Wednesday, 11 November 2009

I've been to cities that never close down...

Cindy and I spent this afternoon with my new friends, the Australasian Association of IU. The international centre here put on a World's Fair and we had a stall. They were still looking for decorations when I went to my first meeting with the group last week so I volunteered Cindy's stuffed toys. We ended up taking a huge number of toy marsupials as well as a full-size didgeridoo and a very classy beach towel with a map of Australia on it. The group president declared proudly that our stall looked like a gift shop and I reiterated that it belonged to Cindy, not me.

Each stall was giving out food from their home country but I shouldn't have got my hopes up on hearing that our group had given the caterers a recipe for sausage rolls. The recipe we gave them was too vague so we ended up with American "Italian" sausage (i.e. pork with lots of fennel or aniseed) cut into discs. It wasn't bad, the Americans liked it. But maybe that was just by comparison with the Vegemite that we were also forcing them to try! So there was a few hours of passing out food and we got to try some food from the other stalls too.

Most of those international student groups are quite big and some gave musical performances. There was an interesting central-Asian drum group and an Afro-Cuban ensemble that gave me bad tinnitus. The highlight was troupe of Indian dancers. They were wearing bright costumes, holding batons, dancing in circles weaving in and out and generally having a fun time. I don't know whether it was the good rhythm of the music or the super-animated dancing but they had us all mesmerised and got fantastic applause at the end.

1 comment:

Scyndeye said...

But you didn't say that a very bad Oz girl violated your pride by clipping a small koala to your shirt. I witnessed the whole thing and I have to admit that I was very proud of you when I saw all the effort you put into forcing you not to cry, you were very brave!