On the last day of May, our school celebrated International Day. We (the kindergarten group) had ours in the morning, and the primary section had theirs in the afternoon. It was the finale to our last topic, “My Community.” After talking about places and people closer to us, we talked about communities far away and around the world. In CASA and Prep, each classroom chose a country to focus on and prepared an activity and food for International Day. Ever since I was told back in middle school that part of my family heritage stems from Switzerland, I have been interested in it. This was further cemented when my uncle told me (before coming to China) that he traced our family’s lineage on my mother’s side back to about 1632 (or was it 1634?), Switzerland. So, it was a no-brainer for me to choose that country.

One of the things I showed them, aside from a tourism promotion video showcasing all of the insanely beautiful landscapes of Switzerland, was a video of a woman who is dubbed “the queen of yodeling” (Melanie Oesch) singing on a TV show. The kids got a kick out of it, and several of them tried to imitate her, which mostly included flicking their tongues around the way she seemed to do. Below is the video I found on YouTube. What do you think? Does it make you want to stand atop the Swiss Alps and belt out a modern Swiss tune or two?

The foreign teachers were responsible for coming up with an activity, while the PTA parents were responsible for the food and the t-shirt design. I had sent them my PPT from before about Switzerland, hoping that it would give them enough of an idea to go off of. I was worried when I saw “Italian pasta” listed among the food items they were bringing, but on the day of the event, I was (mostly) pleasantly surprised that they had relevant items, like cheese fondue.

Knowing that Switzerland is famous for things like making watches and Swiss army knives, cheese and chocolate fondue, playing the giant alphorn and yodeling, I had to figure out an activity that was somehow relevant and doable. Since none of the things I just mentioned would be feasible as activities, I finally decided on something inspired by the tale of William Tell, a legend of heroic Swiss folklore and the part about him being forced to shoot an apple off of the top of his son’s head. And so, the apple archery activity was chosen.

I was able to find a toy bow and arrow set on Taobao (China’s version of “Amazon”). The hard part was finding something that would be suitable to place the apple on top of. I asked for a large doll, and one of the moms said her company has kids furniture and toys, so finally they found these elephant dolls with a solid shoe base and legs that could be extended so they could stand upright. Our tent was the most popular, as it was the last activity tent with kids waiting to participate. A handful of kids actually managed to shoot the apple off the elephant’s head. William Tell would be proud.

Luckily, the penchant for competition led many of the PTA members to try to outdo the other classes with opulent decorations and food items.

Throughout the event, each class performed their little ethnic dance routine on stage. I wasn’t able to see our class because I needed to man the tent and help many of the kids learn how to hold and shoot the arrows.

Some of the activity tens.

Most of the kids from our class went home after lunch, so we were only left with about five kids. After rotating classrooms for some final country-related activities, we took our kids outside to see what the primary kids were doing. It didn’t take long to go around and see everything. There were definitely more people, and the activities were all crowded close together, so it was difficult to make out what they were. Overall, I thought the CASA/Prep group had better and more clearly defined activities and food.

Now that this event is over, there is only one final task to prepare for: the end-of-year performance and graduation ceremony!