Every year seventh graders at Pateros Junior High pick out a country, any country in the world except the United States, and subject it to intensive study: geography, language, culture, food, traditional dress, weather, important historical and contemporary figures, all the facts they can get. They don't write a report, however. They find clothes to represent the national costume, or an approximation - sometimes it's an approximate approximation. They make a traditional dish; they make a relief map of the country, showing important geographical features. And all of that stuff goes on display on International Day.
Grade school kids, high school kids, teachers, staff - everybody at school comes down to the gym on International Day to sample the food, check out the maps and the information about the various countries. Students choose countries near (Mexico and Central American nations) and far (China), big (Canada) and small (Greece), famous (Great Britain) and not so famous (the Czech Republic).
Food is always big on International Day. Kids made pizza to represent Italy, tortillas and rice for Central America, pickled herring for Scandinavia, cookies for the Czech Republic, a tofu dish for Japan. (The consensus was that the pickled herring was better than it sounded; the tofu generated the most buzz.) The girls who chose Latin American countries wore the traditional long dresses reflecting those traditions; the students who chose China and Japan wore the round straw hat that is traditional farming attire in those countries.
International Day wasn't just for fun; students had to answer questions about the countries they chose.
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