures through feeling, hearing and experiencing the show.”
A Bearim Bau performer from Japan, Shotaro Takahashi, said that it is an African musical instrument adopted in Brazil. Bearim Bau is a long bamboo stick with a wooden box attached at the bottom. “It is interesting how the players interact with each other,” he said.
More than 200 people watched the talent show, which contained 10 performances including Middle-East belly dancing, African dancing, Chinese singing and flamenco dancing.
According to Sarah Joughin, international students and scholar advisor, ISA had been setting meetings with students and recruiting volunteers since September. An increasing amount of the international students made the talent show more exciting. “We had to turn people away,” Joughin said.
Culturefest ended on a runway. The international students walked to the music in their traditional dresses. A bright red dress from China, a long white thob from Saudi Arabia and a purple silk dress from India made the show quite colorful. UMaine students turned the end of Culturefest into a catwalk show.
