The Knox Student

The lobby of the Center for the Fine Arts was filled with displays featuring information, games, music and colorful flags of various countries represented during this year’s International Fair.

When asked about what she thought about I-Fair, junior Cat Erickson said, “OMG, it is so LOL fantastic!”

Sophomore Tanvi Madhusudanan and junior Yumna Rathore spoke about AAINA’s booth, which featured designs with henna, which is used to dye skin, and a display of an auto rickshaw, a mode of transport widely used in South Asia. They also had a poster that compared various American actresses, actors and athletes to their South Asian counterparts. “We’re showing how different yet the same South Asia and the U.S. are…and we have cows as well,” Rathore said.

“Not real cows, but poster board cows,” Madhusudanan said.

Sophomore Regina Rosenbrock stood in front of International Club’s table, which had copies of I-Mag, the magazine featuring pictures and writing on this year’s theme for I-Fair. Rosenbrock said the theme of I-Shock, Culture Shock, was chosen at I-Formal last year as students voted for “Culture Shock.”

Co-president of Chinese Club senior Orit Buzali said their display was of a poster with pictures taken by Knox students in China, with most of them being from study abroad programs. Orit said the club holds events for Chinese festivals like New Years and exists mainly for Chinese students to have their culture represented and for other students to learn about Chinese culture.

Japanese Club had one of the most popular booths as students and Galesburg residents crowded around their display featuring the children’s game called kamizumo, roughly translated as “godly sumo wrestler.” On one end of their table, Japanese Club members instructed people on how to make the origami sumo wrestlers while the other end of table had rings set up for the sumo matches, made up of shoe boxes. Junior Melissa Sher said, “You tap the ends and the little origami sumo wrestlers will get closer and closer and closer and then they kind of grapple until one falls over and one is then vanquished.”

In reference to the Japanese Club display of a sumo wrestling game, Erickson said, “It’s so intense. It’s like camping.”

Sophomore Katie Miller said French Club wanted to have their board be interactive, so they had slips of paper with questions on French culture so that people could flip them up and see the answers. They could also look up well-known products in their respective regions, which were demonstrated on map in middle. French Club also had some information on the Besancon study abroad program.

Kyla Tully, sophomore and co-founder of Belly Dance Club, said the members of the new club found each other because they each wanted to have different belly dance acts. On their table were belly dance costumes representing the regions of different music and movements that go with each genre. There was a red top representing Egypt, a Turkish costume in turquoise and a black tribal top. Speaking about the various costumes, Tully said, “Turkish is definitely a little more scandalous … They tend to do a lot more stuff with the skirt with the slit at the side.” Belly Dance Club will soon have meetings on Thursdays at 6 p.m. in the Fitness Center of Memorial Gym. Men and women are invited to join. Tully said that it is common to have male belly dancers, who can dance like women as well as men and have different body shapes.

Spanish Club had pictures of people who went abroad in Barcelona, Argentina and Peru, including a photo of cooked guinea pig called cuy in Cusco, Peru. Their display also featured Professor Fernando Gomez playing guitar. German Club also had music featured from their represented country. Their table had a laptop that played German band Tokio Hotel, and they also had face paint to paint Germany’s flag and gummi bears from Haribo, a German company.

Harambee had five flags representing people who were from African countries such as Ghana, Burkina Faso and Nigeria as well as random facts about Africa. When asked about what their club does, Harambee secretary sophomore Dzifa Penty said, “We try to educate people about Africa and we kind of talk more about stuff they don’t know about Africa. I think that’s a different perception from what you see on TV. It’s not all about AIDs and poverty. We have beautiful culture. We want people to be aware of that.”