North America Night!

One night.  One night to showcase North American culture.  One night to give others an idea of our history, of our lives, values and what makes us American.  Sounds pretty tough, right?  It was very difficult for many reasons at the outset but the results were outstanding.

Challenges:

1. North America night included Canada and the United States and NOT Mexico.  How did this happen?  What kind of message were we trying to send?  Just because we are building up our physical borders does not mean we should sever all relations, right?  Well, at the outset, Mexico was included.  The difficulties were numerical and cultural.  There are only two Mexicans at school and it would be difficult for them to showcase their culture with such limited manpower, especially since their culture is completely distinct from the rest of North America.  Also, the rest of us North Americans are loud mouthed and bossy and on-time which left the Mexicans at a slight loss when they didn't come to meetings and then when they did, they didn't speak up amongst the noisy rest of us.  So, no Mexico.  We took some heat for it later but then it was reconciled once again and it all worked out.

2.  Did I mention the loud-mouthed bossy North Americans?  Yeah, well, put us all in a meeting together and try telling us to plan North America Night when we all had different ideas and plans.  It was messy. It turns out, we don't really work well together but prefer to do things last minute, on our own and generally flying by the seat of our pants.  This made some a little anxious.  Once again, amazingly, everything worked out.  While we were all working hard in graduate school, we managed to pull off North America night with most of the planning happening in the last week.

3.  Canada disowned us.  What's new?  They were still a part of North America Night but held their own meetings, fundraisers and basically did their own thing.

4.  When asked to showcase the culture of the United States, what food would you cook?  What clothing would you wear?  What would you do?  We were stuck for a while because our culture seems bland compared to others and our food is generally borrowed from everywhere else!  We are a melting pot, after all.  But then we realized that we have quite a history and culture.  We served a BBQ style dinner with different salads, corn on the cob and burgers and hot dogs with apple pie and brownies for dessert.

Our final program for the evening included a tribute to Native Americans and First Nations people, a curling demonstrations, poetry readings, famous quotes, jokes, dances from the 50's through the present and more!  Some of the dances featured were the charleston, hand jive, the twist, YMCA, country line dancing and Napoleon Dynamite.  I participated in 5 dances and had practice for 3-5 hours a night for six days!  It was crazy.  The most difficult dance to learn by far was the Napoleon Dynamite!  Watch the clip of it I posted here and the real version here: Napoleon Dynamite Youtube.  

After the show and dinner we had a bonfire and some games to close the night.  At the bonfire we had the fixings for s'mores.  Yum.  Somehow I didn't stop to think that many people had never roasted a marshmallow.  We lost quite a few to the flames and people frantically waving around little torches which only encouraged their demise.  As a result, I had several marshmallow roasting demonstrations and witnessed many peoples first s'mores experience.  It was a pretty special site seeing their eyes pop open as they bit into the melty gooey goodness.  Our gaming tables included a selection of 'minute to win it' challenges such as getting an oreo from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands.  We also had college favorites beer pong and flip cup.  

It turns out we really do have culture.  Our theme for the night was 'Diversity Makes Us One'.  And it does.  Canada and the United States aligned forces in the end and pulled off a seamless, entertaining, diverse and educational show!

And the YMCA from the 70's: