I may be on the road to recovery...

Finally, I have found the energy to post again. I blame it all on WorldFest. But this morning I was able to find a little clip of the Extravaganza from a t.v. channel. The night was not without drama, the performances were not seamless, and there was a bit of hyperventilating on my part, but it also seemed to turn out pretty well! I actually did not get to see any of it, as I was backstage, desperately calling out, "where's Ghana?? I can't find Ghana!!!" or, "Holy cow! How much longer does this song have???" or, my favorite, "yes, I know it's incredibly loud, but Mexico wants the mics turned up more. No, MORE." My sweet co-planner-who-instead-of-looking-haggard-like-me-looked-beautiful-and-also-never-raised-her-voice, who saved me by taking care of all the sound issues, especially loved that part too. So here's a taste of WorldFest:

So the guy doing the haka in his shirt and tie is Adam, President, International Student Association. He did a fantastic job emceeing for the event. I had to do some serious harassing to get him and his Kiwi friends to perform the haka. The guy without a shirt was hilarious. Wouldn't commit without the promise of free tickets to the mediocre banquet. Also wanted to know who in our office is single and if we were hiring.

The kids did wonderfully - all of them looked so professional. We had a touch of drama with an Israeli ("Israeli" according to Todd, because, get this: they were blond) family who got up and walked out during the modeling from the Middle East (which was very beautifully and carefully done by Jordanian and Palestinian students, one of whom wore a dress handmade by her Grandmother). But no one really saw that, and it would have taken a knowledge of the weeks' issues of American students harassing Palestinian students at the Culture Booths to really see it for what it was. Or maybe the family just, um, needed to use the bathroom, um all of them at the same time, and then, um, returned to a different table...

On that note, though. Why do we need to be careful and place the Taiwanese booth far from the Chinese booth, the Israelis far from the Palestinians, and so on/so forth? WorldFest is a celebration of the cultures of our beautiful world and University is an opportunity to yes, explore the differences and difficult histories of countries and kingdoms, but also to objectively study the diversity of our world. I guess some wounds are too fresh, too deep and too-covered-by-CNN to heal during a week of culture shows.

The whole thing, though, was amazing. By the end of the (sold out!) show though, I was DONE. I piled stuff into my office, hurriedly took inventory of the clothes borrowed from other departments, gathered the leftover clothes from the dressing room (holy cow, someone left an ENTIRE outfit in the dressing room - what the heck did he wear home? His piu piu?) In checking the dressing rooms, can I just say that boys from all cultures need to be taught better to clean up after themselves? I found maybe three cups of water in the girls' dressing room, all the others had been properly disposed of in the AVAILABLE trash bins. The boys' side - oh my goodness. Half-drunk cups all over the place, right next to but not in the trash bins. Huh??? Clothes all over the place, food wrappers (didn't we just feed you guys?? Mediocre, yes, but free!), bottles, books, hangers, just garbage. After a bit more exhaustion with the massive water thermoses and a lot of help from the Palestinians, I collapsed into my car, fed the baby (I had been doing all of this with the babe - why, you ask? Because I suffer from an immense amount of guilt when I work forty hours a week, and it increases exponentially when I work sixty hour weeks. Couldn't let T. take him home after the performance when I could be holding him and doing everything else one-handed) headed home, packed the car and left for Seattle with the family for Thanksgiving with my parents and sister. It was awesome.