Are you feeling the need to go abroad to experience other cultures all over the word, watch their shows and try their local food? This semester you needed to go no further than the IMU on the IU Bloomington campus! The Office of International Services at IU held its annual biggest event “World’s Fare” on Nov. 15 at Alumni Hall in the Indiana Memorial Union. All kinds of associations and clubs displayed their cultures and hosted interactive exhibits at their booths with activities and games. Visitors watched eleven different dance performances, chose from 24 different food options and interacted with 23 different cultural groups on campus–all in one place.
This was the 13th celebration of the IU World’s Fare. The IUWF is organized by the Office of International Services with the Union Board, co-coordinated by Director of Comedy and Entertainment Seth Blunt.
Performances from Chinese association and Indian association.
Associations prepared shows for IUWF from the beginning of this semester. They were awarded prizes by judges based on the audiences’ decisions. The Chinese dancing “the Argun” won the first prize and got much screaming from audiences. It showed the relationship between Mongolian women and the river Argun.
“I was so excited about it and we never thought audiences would love this dance so much,” said Rui Jiang, one of the performers in this dance. She said X-Power’s leader began to prepare this dance from summer vacation because they needed to teach other performers after back to campus. They rehearsed four times a week from this semester started. “It was really tired, it was. But when I heard that audiences clapped hands and they all shot videos for us, it makes everything worthwhile.” said Jiang.
Visitors got what they wanted to try by showing the “tickets”.
Every country or culture representative offered several ethnic food options to visitors. Visitors received small “tickets” when they step into the Alumni Hall, which was stamped as they took part in the games at different booths. They could try as many kinds of food as they wanted as long as they interacted with enough numbers of booths. Visitors all got what they wanted to try after waiting in long lines because of crowds. Many international students said the food was cooked in a local way and tasted as same as they ate in their hometown.
Salwa Almetwali, an international student from Irak, shared her opinions.
Leaders from different associations were excited about this event. They all hope visitors from different cultural backgrounds learned more about others and enjoy themselves while being there.
They changed their topic for IUWF every year. Salwa Almetwali, an international student from Irak and also a member from the clubs there. She said she enjoyed that IU can hold these kind of events because she loves to share her different cultures and experience with other people. “That made me feel that I can teach people something that they did not know and try my best to delete some misunderstandings on my country from public’s brain even just a little bit,” said Almetwali.
There is an official video available on OIS website and Instagram page. Check that out and find more information there.
