On to the rest of our International Day fun:
There was a stage set up where different groups performed music and dance from around the world. The audience was free to come and go like you would at a county fair.
The show started with the preschool class singing “We’ve got the whole world in our hands.” It was interesting because they took out the mention of God from the original song. Yes, it makes the song politically correct, but as Josh said, it’s really only the West that cares about that. The irony is that here in Oman, if you don’t believe in God, Muslims would think there is something wrong with you. Anyway . . . cute song and performance that generated an interesting discussion at our house.
This little guy in the middle is decked out in the US equivalent of a tuxedo. The dishdasha and kuma are daily wear, the massar (the wrap worn over the top of the kuma) brings it up to suit and tie level, and when you wear the khanjar it is black tie event-worthy. The khanjar is the Omani curved knife that is carried inside of a leather sheath covered in woven silver. Next to him is an adorable Turkish naval officer.
The Omani kid in the center with the black robe over his dishdasha is even more dressed up — the thing they wear over the dishdasha? That’s like going white tie.
“We’ve got the rivers and the streams, in our hands . . .”
Typical American, wearing whatever is most comfortable. In my defense, Dairy Queen is an American company.
We had to wait for the Irish dancers to perform before we could explore the food booths because Caleb had several girl friends performing in the group that he wanted to watch and then hang out with after.
Caleb looking for his harem. No kidding, we gave him his share of the food tickets and he ran off in the center of a group of five girls.
The rest of the school grounds was covered with food booths representing all the different countries that have students at TAISM. Each ticket cost 200 baisa (approx 50 cents) and the different booths charged between 1 and 4 tickets for food items. Here Carter and Josh are visiting Pakistan and trying to decide how to spend their tickets. Josh got Pakistani ice cream (vanilla with a rice pudding custard topping) which was really good.
Off to find more food. She was yelling, “Eat! Eat!”
This huge tent had food from all over the Arab world. We ate tabouleh (Lebanese parsley salad), roasted eggplant with chickpeas, koshary from Egypt, flatbread with cheese, and I can’t remember what else.
Camille was fascinated the dancing Egyptian girls
She didn’t quite join in, but I could tell she wanted to
After dancing, it was time for more food! We ate chicken satay with peanut sauce and glass noodles with shrimp from Indonesia, sausage from South Africa, Caleb had a hot dog from America (of course!), and the kids all got snow cones from somewhere. I’m not sure which country was claiming them, all I know is they came back with blue and green tongues.
While all this eating was going on, music, dance and other cultural exhibitions were happening simultaneously. We happened to pass by the stage in time to see this martial arts demonstration.
I loved the Bollywood dancing. It would be really fun to take a class. These women are all teachers at TAISM.
A quick stop so everyone could get hennaed up — Carter got a snake on each arm.
After henna we spent the last of our tickets on desserts: fruit kebabs with chocolate fondue from France, pecan bars from the United States, scones with cream and jam and apple crumble from the UK. We managed to eat our way around the world.
In between all the food booths and music there were plenty of bouncy houses and inflatable slides for the kids to play on. There were no adults supervising so it was kid heaven — jumping in and out, diving and tackling. Camille didn’t seem to mind, but I kept her out of the way of the main action just to be safe.
One last picture with our Flat Stanley in front of all the different flags of the countries represented at TAISM. When we did an admissions tour I remember the administrator giving a number in the 60s.
Then it was home to bed to sleep off the feast!
