Taste Cheese with Chopsticks

It’s that time of year again: ISO (International Student Organization) show time! From McCullough to the Gifford annex, international students perform using traditional props and costumes from their home countries.

The theme this year is “Mosaic”, which will bring spectacular acts around the world into a great show. This is a little promotion for the ISO show, and it will be great to see all of your faces this Saturday.

The ISO show reminds me a lot of my high school festival. In China we don’t choose our classes during high school, so we always have the same 50 classmates. The time around the school festival was the most interesting part of the year since there is so little happening besides academic work on campus every year. Every class comes up with a performance and the teacher picks the best ones.

The performance night is the highlight of the festival. It is mandatory for every student to go and watch. We have that day off from school, which means that we can spend some fun time with friends without worrying about homework.

You cannot imagine how badly I wanted to perform on stage. But I never had a chance to perform during high school because it was too competitive. This is why I was thrilled to hear about the ISO show — it sounded exactly the same as my high school festival!

But it is not. For sure there are performances from all over the world and the seats are always full, but it is not a campus-wide celebration. It is more like a carnival of international students. Most of my international friends will perform that day while some of my U.S. friends won’t even know the ISO show is happening this Saturday.

In the audience last year, there were more host families, Middlebury town residents and professors watching the show than college students from the U.S. The reason may be that there are too many shows happening every week: dances from RIDDIM, plays in the Hepburn Zoo, and concerts at the CFA, just to name a few. Since we have so many choices, the importance of the ISO show here is nothing compared to my high school festival.

The ISO show, unique and different from other shows, is a great opportunity for us to learn about the culture of other countries. Believe me, the performance represents the culture in a detailed and concrete way.

From my own experience, I learned to be a positive and energetic Japanese girl when I was practicing in Shodo (Japanese calligraphy and dance); I got to know the typical Bollywood dance, which made me looked like a Bollywood movie star; I tried to avoid being smashed during the bamboo dance, but failed to stop thinking about the coconut juice from the Philippines when the music starts. We may sometimes feel uncomfortable in breaking the boundaries between different cultures, but the ISO show provides a risk-free way for us to step out and look around.

Although it’s too late to perform now, you can still watch the show and experience amazing cultures from all over the world.

You will be amazed by how talented every one around us and how diverse the campus is.