Aww.

I feel like I've been consumed for the past two weeks with organizing my school's biennial Multicultural Day.  This is my third time around in the organizer's chair, and it's kind of getting easier: the first time, I organized single-handedly, then my friend Fea co-organized the second time, and this time my buddy Nadine has jumped on board.  It's made things go more smoothly, and we keeping trying to make the day bigger and better.  In addition, our awesome student council team has been great in helping with organization.  However, it's still a lot of work, and I'm decompressing after a 12-hour day at school.

We've sold about 550 tickets to the student body (which is about 720 in total).  We've organized a showcase with different groups of student performers (the Filipino dance team is amazing), a parade of flags, and we've even hired a troupe of Chinese lion dancers to perform.  After the showcase, students go up to the second floor of the school, where sixteen classrooms have been transformed into pavilions that are decorated and have food and activities to represent different countries/continents/cultures.
It's taken pretty much our entire staff to make this day happen.   But all of the work is entirely worth it when you see all of the energy and student engagement that happens in the process.

One of my favourite moments happened last week when we were planning the African pavilion.  We always have to group the entire continent together because we have a scattering of African students: a couple from Ethiopia, a few from Nigeria, one from Angola, etc, etc.  As we were planning, I remembered an Eritrean boy that I'd taught last year.  I told student council to buy a flag for Eritrea.  I was certain that he'd carry it into the flag parade, and that he and his brothers would help us with the pavilion.

I tracked him down and asked if he wanted to participate.  I think at first he didn't understand the details.  His first response was "Miss, we don't have time to go the embassy to get a flag!"

"No, we already bought you a flag!  You just will have to carry it."

He looked incredulous.  "Where did you find an Eritrean flag?"

"One of the flag store on Spadina.  They sell every flag there."

That's when his eyes lit up and he offered to bring in food and promised to be at the dress rehearsal.

Tonight we pulled together the African pavilion and his brother went all the way home in the rain and back to bring in pictures from home.  It was really sweet.

Oh, and as an aside, the man at the flag store knows me well.  This year our Multicultural Rep on student council (a new position we created for years with multicultural days) went to the flag store.  "$8 a flag!" I told her.  "That's how much we always pay."

She returned telling me that the man at the flag store remembers me well, and said that I'm tough and drive a hard bargain.  I love that I have a rep in Toronto's flag district.

Here's hoping that they day goes super well!