ISF International Day

Anaëlle got to visit the International School of Frankfurt in all its glory today. It was International Day, a day where ISF becomes a cultural learning place as students, parents, and visitors explore five focus country rooms, participate in Sports Spass events (traditional sports from the featured countries), view theater performances, and eat wonderful home-made cakes.

The day began with Opening Ceremonies. Flags from the home nations of ISF families where paraded across the stage -- 50 all together -- and finally, the ISF flag graced the stage. The five focus countries were Australia, China, Japan, Kenya and Turkey.

A Japanese fan dancer began the cultural presentations.

There is only one family from Australia, so they enlisted the help of a first grade class and some teachers to lead in the singing of Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, a song I remember learning from somewhere when I was little.

I don't know enough about photography to take a clear picture of energetic Turkish dancers.

The audience favorite, however, was the Tai Chi Fighting Fan demonstration.

The first time he flicked his wrist and the fan snapped open with a loud crack, the kids oohed and aahed.

There were tables set up with items for sale from many places around the world: Polish Pottery, African jewelry, Girl Scout cookies, etc.

The main activity of the day for the kids is to get their Passports stamped. They must visit each Focus country room where they earn that country's stamp by successfully answering a sheet of questions about that country. The answers are found somewhere in the displays set up around that room. Then it's down to the gym to earn another set of passport stamps by participating in games from those counties.

When completed, the passports are put into a tombola (raffle) and there were rumors flying about what the prizes would be.

In the Turkey room, we got to sample Turkish Delight, that treat mentioned so prevalently in the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Whenever the kids would ask me "But Mom, what is Turkish Delight?," I would have no good answer. Now we all know it's a starch and sugar candy flavored with rosewater, mastic or lemon.

Emilie learned that Noah's Ark ended up settling on a mountain top in Turkey.

International diplomacy at work as some Japanese girls visit the Kenya room. There was a slide show being projected on the wall featuring pictures from a recent trip to Kenya by an ISF teacher. She brought some supplies to a Kenyan school and I remember Emilie telling me last week that the teacher talked about how over the moon the Kenyan students were to receive a new pencil.

The girls painted animal masks in Kenya....

.... and David and I sampled Vegemite, a food paste made from yeast extract, in Australia.

Rebecca getting her name written in Chinese. The amount of work that went into these focus country rooms was very impressive.

After getting this origami Pokémon, Emilie excitedly exclaimed, "Mom, guess what?  I just found out that Pikachu is really popular in Japan!"  What else can you say but, "Well, Pikachu does come from Japan, Sweetie." Emilie was shocked by that revelation.

Becca asked to be painted as Pikachu at the facepainting table.

I don't think she intended to look like Pikachu from your worst nightmare.

Emilie chose a pretty headband.

Passports completed, the kids awaited the raffle drawing. There were twenty drawings, with prizes of everything from 25 Euro Land's End giftcards (they are our uniform providers), to remote control cars, to Frankfurt Skyliners t-shirts (that's our local professional basketball team), but the big prize of the day was...

.... the Samsung flatscreen TV, which we didn't win. But the kids didn't go home empty-handed.

Every student who participated in International Day received one of these very nice ISF coffee cups. But for the record, there were more raffle drawings at school the following Monday and Emilie won a Land's End gift card and James won a Skyliners t-shirt.