International Days at International School of Bucharest!

Joshua with buddy, Cristof, who is from Hungary!

Little guy from Greece told us he just loves to eat fish. He then proceeded to take a big bite of the top half of the fish, smiling as he crunched! Joshua could not believe it!

Indian, Joshua, and Cowgirl represent the country of America!

Students from around 45 countries attend Joshua's school.

It was fun to see the wide variety of native costumes from so many countries!

The week before Halloween, Joshua's school had a two day celebration called "International Days." The first day, parents of students from various countries did six half-hour long presentations about their native country. I was asked to do one on America. It was fun to have the classes rotate in, receive a stamp on their "passport," and then learn some things about our great country. I did a power point presentation showing patriotic symbols and also talked about the early settlers, the holidays, the food, and sports. I was able to get some good props from the American Embassy. The kids seemed to enjoy it.

The second day, people were asked to bring some sort of food from their country to share. There was also a parade of the children dressed in their native costume. Each child was encouraged to participate.

I tried to think what I could make that would be good for a "tasting table." I finally made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies. When President Lundberg and I arrived at the school at the appointed time, the tables were all around the foyer with a sign stating the name of the country. There was one empty table with a simple "U.S.A." sign. The other tables had beautiful cloths, flags, posters, brochures, and tons of food spread on them. My huge tupperware bowl of chocolate chip cookies on a plain table looked a little sad. I had no idea that I was in charge of a table. The props and decorations I had used the previous day were at home. So, I set the cookies on the table and we walked around, sampling other countries foods. I was a little too embarrassed to even stand by my table, so after a few minutes, I whispered to President Lundberg that the missionaries would love the cookies and we slipped over to the table, pulled the sign off, and ran the cookies to the car. There were so many tables that nobody noticed and we will be more prepared next year!

We tried to decide what the native costume of America was so that Joshua could participate in the parade. The four things we came up with were Uncle Sam, American Indian, cowboy, or baseball player. Fortunately, when I was at a big store here (Kind of like a Costco), I went to the toy section where I found three boy costumes. One of them was an Indian costume, so I bought it. Joshua was in line near the end of the parade, but when he came through carrying the USA sign, he was with a little girl dressed as a cowgirl. She lives in Romania, and her mother is Romanian, but her father is American. It looked cute to have the two of them representing America.