Culture Night!

November 23^rd the International Student Union held their biggest event of the year: Culture Night. It has a popular reputation at Handong, especially amongst the international students. Even as exchange students we were told about it during our orientation week. What is Culture Night you ask? It is a night to celebrate the cultures represented at this school with singing, dancing, food, and fellowship.

All of the international communities get together fairly early in the semester to begin planning this event under the leadership of the president and other members of the International Student Union.

The event begins with each community serving samples of food from their country to the crowds that show up early enough to get a portion. As you can imagine, figuring out how to cook for hundreds of people can be a challenge.

After the food is gone the main event of the evening begins; meaning, a series of performances from cultures represented here on campus. These performances include dancing, singing, story-telling, and other creative ways to represent and demonstrate the beautiful culture the students from their respective communities come from. When the performances finish, there is a fashion show to exhibit the traditional costumes from all over the world.

This is a skeletal description, so now I’ll flesh it out a bit by talking about my experience with Culture Night.  

Over a month ago we were all asked to start getting together with our countrymen to begin the planning process of what we wanted to perform. That’s when the series of meetings began. Each community would send a leader or representative to the meetings where logistics and guidelines for the event were set out with the help of the international student union, then we would hold another meeting to confer that information to our individual communities so that we could plan our section of the program accordingly.

Once we figured out what we wanted to do, our task was to start practicing! As Americans, we had a difficult task coming up with a traditional dance specific to our country. We decided to do a combination of several popular dances taken from the past century of our history. We also ended up including a short skit based off a popular American movie near the end, but I’ll elaborate upon that later.

Only three out of the seven of us had ever danced before so it was a really interesting and sometimes crazy process trying to choreograph it. But with the help of YouTube, talented members of our group, and a lot of time we figured out a routine. As often as we could we gathered to practice the dance routine and polish it up. I have never danced before in my life so it was traumatizing, exciting, stressful and foreign all at once to me.

While we practiced our dance routine we were also trying to decide on what to cook. After much going back and forth we landed on the all American… pie! Apple and pumpkin. Making pie for a few hundred people or so was a daunting task, but with the combined ingenuity of many minds we were able to calculate how much of the ingredients we would need.

The final two weeks before the actual event were busy. We all had to figure out final logistics, practice as much as possible, make our few props, coordinate with the other communities, and so on.

The Thursday before the big night was when we started the baking process. I spent a couple hours that afternoon peeling and slicing up around 75 apples. The next day, Friday, we had to start actually putting everything together. Almost everyone from the American community helped with the baking, including the wonderful faculty couple who let us use their kitchen and a few other awesome helpers.

With our combined forces we got those miniature pies baked and stored—waiting for the coming day when they would all be eaten.

Saturday dawned and found all the internationals dragging themselves at 10 a.m. to the auditorium for a semi-rehearsal. After that I spent the rest of the afternoon doing some final practices with my group, getting homework done, and preparing myself for the evening.

At around 3 p.m. we gathered again to help set up the food serving area and take care of last minute details. Every detail had to fall into place—lighting, music tracks, our introduction video, entering and exiting, prop storage, etc.

By 5 o’clock we were ready to receive all of campus to taste our food! For the next hour or so we served pies and interacted with the other internationals, the Koreans, and some guests who came from off campus. It was a lot of fun and our pies went pretty fast despite the massive quantity we had made.

America!

I got to try a few small things from the other countries’ tables, but I was mostly serving. At last the time for performances came and everyone settled into the auditorium. We started with some traditional Korean drumming, as well as a traditional Korean dance. A message was given on the theme of the night—Passion of the Nations. The idea behind Culture Night was finding unity amongst the diversity of God’s beautiful world, so we heard some good words upon that subject from our faculty adviser.

As each culture performed I was really impressed by what everyone came up with. There was dancing, singing, and more dancing. Everyone put so much work into their performances! I won’t describe each performance in detail because it would be a lot to try and describe, but I will give a list of the cultures who performed:

South Korea (Hayang)

China

Indonesia

Mekong (Laos, Thailand, Cambodia)

South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal)

Australia

Nepal

Russia

Mongolia

Myanmar

India

Madagascar

America

Africa

To try and give you at least a brief picture of the variety of beautiful things I got to see and experience, I made a little video blog if you so desire to view it. Sadly, I was not able to video every single one, but at least this can give you an overview. I also wish I could have taken more pictures of everyone else's performances!

By the time it came to our performance, I was honestly getting nervous. Everyone else did such a wonderful job, and here I was—the American who had never danced before, much less in front of a crowd! But as we gathered back stage and said a prayer, I decided to have a good time of it. And you know what, I did. Somehow the moves came to me along with a smile on my face. I had so much fun listening to the crowd laugh at our cheesy, random routine.

We went from doing the Charleston to swing dance, from swing to the twist, from the twist to some disco set to the BG’s “Stayin’ Alive,” then on to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Then we got some 90’ boy band in with the guys of our group doing N’Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye.” This was followed by a modern dance called the jerk based off a popular song by Audio Push. Next, we surprised the audience with a few seconds based off the movie “Titanic.” The boys even made a cardboard ship!

The pictures describe it better than I could. Everyone had a good laugh as Celine Dion’s voice rang out passionately across the auditorium with our guys standing on the long board. I am still not sure what inspired them to include it, but everyone enjoyed it so I guess it worked!

We concluded our 6 minute dance with the Harlem Shake, another modern trend in American culture right now. I hadn’t actually practiced that part, so I winged it. I am so glad that I can say I ended up having a blast performing. We may have been silly, but that was alright. I did not mind. It is not easy for me to overcome insecurity and pride in order to do something like that, but I am glad that I did.

After the last performance from the African community we watched the fashion show, and then our International Student Union president got up on stage to give a few heartfelt words. A lot of division has been occurring on campus this semester as a new university president has been elected. This occasion has met with a lot of protests for many complicated reasons. But even in something small like Culture Night, we were all able to experience unity in a meaningful way. So many people worked hard and so many beautiful relationships were showcased throughout this event that it really was a light for Handong. At least, this was my perception. I was really touched.

We ended with singing the Handong logo song, then a huge group picture of all the students—both international and Korean.

The goal of Culture Night was to bring glory to God and celebrate His diverse world in light of the fact that it is also a united world through Him. I think it achieved that purpose. As pictures, laughter, and conversation followed the end of the event my heart filled to bursting. I was surrounded by so many beautiful people, with beautiful stories, who came together in a beautiful way to make it a memorable evening. I am so glad I spent the time and energy on this event. It meant a lot to me, and reminded me of how blessed I have been this semester. It was refreshing, and so many good memories were made.

Thanks for reading to a long, rambling blog entry! I cannot express very well why I enjoyed this event so much, but I bet that if you had been there you would have felt the same. :-)

Blessings!