Global days

This weekend was dominated by Global Day festivities.  Global Day is an elaborate two-day festival on campus where student cultural organizations set up outdoor tents and displays representing their heritage and put on a multi-night performance featuring dances, skits, and music.  The outdoor portion was a lot like Epcot Center.  Each display represented a particular country (The Emirates, Iraq, Iran, India, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Armenia, Russia, Japan, Korea, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Qatar, Bahrain, Somalia, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria...I'm probably forgetting a few) and had historical artifacts, samples of food, and club members dressed in traditional costume.  The students did a great job; the detail alone was amazing.  Qatar, for example, had a World Cup theme (they're hosting in a few years) and their structure was like a soccer field.  In Palestine, you could buy homemade baked goods to benefit an orphanage and, to do so, you exchanged money for laminated Palestinian pounds.  Really creative stuff. 

I only saw the second evening's performances because night #1 was sold out by the time I got to the cashier's office.  So I missed the "non-Arab" shows.  Night #2 featured all the Arab states...so lots of dabkek!  Lebanese dabkeh, Palestinian dabkeh, Jordanian dabkeh.  Good music and dancing all around.  The Syrian club's performance stood out.  They did an interpretive performance piece where all the club members wore flowing white blouses and danced happily before removing the blouses to reveal half wore blue and half wore black t-shirts.  The blue and black sides were at odds and did a dance-fight (kind of like West Side Story) until they had changes of heart, put their white blouses back on, and ceased fighting.  Nicely done.  The crowd response was amazing--chanting "Suryeea" and generally expressing pride.  The Emirates club did a salute to the land's history, acting out sketches "before oil," "after oil," and "present day."  Interesting, and definitely indicative of national pride and the love of technology and economic advancement.