Two Weeks of Culture!

The tragedy of the Virginia Tech shootings resonated around campus early last week, and I attended the candlelight vigil that was held on campus.

On a completely different note, Friday April 20th was a very happy day for lots of youth in North America. The 4/20 celebration was about the consumption (by inhalation) of cannabis (weed, kush, whatever you want to call it). It was a night that never fell short of laughs.

The day that followed was the second "American Pie" event of the year. With other UCSD students, we went to the US/Mexico border and took a tour, learning about the many border-crossing and militarization issues that were yet to be resolved. We also visited the Chicano Park Annual Celebration that was happening, and then did some volunteer work at a community centre where a UCSD newspaper (The Guardian) reporter took a candid shot, unbeknownst to me until the following weekday...whoa surprise, there I was.

On the Monday, along with some other members of the group, International Cares, and some Koreans from I-House, I went to a largely Mexican-American elementary school near the border to teach a classroom of kids about Korea and to show them Korean culture. After the class, I showed them some Taekwondo, which some youngsters loved a bit too much. It was cool being a primary school classroom teacher and a P.E teacher for a day (although it got a bit strenuous on the vocal cords).

On Wednesday, Mohit and I bought all the ingredients required to make ANZAC biscuits and hokey-pokey. We then baked (baked? baked!) the biscuits and made hokey-pokey ice-cream - delicious Kiwiana. Why? The next night (since the night coincided with ANZAC Day), us Kiwis of I-House (Alice, Mohit and me) gave a presentation about our New Zealand and served the delicious Kiwi dessert afterwards. During my section, I touched on some areas that greatly (and truthfully) favoured NZ over Australia in our trans-Tasman rivalry. This got an Aussie girl in the audience fired up a bit, who cursed out loud for all to hear, a well-known (false) dirty remark about NZers and sheep. What directly followed this was my final slide that stated that Australia had more sheep than New Zealand. Haha.