Internationals Day Festival

By Chase Godfrey Staff Writer

Internationals Day is an event that East Central hosts every fall, it is one of the many events that falls under Interational’s Education Week (IEW).  ECC is one of the lucky colleges that gets to formally participate in these events, as it sheds light on our international students that attend East Central. With students and local communities representing their country of choice, at booths, food, and activities.  

This year’s Interational Day was held in the gymnasium compared to, last year where it was held in the cafeteria as most students would remember it. Like soon to be sophomore student Ava Harris, who was able to experience this event last fall. Ava is a nineteen-year-old first year student at East Central, who is majoring in Dental Hygiene, where she will finish her prerequisites at East Central to transfer to a college in Springfield, to finish her schooling to become a Dental Hygienist.  

Ava went to Interational’s Day last year and proclaimed that it was her most memorable unique college event she went too. In her words ava affirmed “It’s a cool event to go and obverse and get an idea of each country that was there. By their activities, props, and food they had to offer. Along with the food, they had really cool food truck that was so good.” Ava voiced how she liked how every year they host this event; they have a passport book. With this book, you can get stickers from each booth and country to write down interesting things about each booth.   

As for this year there were more booths that ECC had to offer, like are both from Brazil represented by East Central Student Cassio Da Silva. A twenty-two-year-old second year student who plays for our college’s soccer team, Cassio is majoring in Exercise Science, where he is still deciding where to go after East Central.  

This is Cassio first year attending Internationals Day along with participating in it too, Cassio this year represented his home country of Brazil proudly. He expressed to me when that if he were asked again, he would, “Yeah I would love to come back and do this, it was amazing experience to be a part of.” Cassio’s booth had a Portuguese card game, with sentences, paraphrase’s, he elaborated to me that he real enjoyed seeing students and community members attempt these games.  

Cassio pointed out, that one of his favorite experiences about this event was seeing his friends and classmates there. Whether they were practicing in the festival or just going to the events he really enjoyed seeing familiar faces. By far he announced that the Spanish booth was his favorite, “The Spanish booth was my favorite, it was interesting to learn more, their language too. Since a lot of my teammates speak Spanish, I want to learn more to help understand them.” Cassio is enrolled in a foreign language class this year, to help broaden his scope of the language more than he already knows.  
 
Both students indicated some changes and additions they would love to see next fall, for the festival. Both Ava and Cassio would love to see more booth participate in the festival, specifically. Cassio said he loved to see Zimbabwe booth. He went into the fact that he has a classmate who is form Zimbabwe and would love for them to participate next year and represent the booth. As for Ava she said love to see a booth form the Philippines, since her family relations to the country. Along with more activities for the students, to be able to partake in whilst there.  

Overall, this one day is a week-long celebration and festival, for the diverse culture and student body at ECC. Internationals Day does an amazing job zooming in on the countries that participate on this day. It means a lot to the students that fall under those umbrellas, and really makes them feel appreciated, heard, and feel at home, and this year did not disappoint, with its student and community support and involvement.