Culture Day, Blasts into Ability!

On the 17th June Ability Education celebrated its annual Culture Day party at Central Campus in Sydney. This tradition started many years ago as an expression of the fantastic cultural diversities we are fortunate to have in our college. Students can freely interact and meet friendly new faces, appreciating all the differences and similarities together. Currently with 35 different nationalities present at Ability Education, Culture Day is a great way for everyone to join as one and have fun.

The day was broken into 3 parts: morning-decorating each room into a different country using pictures, DVD’s and music; noon- food preparation and food sampling followed by performances from Latin America, China & South-East Asia, Japan, Turkey, Korea, Saudi Arabia and Europe. Level 5 was converted into theatre spaces; each room had a teacher who was the presenter too: Adriana, Lee and Ashley.

While the students waited eagerly for the performers to arrive to each room, the teachers gave out prizes: pens, soft drinks and candy, to students who answered the trivia questions correctly. Spelling Australian towns and suburbs was extra tricky for some students! Then the performances began and trust me, the rooms all got suddenly hot- for everyone! The Salsa dancers from Latin America picked people from the audience to join in their craziness and soon everyone else was doing the same! From Europe’s Macarena, Turkish Belly Dance, Saudi dance- everyone danced! The Japanese performance was dynamic. It was a cross between Karate and Dance with shouts of SOYA. Even the black and red costumes were cute.

The only group that didn’t dance was China & South-East Asia. The group, made up of students from Taiwan, China, Thailand and Laos performed a play based on the Adventures of Monkey Magic. It had a moral too- never judge a book by its cover. Korea’s performer was brave as she played a traditional Korean aria alone on the flute. The song is very popular in Korea and makes some people even cry!

Time passed very quickly because before you knew it it was time to announce the winners for Best Food; Best Performance and Best Room Decoration. Anticipation hung like a cloud in room 21, who will win, everyone wondered. Best Food- Turkey; Best Performance- Latin America and Best Room Decoration- Saudi Arabia. Everyone accepted their award and gifts with great pride, even giving serious acceptance speeches (Turkey).

Then, mass hysteria broke out with everyone chanting: ‘Ability! Ability! Ability!!!’ Luckily we had foreseen this excess energy and had organised an after party at Side Bar from 4pm with free drinks for students. Seeing so many happy smiling faces it was a pleasure to offer such a day to our students and look forward to our next BIG Day in September with the famous Ability Education Talent Quest.

Author: Adriana