International Day at MSU

I attended “International Day” at the College of Engineering yesterday. This was a great opportunity to witness different cultures embracing one another in a traditional way. During the hour that I was there, I was able to see two performances, each one highlighting a different culture. One was an African performance by a young boy and his mother. The young boy was about eight years old and he played the snare drum and the Congo. He was amazingly talented. In addition to his solo consisting of three songs, he played accompanying his mother while she sang. The mother was so kind to make her song a community effort by teaching the audience the song called “Sunshine in Africa”. The young boy representing Africa also played along side a man representing the Mexican culture while he sang. This was the highlight of my experience; this event focused on exposing individual cultures and these two people took it amongst themselves to embrace one another. The second performance that I saw was a traditional Mexican dance by a local Lansing dance group called “Fanticia”. They were extremely good, entertaining and professional. I truly enjoyed this showcase of other cultures. I was able to mix-and-mingle with a diverse group of MSU faculty and students, observe beautiful cultural traditions and best of all, learn the song “Sunshine in Africa”.