Saturday evening we had our country presentations dinner at a Crown Plaza hotel (with distinctively Communist architecture) within walking distance of our dorm. We ate a tasty traditional Czech meal while a Czech band played. During dessert each of the countries gave a brief presentation about their country. This was a little harder for individuals who were the lone representatives of their country.
The U.S. group felt like we had a hard task, since the students already know so much about our country. We decided to take a humourous approach and after some introductory remarks gave ten reasons that Europe should become the 51st state. That sounds offensive, but we had tested our idea on European focus groups ahead of time. Our list of reasons were self-deprecatory–things like “the U.S. will finally have a good football (soccer) team.” It was well-received.
Many of the presentations were excellent, including national music, foods, and folk dances. The evening closed with the presentation from Georgia, the largest and most close-knit group here. They had several talented dancers in full costume who performed a fitting finale to the evening.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get lots of photos of the evening. It was hard to get close to the action and my flash batteries gave out, so I was a little limited. Here are a few, though.
I’ve been wanting to try posting some video. This is the hired band that played while we ate. I’m sorry the video quality isn’t great. I wasn’t thinking about posting it, but now the possibility is too great to resist. So here goes. This video may not be viewable with some filtering services.